Recently in Blogosphere Category

Here are links to and a few notes about the bloggers I had the pleasure of meeting this week at the Republican National Convention. (If I met you but left out your name below, it's because I didn't get your business card. Drop a reminder to me at blog at batesline dot com.)

* Anne Leary, the BackyardConservative, from the Chicago 'burbs: Here Anne has posted some great photos from the last day of the convention, and she tells of her brushes with greatness.

* Skye, a conservative Democrat from Philadelphia, who blogs at Midnight Blue, Flopping Aces, and Right Wing News: Skye's latest has video of Barack Obama gaffe-ing his way across Pennsylvania.

Here's a video conversation between Anne and Skye.

* Chad Everson of Grizzly Groundswell and Socialist Squirrel. Grizzly Groundswell is a conservative blog community.

* Stix of Stix Blog: Stix has photos of several of our fellow bloggers at Centerfield, the Minneapolis warehouse district bar where he and several others stayed during the convention. (Unfortunately, I had to miss the Wednesday night party there. I stuck around the Xcel Center for the roll call, then posted about the problem with Oklahoma's votes and uploaded video, and I didn't get out of the Media Filing Center until 1:30 a.m.)

* Eric of The Tygrrrr Express: Eric had an interesting run-in with some Code Pinkos:

When they complained about a police state and overaggressive police tactics, I set them straight.

I told them:

"I can prove you are wrong in 60 seconds. You claim the police use excessive force. I know this is wrong because I begged them to do it and they wouldn't. I asked those cops (pointing towards them) to use tear gas, rubber bullets, and batons. I wanted Kent State 2008. They said no because we live in a democracy. So sorry to disappoint you, but as badly as you want it, you will not be savagely beaten. Now be quiet before I come back tomorrow with a razor and shave you all under your armpits."

Sadly enough the police would not let me do that either.

Eric also believes that Sarah Palin is the Second Coming of Margaret Thatcher.

Skye has posted some video of Eric conversing with a Code Pinko and a "Paulbot."

* Katherine Morrison from New Hampshire, of PurplePeopleVote and Blogs4McCain: Here's her summary of Day 2, which had the theme of service.

* Bill Smith of the ARRA News Service, a conservative Arkansas blog, and Let's Get This Right, a conservative blog community: Here's an interview between Bill and the aforementioned Katherine Morrison, who talks about what brought her to the convention:

I have a brother who moved to the St. Paul area and I wanted to visit him, my sister-in-law and their children. I am also a blogger and applied for press credentials as an Independent. And the RNC granted them. So, I took vacation and paid my way here. I have meet bloggers of all types: republicans, libertarians, democrats, independents and some from other countries.

* "CyberPastor" Ed Boston of Do the Right Thing.

* The Lady Logician of Ladies Logic: Here are her photos of the wide variety of Wednesday afternoon protesters, and here are her initial reflections following McCain's speech:

Senator McCain's intro video was very informative and I loved the self deprecating humor that was interlaced in with some very serious subject matters. At one point, in a section where it talked about all of the different names that Senator McCain had been called, as the narrator said, "He has even been called," the camera cut to Senator McCain's 96-year-old mother saying, "Mama's boy".

* Fausta of Fausta's blog: Here's her encounter with a couple of P.O.ed PUMAs for Palin:

Staunch Hillary supporters with a long history of activism, they headed to Denver. Bettyjean [Kling] purchased a 27′ RV and drove to Denver with her friend Robin Robinson as part of the "300″ to get Hillary a nomination and roll call at the Democratic National Convention last week.

They had worked on the Hillary campaign for months, Bettyjean in Pennsylvania and Robin in Delaware, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

But once they got to Denver they found delegates who told them that they were bein pressured to vote for Obama, and who were being told that they would never have a future in politics if they didn't. "Their arms were twisted", said Bettyjean....

Robin and Bettyjean were bitterly disappointed. When they heard that Sarah Palin was going to be the Vice-Presidential candidate, "our spirits rose and we headed to St. Paul."

* Lance Burri, who is, according to his business card, "the widest read, most influential conservative columnist ever to emerge from Greater Metropolitan Baraboo. East side. North of the river. Ever." Lance also blogs at Badger Blog Alliance, where he posted this account of the blogger lunch at Babani's Kurdish Restaurant, complete with a mouthwatering photo, plus video of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Frank Luntz at Wednesday's blogger brunch, and of former Sen. Fred Thompson from Tuesday's brunch.

* Dan Blatt, the western correspondent for GayPatriot, which calls itself "the internet home for American gay conservatives": Dan notes that the theme of gratitude provided bookends to McCain's speech:

At the beginning, he acknowledged his rivals for the Republican nomination and expressed his gratitude to the president and his family. He concluded by acknowledging his fellow POW Bob Craner, telling us how that good man "saved" him.

Maybe I read too much into this, but it says a lot of a man that he frames this speech by acknowledging how much he owes to others, showing how grateful he is for their love, their inspiration, their support, their compassion. He knows, more, he recognizes what he owes to others. For no one who has achieved any measure of success in any given endeavor could have accomplished anything without the support of others.

Devoting so much time in a speech of this significance suggests a certain humility, something we don't see in many politicians, particularly this election cycle.

* MarathonPundit, who recounts a conversation with a British press journalist who regarded his assignment to cover the RNC as "punishment."

I also met (briefly) A-list bloggers Scott Ott of the family-friendly satire site Scrappleface (who was surprisingly tall and whose face did not at all resemble scrapple), Ed Morrissey of Hot Air, and former (?) blogger and rising conservative star Mary Katherine Ham.

MORE: Skye and Marathon Pundit were interviewed by Al Jazeera during the convention.

I've spent all morning and the beginning of the afternoon eating and listening. I've finally had the time to stop taking in and starting processing and writing about what I've seen and heard.

First stop was a joint breakfast of the Oklahoma and Louisiana delegations, way the heck out in Brooklyn Center, northwest of Minneapolis. J. C. Watts was the guest speaker. If the audio is audible, I'll post it later this evening.

Then I drove into St. Paul, for an 11 o'clock RedState.com/Google blogger brunch. Tony Lauinger from Oklahomans for Life rode along with me -- he was headed to a "Catholics for McCain" event not far from the brunch.

Today's blogger brunch featured a Q&A with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, U. S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy from California (not the guy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and UHF), and a surprise appearance by pollster Frank Luntz.

