Yesterday, Russ Baker appeared on the Thom Hartmann Program, and that interview can be listened to in full.

The New York Observer sent reporter Leon Neyfakh to cover the Family of Secrets book release party earlier this week. Neyfakh asked partygoers and friends of the book about its likely reception in the mainstream media. Dan Rather, Judith Regan, and the author himself offered their opinions.

As for that mainstream media reception…Tim Rutten of The Los Angeles Times fired the opening salvo in what is sure to provoke an ongoing conversation among critics and historians about this new book. He blasted the book as “preposterous,” before declaring a personal bias:

I regard the belief that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone as an important indicium of mental health.

According to an ABC News poll conducted in 2003 in conjunction with a Peter Jennings special report, seven in 10 Americans think the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the result of a plot. (And in 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations found a “probable conspiracy” but did not identify specific perpetrators.) With that in mind, Rutten is making a pretty serious assertion about our country’s sanity.