I’m not making this up. I’ve been attacked by Limbaugh before; it’s an honor for liberals. But his remarks about Fluke are unbelievable. Literally. I had to hear it twice to believe it’s what he said. (After I wrote this, President Obama called Fluke to commend her courage and tell her that her parents should be proud of her.)

Limbaugh’s behavior is just the far-right edge on a continuum of conservative misogyny that’s gone beyond trying to outlaw abortion, moved into the once-unimaginable realm of contraception, and mocks women in a way we haven’t heard since my childhood, I think. His “joke” is based on the remark by Rick Santorum’s moneyman Foster Freiss, on the same day as Issa’s “hearing,” recalling the days when gals didn’t need birth control because they put aspirin between their knees. But it’s not just for fun: The entire GOP presidential field has endorsed a “personhood” amendment that could outlaw most non-barrier forms of contraception. On Thursday, Sen. Roy Blunt’s shameful attempt to give employers the right to deny health insurance coverage for any treatment they didn’t approve of – targeting but not limited to contraception – was tabled in the Senate, but not before it got 48 votes, including every Republican except the departing Olympia Snowe, plus three cowardly Democrats, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey.

I’m happy to say, though, that women – and the men who care about them – are fighting back as never before in my memory. We forced Susan G. Komen to rescind its decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. Despite the frothing of conservatives, the Obama administration is still requiring insurers to provide cost-free contraception. The president’s courage on the issue is bringing women back into the Democratic fold, according to recent opinion polls – and has them running away from Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

But we have to do more. I’m putting my energy into two causes in the coming months: a grass-roots effort to turn out the women’s vote called #usethe19th – you’ve seen a lot of it on Twitter today – and helping to promote Salon Core. Salon has led the way in covering news about women, by women, since our founding in 1995. We stand out in a world where men’s voices are still dominant – after the discouraging news this week that the nation’s best magazines still overwhelmingly feature men on their table of contents page, ThinkProgress produced a list of 10 women writers they should hire – and two of them, Tracy Clark-Flory and Irin Carmon, work for Salon (and several of the others freelance for us).

Over the years we’ve featured an unmatched array of smart women; Arianna Huffington, Tina Brown, Anne Lamott and Camille Paglia as leading columnists; on the culture side, Laura Miller and my former colleagues Heather Havrilesky and Stephanie Zacharek, some of the smartest writers anywhere; Rebecca Traister is one of the bravest, clearest writers on feminism and American politics that I know. And Mary Elizabeth Williams is one of my favorite writers on everything she writes about. I couldn’t have done the work I do with total freedom and support any place other than Salon.

The only good thing about this assault on women’s rights is that the women writers I know are becoming even more active than ever before. A whole lot of people have jumped into the #usethe19th fray – join us! We need to elect better leaders. We need to tell our stories. And we need to put our money where our mouths are – behind media outlets that tell those stories, as well as politicians who listen.

Over the years Salon has often turned to its readers for support, and this year we’re developing a new membership program to support our work – and support yours, too. I’ll be out on the road during this election season covering the candidates but also meeting Salon Core readers at a new roster of events we’re putting together for our members. When my book comes out in November, we’ll have a special offer for Core. We’ll be hosting members-only chats and other political convenings through November.

Republicans like to say this is the most important election year of their lifetimes. I agree. Make noise. Lobby. Campaign. Run for office. Raise money. Write. Vote. Join Salon Core – support those who support you. And piss off that angry old misogynist, Rush Limbaugh.

Salon was one of the first Web-only news sites and since we launched at the dawn of the digital era, we have recognized the significance of intelligent interaction in online “town squares.” This is why we take your feedback about problems with the functionality of our comments section seriously and why we’re making this our top priority.

Regarding a few of the problems, there is consensus on what needs to be improved. Here’s how we plan on responding:

• Installing a “preview” button, so you can review comments before publishing.

• Making comments searchable, so you can find your comments via Google or another search engine.

• Allowing blocking comments of users you don’t want to see.

However, regarding other requests, the path forward is not as clear. For example, some users want to be able to sort comments chronologically while others want comments sorted by popularity, which would be determined via up- or down-voting. Some users prefer a nested, threaded system while others want replies grouped together chronologically. We may be able to offer choices in how you personally display the comments, or it may be that there really is a strong preference for the way the old “Letters system” worked. Let us know what is important to you.