At the brunch I heard about a lunch organized by Hot Air's Ed Morrissey at a Kurdish restaurant, Babani's. I hadn't gotten the invite and therefore hadn't RSVPed, but I decided to tag along anyway. We heard some brief remarks, but mostly it was a chance to chat with the other bloggers. I shared a table with Fausta, Dan Blatt, and one of Dan's readers who lives here in the Twin Cities area.

One of the topics of conversation was how poorly organized the RNC had been in dealing with bloggers this year. Four years ago, there was a Bloggers' Corner near radio row, which gave bloggers easy access to the eminentoes coming and going for talk radio interviews. Convention staff brought elected officials and other special guests around to be interviewed by the bloggers. There were fewer bloggers in 2004, but they all knew who the others were. This time there are many more, but word about special events for bloggers isn't getting around. I was especially chagrined to hear today about an incredible Pajamas Media party last night at James Lileks' palatial Jasperwood estate. Granted, if they had had a full list of convention bloggers, they might not have invited all of us, but then again they might have.

At the moment I'm back in Dunn Bros. Coffee, sitting next to Adam C. from RedState.com, a Tulsa native. (Here's his latest post, about a poll showing Gov. Sarah Palin with stratospheric approval ratings in Alaska.) Once I get back to the convention hall, I plan to upload more video, audio, and photos. You can see my pictures, up through last night, on my Flickr page. There are some good shots of Fred Thompson, George H. W. and Barbara Bush, and a number of Oklahoma officials and delegates, such as Muskogee Mayor John Tyler Hammons, America's youngest mayor, being interviewed here by MTV News.

You can hear more of my take on last night's proceedings on the WynnCast and in an interview with the KRMG Morning News team.

MORE: Here's a slideshow which includes photos of my conversation with KRMG's Joe Kelley and Rick Couri.

When the Sitemeter mess came to light over the weekend, I noticed that this site looked funny in my laptop's copy of Internet Explorer 6, which is still the second-most popular browser among BatesLine readers. (IE 7.0 has taken the top spot, and Firefox is gaining rapidly.) There was blue space around my header image, and the right sidebar had slipped way down the page and to the left. The header image and the text looked like it had been enlarged using a particularly bad algorithm, and I noticed that on most sites, images appeared to be stretched out and pixellated. It was as if I had the magnifier turned on just for IE, but I couldn't find anywhere to turn it off.

Here's what I saw in the header (click to see the full size version):

And here's the sidebar overlap:

Everything looks normal in Firefox 3.0.1 and in IE 7. A reader e-mailed to say that things looked strange in his browser, too, although he didn't say which browser he was running. I went to browsershots.org to see what it looked like in various browsers, and it showed everything looking fine in IE 6.

Here's what it's supposed to look like (again, click to see the full size version):

If BatesLine doesn't look like that, please drop me a line at blog at batesline dot com, and let me know what browser and what version of the browser you're running and what kind of weirdness you're seeing. (Click the "Help" menu, then select "About...", and it'll show you the version number.) Thanks in advance for your help.

There maybe something funky about my particular Internet Explorer configuration. Or it may be a problem with the style sheet. I don't think Sitemeter is responsible, as the problem persisted after I removed Sitemeter. (I'm going to put it back now.)

EUREKA! Don Danz identified the cause and the cure. Evidently Dell thoughtfully altered the DPI setting of my high-res display to make icons and fonts look bigger, and it messes up websites. I put the DPI back to the default (96 dpi) and all is well.

I'm very happy to pass along the news that friend and top talk host Kevin McCullough is back on the air with his pale Stephen Baldwin (the conservative Baldwin brother). Baldwin/McCullough Xtreme Radio launches tonight from 8 - 10 p.m. Tulsa Time (9 - 11 Eastern) on 21 stations from Cape Cod to St. Augustine, FL, from New York City to Salt Lake City:

New York City - AM 970
Washington DC - AM 580
Salt Lake UT - AM 820
Jacksonville FL - FM 91.9
Charlotte NC - AM 960
Richmond VA - AM 580
Newark NJ - AM 970
Virginia Beach VA - AM 1010
Trenton NJ - AM 970
Greensboro NC - AM 830
Hartford CT - AM 970
Winston-Salem NC - AM 830
Cape Cod Mass - AM 970
High Point NC - AM 830
Roanoke VA - AM 910
Hackensack NJ - AM 970
St Augustine FL - FM 103.7
Danbury CT - AM 970
Statesville NC - AM1400
Mocksville NC - AM 1520
Bridgeport CT - AM 970

You can also listen online via Blog Talk Radio.

Here's what Kevin says we can look forward to:

Here's part of what we're hitting on tonight - so be by the radio:

1. If the top song in the country (especially for those 15-34 female) is, "I kissed a girl and I liked it..." we'd sort of love to get your idea as to WHY it is number 1. Some say it's due to the fact that society and culture have pushed the envelope right over the cliff. The pressure to be funky - the influences of where it comes from and how we respond to it...

2. Brooke Barrettsmith (www.brookerocks.com) is a rising star in the music world. Her new single "Farewell" has been climbing charts. She will join us LIVE to tell us the story behind the song. You may remember Brooke from American Idol season 5 - the most talented Idol class ever.

3. Kevin McCullough will go see it! But Stephen Baldwin has refused to see the newest Batman movie 'The Dark Knight'. The character of The Joker as played by Heath Ledger is a large part of the reason why. Some think Jack Nicholson intimated some sort of supernatural involvement with evil when he played the role years ago in the Michael Keaton/Tim Burton version. As you may know Heath Ledger committed suicide shortly after finishing work on film. Upon hearing the news Nicholson could only reply, "I warned him." We'd like to know whether you think Heath's death was influenced at all by supernatural evil. Which also begs us to consider how we intersect with the supernatural on a daily basis.

4. Music Guests tonight feature: Brooke Barrettsmith, Jonas Brothers, Pillar, Demi Lovato, Tenth Avenue North, Leona Lewis, Natalie Grant, and Duffy!

We'd like to thank our sponsors for making it all happen: Christian Values Network, Compassion International, GLYBooks.com, and Hit Me Energy Shots.

You can get a sense of the entertaining way Stephen and Kevin deal with serious issues by heading to the BMXRadioNow website and listening to their conversation with KISS's Gene Simmons about merchandising and child-rearing.

