The Sunday NY Times (yeah, I'm trying to catch up after blowing off the weekend) has a short piece on all the fact checking that's gone on this election season.

Despite the fractious modern-day discourse, the nation's founders would have surely loved the debate fueled by the Internet. The pamphleteers of their day could be nettlesome and scurrilous, but the founders wrote the First Amendment with the faith that good ideas generally win out in the marketplace of ideas. They understood that the intellectual marketplace is the foundation of democracy, just as the dollars-and-cents marketplace is the foundation of the economy.

The fact that today's marketplace of ideas has vendors that pass off shoddy goods should come as no surprise to those who have watched the rise of scams and fraud in the online economic marketplace. But Internauts didn't abandon eBay, which calls itself the "perfect market," or other online shops. Instead, they approach those marketplaces with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Given time, we all might become savvy consumers in the marketplace of ideas as well. It's never too soon, and later than we think.

That sums things up nicely, I think.

There are bloggers that I think we'd be better off without but on the whole I'd like to see everyone continue with the fact checking. And I'm assuming a Kerry win.