links for 2009-09-05

A nice piece on how it feels to have anonymous hate mail every time you write you publicly. "All of it is, inevitably, anonymous - people will say stuff in letters and as anonymous commenters that they never would say in person, much less on a telephone....I write this not to complain, nor to Broder-ish case for "comity" and "bipartisanship," but to simply point out that I think there is some truth to the idea that the political discourse in this country has gotten toxically coarse to the point where we're not having any kind of discussion about substance at all."