Morin is the head of the Washington Post polling operation. He recently declared himself to be "mad" and "angry" at readers who asked, during an online chat session, why the Post wasn't trying to find out what percentage of Americans supported the impeachment of the asshole-birth.

When Morin's priggish, stupid, and condescending remarks were widely circulated, he became the target of an e-mail campaign coordinated by Democrats.com. Readers of that site were encouraged to ask why the impeachment question was now off-limits, even though Morin himself was asking the same question about Clinton less than a week after the Lewinsky scandal first broke (i.e., when her name was first made public, well before the Starr report or Clinton's testimony). Morin then became even "madder" and "angrier," of course, and chastised the letter-writers for participating in the campaign. You know the old saw: mass mailings made the letter-writers look like lemmings, their complaints couldn't be legitimate because they were just following somebody's orders, etc.

You might want to contact him: morinr@washpost.com

I sent him the message below. I was trying to be "polite," as we are told to do when participating in these futile and masochistic "activist" mailings. But since it's obvious that Morin is a stupid asshole, I'd encourage you to tell him to eat shit.

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Dear Richard Morin:

When a popular website points out what its authors consider to be a problem with your polling operation, and the readers of that website agree that there is a problem, and then contact you--it behooves you to listen.

The readers of weblogs aren't robots or idiots. I notice or receive dozens of appeals each day, asking that I contact this or that person. I choose, occasionally, to contact one of these people when I think there is a problem. Sometimes I send a form letter. This does not mean I'm brain-damaged. It means that, after some thought, I've decided that the letter represents, with sufficient accuracy, my basic feelings on the issue.

If you get a lot of such messages, it means a lot of people are thinking the same thing. Receiving a lot of these messages is not a reason to ignore them. Does that even make sense?

It's obvious you're looking for excuses to dismiss the questions raised about your polling operation. Why?

No doubt you get lots of messages that raise questions; no doubt lots of the questions are stupid. But you'd better think a bit harder about WHICH ones are stupid, and which aren't.

Sincerely...