But one reader — and only one — brought up a specific point I should have mentioned: Mickey Kaus. As this reader puts it:

Slate is a lot less liberal than you think — and for reasons beyond Hitchens.
Have you read Mickey Kaus in the past five years? Slate’s central blogging voice is the Zell Miller of bloggers.
While nominally a Democrat, Kaus hates unions more than anyone outside of the Right to Work Committee. He hates affirmative action. He hates welfare. He strongly dislikes immigrants. He bends himself into pretzels trying to construe Ann Coulter’s latest rhetorical IED as some sort of responsible comment. He hates Gore. He hates Hillary. He hates Kerry. He hates Obama. Sure, he sometimes throws in a stray anti-GOP comment, but what clearly animates him is hatred for anything left-liberal in the past, present, and future.
Would a liberal web site emplace somebody like Kaus as its central blogger?

Me: I’m not sure all of this isn’t more than a little overstated. And I should have accounted for Kaus. It’s worth noting, for example, he was an independent and popular blogger who was brought on board at Slate to be an independent voice. He is that and he is very, very good at what he does. However, it’s also worth noting that this reader basically makes my point. Slate’s maverick rightwinger is a rightwing Democrat. Slate’s maverick hawk is a Trotskyist. They may be far out in Slate’s orbit but they’re still part of the liberal solar system.