Many thanks to the readers of Urban Tulsa Weekly who have, for the second year in a row, voted for me as Tulsa's Favorite Blogger in the Absolute Best of Tulsa readers' poll:

Michael Bates, Urban Tulsa Weekly's own uber city news geek and pundit extraordinaire, is the man. With his encyclopedic knowledge of Tulsa's history and of the inner workings of city and county government and his piercing insight into the goings on of the city's elite, his weekly columns are often a source of both dread and delight to local leaders. The man is a machine, though, so a weekly column is hardly enough of an outlet for him to say all that he has to say, nor for readers to get their regular fix of his words and wisdom. So, there's always his blog at Batesline.com.

Congratulations to Tulsa World music writer Jennifer Chancellor for getting a "close call" in this category. Although many editors and writers at the daily have blogs, Jennifer is one of the few who is really taking advantage of the medium, updating on a near-daily basis. Most recently she's been posting lots of photos and video from Rocklahoma. I shall have to work much harder if I want a threepeat. (Or maybe lobby to have a separate category for music bloggers.)

I was also happy to see a win in the coffee house category for one of my favorite hangouts, the Coffee House on Cherry Street, with Shades of Brown, another favorite hangout, as a close runner-up. The two coffee houses set the standard not only for good coffee but for community gathering places.

(Note to PLANiTULSA team -- as part of your outreach to Tulsa's young people, hold some "bull sessions" at these coffee houses. Just plan to show up, hang out, and expect to have some great conversations about the city's future.)

I was also happy to see Callupsie win in the Local, Indie Produced Album for their recording debut:

No other established band in Tulsa is as hard-working as Callupsie. And their particular brand of indie jazz-punk is one of the most unique sounds to emerge from the city in quite some time. Produced by Stephen Egerton over just two sessions (the entire album took a total of several days to record), the debut is a ridiculously catchy collection of pop tunes (pop in the best sense) that is just waiting to be played on college stations across the country. To boot, they're four of the nicest musicians you'll ever meet. You all chose well on this one.

The ABoT issue includes some of the more interesting "fill-in-the-blank" responses to questions like, "If I were mayor," and "You are so Tulsa if you..."

My favorite: "If I were mayor... I'd build the Golden Driller a girlfriend." I know just the girl. She's somewhat older, but a lot better looking than the old roughneck. She's "The Goddess of Oil", a 1941 sculpture by Tulsa World staff artist Clarence Allen. The plan was to erect a 40-foot version of the sculpture at the next International Petroleum Exhibition, but the outbreak of World War II got in the way. The model was 19-year-old Marjorie Morrow. Although the full-sized version was never erected, the original sculpture stayed in Morrow's family, and her grandson, muralist William Franklin, hopes to see the original artistic vision realized. You can read all about it and donate to the project at goddessofoil.com.

Congratulations to a transplanted Tulsa couple who received well-deserved national recognition for promoting Route 66. Ron Warnick and Emily Priddy were honored last weekend at the 2008 National Route 66 Festival in Litchfield, Illinois.

Ron received the "Person of the Year" award for his blog, Route 66 News, a clearinghouse for news from Chicago to Santa Monica and everywhere in between along the Mother Road.

Emily was selected by author Michael Wallis for the inaugural Wallis award for (as she put it) "for being a noisy writer/photographer/firebrand." Denny Gibson put it another way: "In [Wallis's] description of the award, he used the words talent, energy, and passion and those certainly apply to the first Wallis 66 award winner, Emily Priddy."

As he describes in an entry earlier this week, Ron saw a need three years ago and stepped in to fill it, creating a central clearinghouse for news from the highway -- positive and inspiring stories of entrepreneurs restoring a piece of roadside history and local officials getting clueful about the tourism value of the highway, alerts about endangered properties, happy news of festivals and foreign roadies here to encounter Americana firsthand, sad news of the passing of Route 66 pioneers and Route 66 landmarks.

Through Route 66 News, historic highway lovers learned of the impending doom of the El Vado Motel and were able to communicate with Albuquerque's city leaders to help them understand the value and significance of the property as a historic asset. Route 66 News notified us of the tragic fire at the Rock Cafe, helping to rally support for clean up and restoration.

Ron's reflection on winning the award is worth reading. He writes about how experiencing Route 66 changed his life, why he started Route 66 News, and why he chose the blog format for the site:

Route 66 News was never intended to be a blog. But the more I investigated the Internet avenues available, it became clear that blogging -- with its ease of writing stories, its archives and its multimedia capabilities -- was the way to go. So here we are, in the blogosphere.

The winner of the Will Rogers award this year is another Route 66 internet pioneer. Swa Frantzen of Belgium launched his Historic66.com website in 1994, which has to make it one of the oldest sites on the World Wide Web still in operation. Looking in vain for the kind of turn-by-turn guide needed to tour the decommissioned highway, he created one of his own, a resource for his fellow archaehodophiles the world over.

My blogpal Anna Broadway has her first book out: Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity. It's an entertaining read, especially for those who grew up in the same evangelical subculture that shaped Anna's view of the world. The heart of the book is the conflict that arises as she moves out of that hothouse environment and into the Big City. The resulting collision of values helped to demolish her inadequate, sometimes idolatrous, notions of sex, love, romance, and marriage, making it possible to rebuild on a firm, God-centered foundation.

Last week, Carla Hinton, religion editor for the Oklahoman, interviewed Anna and wrote an insightful account of the conversation:

The book "Sexless in the City" is lighthearted enough that it should keep the reader laughing and wondering what Broadway is going to say next. The humor does not hinder or water down her thought-provoking message for singles attempting to maintain a chaste lifestyle in a society that says the very idea of chastity is crazy and out of touch with reality....

"I really hope that it raises questions about what the basis of our identity is," Broadway said of the book.

"You know, when I started the book, I would say I was closer to the perspective I describe in the prologue -- of being torn between wanting to serve God but thinking that sex is the ultimate experience in life. So, in other words, if I was chaste my whole life and died without having sex, I pretty much thought, even if I hadn't admitted it to myself, that I was going to die with an unfulfilled life.

"But in the course of having the blog and writing the book, I've come to realize that that's only true if my identity is rooted in my sexuality and if I believe that my sexuality is the most important part of me.

"But if my identity is based on something else, then I can have a fulfilled life no matter if I ever marry or not. My fulfillment is not dependent on the number of lovers or sexual experiences I have. I really hope that is the message people can take away from the book, regardless of whether they share all of my values or not, that they find hope in that -- that who we are as people doesn't have to be just limited to and defined by one part of us."

That same link includes a brief audio interview.