Since you will be the primary users of the new system, we want to know how you want us to proceed. However, we need to be clear that these are not “easy fixes.” We’re well aware that free software and plug-ins are available, but these solutions simply don’t work when applied to a site with as much traffic as Salon. Our numbers have been increasing nearly every month for the past year and we’re on track to hit 8 million unique users monthly soon. The programming and development needed to update our comments system is costly and time-consuming.

We don’t want you to think that we haven’t fixed the comments system yet because we don’t care. We care very much and your feedback has already been very helpful in troubleshooting some minor bugs. For example, several of you have sent us links that have helped us diagnose and fix problems with cookies and log-in states, or helped us realize that some readers were unable to see the comments because they didn’t have Javascript turned on.

The bottom line is that we have been in firefighting mode regarding some basic site issues, and are now turning our full attention to comments. We are currently exploring solutions, both in-house and with a number of popular vendors, for our comments system and our focus is supporting the vibrant, opinionated dialogue that makes Salon such a rich community.  Obviously, the implementation timeline will vary depending on which option emerges as our best pick, but we very much understand the need to provide a robust solution as soon as possible.

In response to the many questions we’ve received since last week about whether Salon is planning to erect a pay wall that would block content for non-Core members: I’m very proud to let you know that we have absolutely no plans to block anyone’s access to our articles. However, your support is used to pay our writers, so if you appreciate fearless, independent journalism—of which David Talbot provides a great list of recent examples here—please consider joining Salon Core to sustain our ability to continue this work.

Lastly, we are aware that one of the most common complaints is that comments are not functioning on many mobile devices. Optimizing Salon for mobile is on our list of priorities, but this is a major project that will take months, not weeks, to accomplish. Unfortunately, this is not one of the upgrades that will happen in the first round.  We are currently exploring various mobile strategies and, as you requested, we’ll be more transparent and communicative about the progress of our efforts.

In recent years, Salon unfortunately allowed its subscription program to nearly wither away, through lack of attention. But today we’re relaunching our new, robust subscription program – Salon Core – with a new array of benefits and special community events. And once more we’re calling on our readers to support Salon’s unique brand of independent journalism.

These days, the only people who still believe in the information-should-be free business model are the media moguls who made a fortune by not paying their freelance workers or by stealing the hard labor of other newsrooms.

At Salon, we know that a free press is not free. We have always paid the hardworking people who report and write and edit and photograph and film and design and code for our site. Nobody has gotten rich from Salon, including me. But we’ve taken pride in our work as one of the last truly independent news operations in America. We are “FEARLESS” – as our new ad banners proclaim – because we can afford to be. We don’t answer to corporate overlords at Time Warner or News Corp. or AOL. We control our own content and answer only to our own conscience.

That’s why we can report and crusade as fearlessly as we do. Think of the following stories – just a recent Salon sample – and ask yourself how many other publications would dare dig into these subjects:

• Glenn Greenwald’s eloquent evisceration of Frank VanderSloot, the billionaire Romney donor who used legal threats to silence other media who dared examine his thuggish behavior.
• Justin Elliott’s exposure of the insidious smear campaign aimed at progressive journalists who dare criticize Israeli government policy.
• Our reporting staff’s comprehensive coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement, extending into the winter months when the mainstream media has grown distracted and bored with the most important social movement of our day.
• Andrew Leonard’s ongoing indictment of the greediest and most anti-American corporations and banks.
• Alex Pareene’s wildly popular and deeply edifying Hack List, documenting the media’s most pompous, power-worshipping and consistently clueless talking heads.
• Mary Elizabeth Williams’ harrowing saga of her participation in a cancer treatment clinical trial, which is not only a heart-rending personal tale, but a sharply observed report on the sickness of our healthcare system.
• Mark Oppenheimer’s intimate profile of Maggie Gallagher, an architect of the national campaign against marriage equality.
• Immy Humes’ compelling video series, “F**KED: The United States of Unemployment,” which gives a human face to the economic crisis.

This is fearless journalism. And there is only way to keep it coming: with your support. Advertising has never paid all of our bills at Salon. Currently, it only underwrites about half of our annual budget.

YOU are the lifeblood of Salon. Help keep us alive and well, so we can keep up the good fight.

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