After the past month, no Democrat should be able to use the term "Swift Boat" as a verb--assuming they even know what it really means--and hold their heads up.

I'm seeing all the "gloves are off!" headlines today. Apparently Palin's face was bashed in for weeks using fluffy mittens. It's like when there's a cease-fire in the Middle East, the Palestinian radicals fire rockets into Israel for weeks, and finally the Israelis retaliate. All the headline the next day say "Israel breaks cease-fire."

Why is Obama's public record and past off limits, but you can pass cash around Wasilla looking for dirt and spread Palin's personal life all over the front pages?

You're too smart to be this hypocritical. Either condemn both operations, or admit that it's a fair fight. McCain wasn't the first one in this campaign to hit below the belt, and in fact, conservatives have been screaming at him for weeks to stop letting the other side get all the hits.

The alternative media has been researching Obama's background, ties, and experience for months, and frustrated that none of it was getting out there. If all you read are the newspapers and all you watch is network news, you would know all about the pregnancy of Palin's daughter, but squat about Obama's leftist radical background.

In a society where the press hadn't picked a political side, newspapers would have done at least as much digging on a Presidential candidate as they did on a V. P. candidate. You can see that this wasn't happening.

Now the New York Times has finally printed a major story that at least mentioned the subject, but of course, it was only to defend Obama's position when it became impossible to pretend the story didn't exist.

If you remember the Swift Boat veterans issue, that's what happened back then. Information was distributed on alternative channels until finally the press had to take notice, but when they did, it was only because they couldn't ignore it any more, and they needed to defend Kerry.

Twenty years ago, the Swift Boat issue would have died quietly with some local TV ads. Without an alternative to the mainstream media, the same would be true now for the Ayers, Rezko and Wright issues, along with others. If it wasn't for the internet and talk radio, the name Ayers would never have appeared in this campaign at all.

Just as an aside, it is a nice blast from the past to remember how very, VERY important military service in Vietnam was as a presidential qualification eight years ago. The "chickenhawk" is now officially extinct.