I was happy for Anna's book to get coverage in Oklahoma, but I also came away very impressed with Carla Hinton. She comes across as not only knowledgeable but also understanding of the people and ideas she writes about. That's not always true of the religion writers in the mainstream media.

Carla Hinton's Religion and Values blog is a place where she can offer more personal reflections than would be appropriate in a news story (for example, this item on her love of Vacation Bible School), provide links and additional context (e.g., this item relating to a story about bloggers who write about the Southern Baptist Convention, and summarizing reader reaction to a story (such as this entry about a story on tithing). It's a good example of a reporter using a blog to complement her reporting.

Clayton Cramer, a conservative blogger from Idaho, is seeking the Republican nomination for State Senate District 22, opposing an incumbent Republican that he says is "out of touch with the traditional values of the district."

The primary is today, and the turnout should be strong, with the eight-man race to replace U. S. Sen. Larry Craig at the top of the ballot. The Secretary of State's website will have results after the polls close at 9 p.m. Mountain Time.

Beyond the traditional array of conservative issues (for which he offers thoughtful position papers), Cramer, an amateur astrophotographer, supports state legislation against light trespass.

It's been interesting to read his thoughts about the various aspects of campaigning, such as his decision to eschew the use of robocalls, the results of his own phone calls to voters, and the difficulties presented by supportive independent campaigns.

If all goes well, we'll be able to enjoy Cramer's take on legislative life.

BatesLine is five years old today. Although that doesn't come close to Dustbury's longevity, five years of fairly consistent and continuous blogging is pretty impressive in a world where blogs start and end at an alarming rate, if I do say so myself.

Here is the Wayback Machine's first snapshot (in August of 2003) of my first month of posts.

Blogging has been a wonderful thing for me. It has given me an outlet to express my interests and opinion and to connect with other people -- here in Tulsa and around the world -- who share those concerns.

The whole thing really started out as, "SInce we're switching from dialup to DSL, maybe I should buy a domain so we can keep our e-mail addresses if we change ISPs." One of the best prices for domain hosting was a company called BlogHosts (RIP), which came with Movable Type 2.6.3 pre-installed, so why not give this blogging thing a try?

I had the good timing to start blogging just as Vision 2025 was gaining public attention. I had plenty of local politics to write about, although it wasn't my original vision for BatesLine that it should be dominated by local issues.

My blogging caught the attention of KFAQ's Michael DelGiorno, and right after the Vision 2025 election, Michael and his co-host Gwen Freeman took me to St. Michael's Alley (RIP) to pitch the idea of a weekly follow-up on Vision 2025. That broadened over time to cover the full scope of local politics. At some point we switched from Monday to Tuesday, and if I missed any weeks through the four and a half years, it was only one or two. Serving as a guest analyst on election night 2004, participating in election post-mortem roundtables, and filling in with Gwen when Michael was off are among some of the highlights.

(Although the regular weekly guest slot on KFAQ is no more, you may be hearing me on the radio again before too long.)

Being on the air every week caught the attention of Urban Tulsa Weekly reporter George Shultz, who wrote a profile of me in July 2005. Through that, Keith Skrzypczak brought me on to write a column for the paper. That began in September 2005. To bring things full circle, the column's tight focus on local politics allowed me to restore a broader focus to BatesLine. The linkblog allowed me to pass along links of interest -- blogging in its fundamental form -- with a minimum of fuss.

I'll stop there for now, but later today look for some highlights from the past five years, and an appreciation of the many wonderful blog-pals I've made.

Thanks for reading and celebrating this milestone with me.

UPDATE: Thanks for all the lovely well wishes. I'm sorry, but I didn't get anything more added today. I did attend a wonderful event: The Holocaust remembrance at Temple Israel. There was an overflow crowd. (Well over a thousand, I would say.) My son sang with the Tulsa Boy Singers. The featured speakers were Dr. Leon Bass, an American World War II veteran who was one of the liberators of Buchenwald, and Robbie Waisman, a survivor of Buchenwald. There was an emphasis on honoring those who had fought against fascism and had liberated the camps. Seven World War II veterans were given the honor of lighting remembrance candles at the end of the service. My son knew the basic facts of the Holocaust, but hearing these speakers tell their personal stories brought it home to him. Mr. Waisman was about the age my son is now when his secure and loving home was torn apart by the Nazis. Only he and a sister survived; five brothers and both parents were put to death.

A couple of additions to the sidebar:

The Conservative Intelligencer is a new blog on politics, culture, and religion.

The Conservative Intelligencer features tough-minded, conservative commentary on the day's events, as well as value-added research to put these events in context. Check here for news and analysis of the War on Terror, immigration reform, Campaign 2008, conservative activism, and the conservative movement. Be sure to check in for Fun with Fisking!

The latest post: Scientology Is weirder than you think. I already thought it was pretty weird, but I learned something new.

Sarah of A Glass of Chianti (first linked on BatesLine here for her musical puns and western swing references) not only took up housekeeping with the blogger formerly known as Mansfield Fox, the two took up blogkeeping together as well. Last fall, after a year of marriage, they returned to the blogosphere at a new address: Dwyeropolis is now the cyberhometown for the bloggers now known as Angus and Sarah Dwyer and their beautiful baby girl Prudence. The blog features cute baby pictures and cultural and political commentary, but mostly cute baby pictures.

I met Anna Broadway at a blogger party in New York City the Thursday before the 2004 Republican National Convention, hosted by Karol Sheinin. We had an enjoyable conversation, which involved shouting into one another's ears to be heard over the very loud music.

A few years ago I wrote: "Anna is an MK (missionary kid), a fellow survivor alum of Campus Crusade for Christ, and a very witty writer. Her blog [Sexless in the City] is about her romantic misadventures in New York, and what she's learned about courtship, dating, chastity, and real, lasting love in the process." Although dating is far in my past, it's in the not-too-distant future for one of my children, and her more contemplative blog entries have helped me reflect on my own experiences and the lessons I'll pass on to my children.

Her less contemplative entries are just fun to read. There's something about living vicariously through stories of singles in the big city that strikes a chord in popular culture, as evidenced by Seinfeld, Friends, and, yes, Sex and the City.

In the last couple of years, she moved from the East Coast to the West Coast and her blogging pace has slowed considerably, but in a good cause -- turning those misadventures, experiences, and reflections into a book: Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity. Its official release date is April 15.

From the publisher's blurb:

Anna Broadway's "Sexless in the City" blog has become a popular Internet destination, attracting readers with its amusing tales of romantic misadventures and candid, far-from-prissy reports on the difficulties of trying to reconcile Christian beliefs with the mores and temptations of the modern world.

