I just came back from voting. I stood in the Ohio drizzle for 90 minutes trying to make small talk with strangers, while I secretly wondered which one of them was voting for Bush. One lady kept complaining about the rain, but I didn’t want to remind her how many before us stood on a battlefield so she could stand in line to vote. The rain is nothing; freedom is everything.

I also wonder why newspapers seems to intent on endorsing candidates. NBC Nightly News doesn’t endorse a candidate, at least overtly. CNN doesn’t endorse a candidate, they just report the news. (We can leave the discussion of whether it’s really “news” or if they do endorse a candidate by their reporting because it gets away from my point.)

Why can’t newspapers just report the news? I have never made a voting decision based on my subscriptions. The Columbus Dispatch always endorses the republicans, yet we have a democratic mayor. I guess I don’t understand the point of a publication making an endorsement when they are also supposed to use journalistic professionalism in their reporting practices.