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What’s desperately needed is an end to the unqualified American financial and political support for Israel that helps finance settlement expansion and rewards Israeli politicians who carry out policies that are inimical to peace.

First, as someone who works with and on behalf of the poor and homeless, for more than a year, I have looked and asked but found little to suggest that those who depend upon others for meeting their basic human needs are going to be a priority for an Obama administration. I am also troubled that Obama supports the death penalty. I was and remain saddened that he does not endorse the right of all women and men to marry whom they choose. I am disappointed that he did not recognize how taking piles of money from the financial services industry compromises his ability to bring order and justice to the mess our economy is in. Obama's apparent readiness to intensify our involvement in Afghanistan, even expand it into Pakistan is, also, deeply troubling to me.

The ascendancy of Barack Obama has been meteoric to say the least, and it is my hope that he wins.

But I do take issue with Mr. Obama’s statement that “in no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

Until July 2007, India had a Sikh prime minister, a Muslim president and a leader of the governing Congress Party who is white and Christian and does not speak fluent Hindi.

Furthermore, the “untouchables” of the caste system, having been discriminated against for more than a millennium, have provided several chief ministers over the past decade.

Even the indigenous people known as tribals have their own state and some self-determination. These groups do not have an easy life, but they have found that it is possible to prosper.

In the first 15 inches of your article, your unquoted, unattributed analysis of Mr. Sholley is virtually entirely unflattering. On the other hand, your references to Mr. Frank as "a key architect of the recent financial rescue package" is not only a distortion of his role, but obscures his well-documented role on the House Financial Services Committee, which was to block all attempts to regulate the financial industry or to take any action to prevent the very financial crisis you're crediting him with solving. Your complimentary treatment of Mr. Frank is stated unquoted (apparently your own conclusions), yet the only nonnegative points about what Mr. Sholley stands for are mentioned only via his own words.

In particular, The Post reported that calls to the office of my congressman, Steny H. Hoyer, were running 3 to 1 against the bill, down from 6 to 1 earlier in the week ["Hoyer Does More Than Hold His Nose," Metro, Oct. 3]. Yet he voted for the bailout. That is not representative government, it's arrogance.

It wasn't the CRA that created the subprime mess but the proliferation of unregulated mortgage originators during the housing boom, financed in part by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) stated, "Most high-cost loans were originated by lenders that did not have a CRA obligation and lacked federal regulatory oversight."

First, Steven Pearlstein's column, "They Just Don't Get It." I'm so glad that he is so sophisticated about money matters that he could tell us readers -- "the American taxpayer" -- how we "just don't get it." Seven hundred billion dollars? He's right -- I won't get it, and neither will Wall Street.

Until we take the incentives for maximizing income out of health insurance and medical services, we will remain tied to a dysfunctional system that is adding an intolerable financial burden to our already staggering economy.

THE BUSH administration is warning of dire consequences if Congress does not rush to pass the no-questions-allowed bailout of Wall Street. This sounds like the administration's warning that delaying an invasion of Iraq would result in a mushroom cloud. And we know how well rushing into that problem has gone.

While it is easy to blame colleges for the heavy alcohol use that takes place on their campuses, the problem of binge drinking on college campuses lies within American society itself. Billboards, television advertisements, pop culture icons and professional athletics all embody distorted conceptions of alcohol use.