In SEXLESS IN THE CITY, Broadway offers a lighthearted, yet unflinching, look at the realities of life as a twentysomething urbanite. She writes about her youthful ambition of writing or editing bodice-rippers, struggles with debt and loneliness, the pleasures and perils of meeting men in singles bars, and other urban outposts, and about her friendships with women searching, as she is, for a good man to spend the rest of their lives with. Guided by her trust in God and the teachings of the Bible, Broadway navigates romantic entanglements with the Harvard Lickwit, Hippie the Groper, Ad Weasel, 5 Percent Man, and various others who wander in and out her life--but never into her bed.

Anna has also compiled a soundtrack for Sexless in the City, downloadable at 99 cents a song from iTunes. The 19-song playlist, while sadly bereft of western swing, includes selections from Miles Davis and John Coltrane, three songs by Etta James ("Stormy Weather," "I Just Want to Make Love to You," and "At Last"), and Dean Martin singing "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You." There's also a favorite of mine, Louis Armstrong singing "A Kiss to Build a Dream On." (KFAQ listeners may recall me singing this a capella during one of my weekly appearances; host Michael DelGiorno had challenged co-host Gwen Freeman to a "KFAQ Idol" sing-off, and I insisted on participating. KFAQ producer Elvis Polo still tweaks me by playing it from time to time.)

Congratulations to Anna on the publication of her book, and best wishes for many printings. I'm looking forward to reading it.

...to Steve Patterson of Urban Review STL, who is recovering from a stroke. He's up and eating pizza and starting to blog again. His insights on urban planning are always worth pondering.

... and to Brian of Audience of One for his impending nuptials. I met Brian and his intended, Terri, at the 2006 Okie Blogger Roundup. They seemed like a happy couple then, and I hope they have many happy years together.

A quick note to welcome back two bloggers who spent some time on hiatus:

Mister Snitch! took most of '06 and '07 off, started up with occasional posts last fall and for the last month or so has been back to his previous prolific pace. (Twenty posts today, and the day's not over yet.) Proprietor Jeff Faria always provides an eclectic selection of links. I particularly enjoy his thoughts on the social impact of the Internet and his perspective on local politics and local journalism, shaped by his experiences in the Mile Square City, Hoboken, New Jersey.

Joe Kelley, host of the KRMG Morning News, was an avid blogger during his previous stint as overnight host on WBAP in Fort Worth. When he came to Tulsa in 2005, he posted occasionally before putting his blog permanently on hiatus and dropping the domain. The demands of the morning show and twin babies didn't leave him time to blog. Now it appears that blogging has become part of the job description, and Joe's back with a blog hosted on the KRMG website.

Welcome back to Jeff and Joe. You'll find links to their latest posts on the BatesLine blogroll headlines page, powered by NewsGator.

Imagine a world where opinions are censored without the censored being aware of it. You write passionately and publish your views and as far as you know, your opinions are out there for the world to consider.

Except that they aren't. Nobody but you can read what you wrote.

Such a world exists at SFgate, the website of the San Francisco Chronicle, according to a new blog called Investigate the Media. This blog was set up by a frequent commenter on Chronicle articles at SFgate. He discovered that he could only see certain of his comments when he was logged in under his username. From another SFgate account or when not logged in at all, the comments were shown as deleted. The coding trick involves the "cookie" that is created on your computer when you log in to the SFgate website. The motivation?

Why would SFGate do such a thing? Because ever since public input was first allowed at SFGate, many commenters who had their comments deleted would come back onto the comment thread and point out that they had been silenced for ideological reasons -- i.e. they weren't sufficiently "progressive" -- or because they had pointed out ethical lapses at SFGate and the Chronicle. Or any number of other reasons that the Chronicle did not want known. So, to pacify these problematic commenters, the SFGate moderators came up with a very clever and underhanded coding trick to prevent deleted commenters from ever finding out that they had been silenced.

A commenter adds:

What refined censorship. The censored don't know they've been deleted, so when they never get feedback of any kind to their comments, they are slowly demoralized and stop posting altogether. It's fiendishly clever and completely dishonest to all readers, left and right, though most of the left probably would approve.

Meanwhile, like a kangaroo court, the San Francisco Chronicle runs a kangaroo court of public opinion where citizens are misled into thinking that they have been heard. It's like a Monty Python skit but nefarious instead of funny.

Via Little Green Footballs.

There are at least a few of you who make faithful use of my BatesLine blogroll headlines page, also known as the NewsGator page, because it uses the NewsGator feed aggregator to collect headlines from the 100 most recent posts from about 160 blogs that I've handpicked as some of the most interesting on the web.

Until today, I included on that page feeds from several sources of op-ed columns and other paid, long-form opinion journalism: American Spectator, National Review, TownHall, and OpinionJournal.com. You'll find a prolific daily output of well-reasoned and informed opinions on those sites.

And that was the problem. While an individual blogger posts on an irregular schedule, these corporate-owned, employee-staffed sites typically post the new day's collection of a dozen or so columns in the wee hours. That means that each morning there might be 50 new op-ed pieces on my NewsGator page, pushing the previous night's output of ordinary, one-or-two-posts-a-day bloggers further down or all the way off the page.

So I've created a second headlines page: The BatesLine op-ed headlines page. Visit there for your daily dose of intelligent opinions and commentary.

By the way, the old NewsGator URL that ended in .php is now obsolescent, so change your bookmark to the link above. I've purged all PHP from my site, because PHP, dynamic content, and my shared hosting provider don't get along. With MT 4.0, I was able to provide a statically-built linkblog and spotlight using the new built-in MultiBlog capability.

There are still several things on my blog to do list:

• Import entries from my old hand-rolled linkblog into my new MT-driven linkblog
• Use Apache mod-rewrite and RewriteMap to direct links to my old numerically named archive entries to the new named versions
• Read Wild Bill's Passionate Blogger blog every day for constructive tips on how to be a better blogger with a better blog
• Reinstate full-text RSS and Atom feeds

As always, your suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Back in June I announced the Blog Reader Project, a way to collect information on who reads BatesLine that might be of interest to potential advertisers.

As an incentive to participate, I offered a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift certificate to one participant out of those who supplied their e-mail address as part of the survey. Because of the number of respondents I decided to award two certificates, which I sent out earlier today to the two lucky winners, selected with the help of the truly random integer generator at random.org. Congratulations to Nik Majdan and Steve Arnold! And to the rest of you, thanks for taking the time to participate.

You can look at aggregate numbers for all participating blogs at the Blog Reader Project website. You can view select results from BatesLine readers here.

One of the most interesting stats, albeit not surprising, is that 85% of the participants have a zip code beginning with "74" and 89% have an Oklahoma zip code. I imagine that the survey is mainly representative of people who come to the site via the homepage, as opposed to those who find the site through search engines.

As I mentioned when I introduced the Blog Reader Project, there is some cost involved in keeping this site running and in keeping myself informed so that I can share what I learn with you. If you appreciate the information and analysis that I provide, you can express that appreciation by means of the PayPal tip jar in the sidebar to the right.

You can also gain some exposure for your business while supporting this site by advertising on BatesLine. $15 buys a standard-sized blogad, which will appear at the top of the right hand column on every page of this blog for one week. That works out to about a tenth of a cent ($0.001) per ad impression. The longer the ad period, the better the deal gets: $100 gets an ad for three months at about five-hundredths of a cent ($0.0005) per ad impression. Hi-rise (more expensive) and mini (less expensive) ads are also available.

(If you run into trouble with posting an ad or using the PayPal donate button, please let me know by dropping me an e-mail at blog at batesline dot com.)

Until I get the linkblog integrated with the new template, here are a few interesting links for your perusal. For more links, check out the BatesLine blogroll headlines page, now relocated and cleansed of PHP:

Slate: The Dangers of Reclining Your Car Seat

"Tilt your car seat back in the front, and you'll find that the seat belt no longer rides the way it's supposed to--the upper strap moves up toward your neck and the lower one up from your pelvis to your middle. And it turns out that is dangerous--though somehow neither the government nor car manufacturers think they need to clearly tell us so."

Slate: William Saletan: Buried Alive in Your Own Skull

"Five days ago, Science published a report on a young woman devastated by a car crash in England. For five months after the accident, tests showed no signs of awareness. Doctors declared her vegetative. Then, scientists put her in a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner, which tracks blood flow to different parts of the brain. They asked her to imagine playing tennis and walking through her home. The scan lit up with telltale patterns of language, movement, and navigation indistinguishable from the brains of healthy people.

"Something was awake inside that woman's skull. Without the scanner, no one but her would have known."

TIME: Best 100 TV Shows of all Time

Via WorldMagBlog, where a commenter complains that the Andy Griffith Show is the "single best show, and it isn't even listed."

New English Review: Theodore Dalrymple: How To Hate The Non-Existent (Via WorldMagBlog.)

"Suffice it to say that I have never received such hate mail as when I suggested that religious people were better than non-religious in their conduct. It seemed that many of the people who responded to me were not content merely not to believe, but had to hate. Although I had not denied that religious motivation could motivate very bad behaviour, something which indeed can hardly be denied, I was treated to a summary of the historical crimes of religion such as many adolescents could provide who had recently discovered to their fury that they had been made to attend boring religious services when the arguments for the existence of God had never been irrefutable....

"Perhaps one of the reasons that contemporary secularists do not simply reject religion but hate it is that they know that, while they can easily rise to the levels of hatred that religion has sometimes encouraged, they will always find it difficult to rise to the levels of love that it has sometimes encouraged."

dustbury.com: Remembering Lane Bryant

"In 1909, Mrs Bryant remarried, to Albert Malsin, who took over the business end of the Lane Bryant shop while she concentrated on design. New York newspapers, however, would not accept advertising for the store, what with all those evil maternity outfits on display. Eventually one paper did agree to run an ad, and when it appeared, the store was completely sold out within twenty-four hours. A second store had been opened in 1915, in Chicago, but feeling that they could not rely on newspapers, the Malsins opened up a mail-order branch, which by 1917 was bringing in $1 million a year."

Danny Carlton is a good blogger. Politically, we're usually on the same page. I used to read his website on a regular basis.

Some time ago, he made the decision to block all Firefox users from his websites. If you're browsing in Firefox and click on one of his links, it sends you to whyfirefoxisblocked.com, where he explains that he's resorted to this because of a Firefox add-on called AdBlock Plus.

His feeling is that if you don't want to look at his ads, you shouldn't get to read his content. Fair enough. That's his right. Since he can't selectively detect and block AdBlock Plus users, he's blocking all Firefox users. He explains that it's no great loss, because there aren't that many Firefox users anyway, and they don't spend as much money as IE users. And he says that the Mozilla Corporation, which produces Firefox, is abetting theft by listing AdBlock Plus

It seems a bit excessive and counterproductive to block (and annoy) all his readers who use Firefox to screen out the handful that have installed AdBlock Plus. But that's his right.

The problem for him is that opinions are a dime a dozen. Danny is a good blogger, but he's hardly indispensable. If I can't read his site, I'll just spend that browsing time somewhere else. The typical reaction to being redirected to whyfirefoxisblocked.com won't be howls of outrage, but a shrug, followed by a click on the "Close Tab" X.

His most recent post is a swipe at "FireFox fanboys". Some of it is lashing out at people who have responded to his ban with profanity, denial of service attacks, and other reprehensible behavior, but some of it is aimed at ordinary Firefox users:

If you think the future of the internet is best decided by a committee of unelected computer-nerds (W3C), rather than the wishes and desires of billions of internet users (market forces)... ...you might be a FF Fanboy.

Blogger Don Singleton posted the first reply:

You are generally very level headed, but your war with FireFox users is tiring.

Danny responded with:

The Fanboys are only a segment of FF users. I'm not at war with FF users. I never was.

I tried to chime in with this comment:

What Don Singleton said. If you block all Firefox users, you're at war with all Firefox users.

What percentage of your pageviews were coming from Firefox, and what percentage of your Firefox users were actually blocking your ads? And aren't there add-ons to IE that do the same thing as Firefox AdBlock Plus? Are you blocking them, too?

I have to use IE to pay a couple of bills every month. Other than that, if I can't get to it from Firefox, I don't bother going. (I made a special effort to read this post when it popped up on my Newsgator page.)

And yes, I'd rather have a neutral standards body define HTML than Microsoft. If that makes me a fanboy, so be it.

But when I hit post, this popped up:

Comments are disabled due to server drain. When the children finish their tantrums, comments will be enabled

I'll give him this much: Sitemeter had him averaging around 100 visits a day until his decision to block Firefox got the attention of Slashdot and other popular websites. He came close to 3000 visits a few days ago.

UPDATE: Danny's advertisers have another, bigger problem than Firefox. Our brains have their own built in Adblock, writes Jakob Nielsen (via a comment on an item on Guardian Unlimited):

The most prominent result from the new eyetracking studies is not actually new. We simply confirmed for the umpteenth time that banner blindness is real. Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it's actually an ad.

On hundreds of pages, users didn't fixate on ads. The following heatmaps show three examples that cover a range of user engagement with the content: quick scanning, partial reading, and thorough reading. Scanning is more common than reading, but users will sometimes dig into an article if they really care about it.

At all levels of user engagement, the finding is the same regarding banners (outlined with green boxes in the above illustration): almost no fixations within advertisements. If users are looking for a quick fact, they want to get done and aren't diverted by banners; and if users are engrossed in a story, they're not going to look away from the content.

[Click through to the article to see the heatmaps.]

The heatmaps also show how users don't fixate within design elements that resemble ads, even if they aren't ads (and thus aren't shown within green boxes above).

What does attract attention?

For example, we know that there are 3 design elements that are most effective at attracting eyeballs:

• Plain text
• Faces
• Cleavage and other "private" body parts

And the fourth way to get a reader to pay attention to an ad:

• The more an ad looks like a native site component, the more users will look at it.
• Not only should the ad look like the site's other design elements, it should appear to be part of the specific page section in which it's displayed.

But, writes Nielsen, that approach is unethical and likely to turn off readers in the long run if abused:

A specific ad may or may not be ethical, depending on how closely it masquerades as content. I caution against going too far, because it can backfire and mislead users. Unethical ads will get you more fixations, but ethical business practices will attract more loyal customers in the long run.

AND STILL MORE: Here's the Slashdot thread about Danny Carlton, courtesy Manasclerk.

More commentary on the matter from the folks who keep Oklahoma bloggers connected: Mike H. at Okiedoke and Kevin Latham, admin of the Blog Oklahoma webring. Kevin was annoyed enough to consider revoking Danny's membership in Blog Oklahoma, but decided to do nothing.

My blogpal Kevin McCullough, a New York-based conservative radio talk show host, will be on C-SPAN2's Book TV tonight at between 7:45 and 7:50 CDT, talking about his book MuscleHead Revolution: Overturning Liberalism with Commonsense Thinking.

You can read Front Page Magazine's interview with Kevin McCullough here. And you can read all the testimonial blurbs, from the likes of Steve Forbes, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, and Dr. Laura, here on his publisher's website.

A week or so ago, I e-mailed Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn through his website regarding the Copyright Royalty Board's decision to raise royalty rates on Internet webcasters, retroactive to 2006, a decision that endangers small Internet-only broadcasters as well as on-line streaming of over the air content (e.g., WFMU). His reply is below. I appreciate the fact that Sen. Coburn has obviously examined the issue and given it some thought:

Dear Mr. Bates,

Thank you for contacting me with your support for the Internet Radio Equality Act of 2007 (S. 1353). I appreciate your input.

On March 9, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) issued a decision that establishes a statutorily mandated standard for royalty rates for commercial and non-commercial Webcasters. The new rates represent an extension of the "willing buyer/willing seller" standard. Under the CRB decision, Internet Webcasters must pay an annual non-refundable $500 fee for a set level of listening hours. Moreover, both commercial and non-commercial Internet Webcasters will be charged 8 cents per song retroactively back to 2006, with the rate gradually climbing until 2010.

The new rate does not include a special exception for small Webcasters. The CRB considered a small Webcasters proposal where the fee structure would be based on total revenues. The CRB rejected the proposals because:

"[S]mall commercial webcasters focus on the amount of the fee, rather than how it should be structured, is further underlined by the absence of evidence submitted by this group to identify a basis for applying a pure revenue-based structure to them. While, at times, they suggest that their situation as small commercial webcasters requires this type of structure, there is no evidence in the record about how the Copyright Royalty Judges would delineate between small webcasters and large webcasters."

As you know, the Internet Radio Equality Act would essentially nullify the CRB's March royalty rate decision and would allow the Internet Webcasters to choose from two payment standards: either 7.5 percent of total revenues received by Webcasters during that year that are directly related to the provider's digital transmissions of sound recordings or 33 cents per hour of sound recordings transmitted to a single listener.

It is my understanding the U.S. Court of Appeals has been asked to review the CRB's decision. I would like to wait until the courts have reviewed the decision before considering legislative action on this issue. I instinctively believe in free markets and competition and a level playing field for all types of radio broadcasts. Government intervention deters risk takers, hoards financial resources and interferes with the efficient allocation of resources. With that said, I believe the best solution to this problem would be for Webcasters to negotiate directly with sound recording copyright owners.

Internet radio, particularly small Webcasters, provide another format for the public to access free music, news and public safety information. I understand the substantial harm these new royalty fees will cause many small Webcasters and that they could potentially put them out of operation. I would like to see a solution to this problem that will allow Webcasters of all sizes to continue streaming their broadcasts over the Internet.

I will closely monitor this issue with your views in mind. Again, thank you for writing me. Should you have any additional concerns, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Tom Coburn
United States Senator

TC: swm

You know those big "bingo card" surveys that ask about your interests, income, hobbies, age, etc.? Sometimes you fill one out to qualify for a free subscription to a professional magazine.

The point of such a survey is to put together a demographic profile which can then be used to attract advertisers who want to reach the kind of people who read the magazine. And by attracting advertisers, the magazine generates sufficient revenue to offer the magazine for free to subscribers.

BatesLine has always been and will always be free of charge to the reader, but it isn't free of charge to me. There are hosting, domain, and other Internet fees to be paid. It costs money -- more than ever -- to attend meetings over lunch and dinner and to drive to events around town and around the state. The laptop needs occasional repairs and upgrades. (My laptop is five years old, but over the years it's had a new video connector, new keyboard, new battery (twice), new motherboard, new hard drive, and -- as soon as its delivered -- a new DVD drive.) I've bought a couple of pieces of equipment -- a digital voice recorder and a digital camera that also shoots video -- to help me capture information to be presented here.

You can support BatesLine directly by making a donation via PayPal (click the DONATE button on the right side of the home page) or buying an ad.

But now there's a way you can support BatesLine financially that will cost you nothing but a few minutes of your time.

It's called the Blog Reader Project, a sort of online version of those bingo cards with questions about your web surfing and online buying habits, your interests, and your affiliations. You can skip over any questions you don't want to answer. Because the survey is being handled by a third party, your answers are anonymous. I'll only see the totals in aggregate.

As an incentive to participate, at the end of the survey there's a place to leave your e-mail address. I'll pick an e-mail address at random to receive a $10 Amazon gift certificate. (If a large number of readers participate, I may give away additional gift certificates.) Your e-mail address will NOT be tied to your survey responses.

Your honest, anonymous answers to the survey questions should help me attract advertisers who offer the sorts of products, services, and information that you'd be interested in. And that will help me continue to fund BatesLine.

Ready? Click here to complete the survey. Thanks for your help.

I am going to be pruning my blogroll over the next few weeks -- checking in with sites I don't visit as often nowadays, removing links to dead and zombie blogs, and synchronizing my blogroll with my Newsgator page. The plan is to take 10 at a time in the random order below and post an entry describing each one, linking to notable recent posts, and, if one has to go in the dustbin, explaining why.

It always bothers me when a site just disappears off of someone's blogroll without explanation. (It's especially troublesome when that site is BatesLine.) It's like driving down a familiar street and seeing a vacant lot that wasn't there yesterday. I rack my brain trying to remember what used to be there.

So for the record here is my blogroll, with 228 entries, as of March 30, 2007.

Congratulations to a couple of long-distance blogpals whom I've met in real life and who are getting some well-deserved recognition:

Steve Patterson writes the excellent Urban Review STL, which covers local politics and urban planning in and around St. Louis. In the December issue of St. Louis magazine, he made their list of "50 Most Powerful in 2006." Here's what they had to say about Steve:

He’s the Jedi master of sunshine laws, the seeker of clandestine city meetings, the guy who can suss out the minutiae of St. Louis politics and explain it in a way anyone can understand. Some call him strong medicine: Jennifer Florida described him to us earlier this year as a “zealot,” and the RFT just crowned him Best Gadfly. But his knack for digging up information that makes those in power squirm—for example, a site plan for the proposed South Grand McDonald’s that Florida claimed did not exist—has been throwing a wrench into local machine politics.

NYC radio talk show host and syndicated columnist Kevin McCullough had the thrill of hearing his latest column, "Why it will be 'President Obama' in 2009," read by Rush Limbaugh today on the flagship program of conservative talk radio. You can read Kevin's reaction and find a link to audio of Rush's comments here. In his column, Kevin lists five political trends and shows how Obama fits each one. Note the last one in particular: "gullible evangelicals."

Thursday morning my car was too iced over to get the door open, so I took our garaged minivan to work. On Thursday night the 10-year-old and I had to dig out the driveway to get the minivan up the hill into the garage. We lit the gas fire, and I read Dickens' abridged version (the version he used for public readings) of A Christmas Carol.

This morning we had about nine inches of snow at our house on top of half an inch of ice. I stayed home and late morning we all got out into the snow. The wee one had his first encounter with the icy white stuff and was interested, but it did not induce his happy bounce. (The birds at the feeder did, however.) The two big kids went across the street to play with a neighbor kid. The six-year-old came home in tears -- she took a snowball in the face. A couple of good movies on TV -- The Polar Express and The Princess Bride -- were part of the day.

I remember a lot of ice storms in my childhood, and snowfalls of two to three inches. I don't recall the big dumps of snow -- six inches to a foot -- that happen at least a couple of times every winter nowadays.

I hope to catch up on some reading. Some of my fellow bloggers have been tracking some important stories in depth. Here are just a few:

At JunkYardBlog, SeeDubya has been covering the stories of the six imams who were removed from a US Airways flight after some worrisome behavior, the "realists" of the Iraq Study Group (actually defeatists who will lead us into disaster), the evidently fake Iraqi police captain who is a frequent source of information for the Associated Press -- heck, just start at the top and work your way down.

All right, one more, back a bit further -- the suicide bomber grandma gets immortalized with a parody of an Elmo and Patsy tune -- "Grandma detonated in a rage, dear"

Kevin McCullough has been all over bestselling author-pastor Rick Warren's decision to invite Sen. Barack Obama to address a global AIDS conference hosted by his Saddleback Church. McCullough detailed Obama's legislative record and religious views and cautioned Warren against giving Obama what amounts to an evangelical seal of approval. Today, Kevin reports that Obama said what he was expected to say:

In other words, Barack Obama views the people of the African continent as smart enough to change their behavior so as to apply microbicides and condoms before engaging in otherwise risky intercourse, yet he doesn't believe that the people of the African continent are smart enough to be presented with the fact that it is the risky sexual behavior that is endangering their lives. Nor does he trust them enough to be able to decide for themselves that they would rather LIVE than have sex.

And Kevin notes that while retailers generally saw post-Thanksgiving sales go up, Wal-Mart's numbers were down, perhaps due to the efforts of groups who are publicizing Wal-Mart's new ties to homosexual-rights groups.

Tom Gray has a couple of updates on the Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery of the PCUSA's legal efforts to seize to the property of Kirk of the Hills, which left the PCUSA earlier this year. Part of the PCUSA's strategy when evangelical congregations leave is to find a few disgruntled members of the congregation, declare that they are the "true church," and sue to give them control of the church property. In a similar situation in North Carolina, the PCUSA presbytery found a member who had moved to the west coast but whose name was still on the rolls. When he declared his opposition to the congregation's departure from the denomination, the prodigal member became one of the chosen remnant entitled, in the PCUSA's view, to the church property.

Recently I came across the blog of Ben Wattenberg, and it's become a favorite read.

The name is no doubt familiar. Wattenberg, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a social scientist and syndicated columnist, has been involved in or writing about Federal policy for over 40 years. He is a classic example of a neo-conservative, a one-time liberal who felt pushed away from the Democratic party by its weakness abroad and failed policies at home. He had served as an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, worked on Henry "Scoop" Jackson's 1976 presidential campaign, and has served on boards and commissions in the Carter, Reagan, and Bush, Sr., administrations.

What I love about his "Wattenblog" is that it is very obviously his, not something a grad student is writing for him. It consists of unedited, unpolished thoughts about things in the news or on the web.

For example, in this entry, Wattenberg rebuts an anonymous commenter, whom he dubs Mr. Wrong, interlineating his reply in bold red capital letters:

You have been provided with a lot of statistical evidence -- largely ignored on your part -- that proves everything you say here is false; that in fact Hispanics are, on average, developing into a new underclass, WRONG, MR WRONG,JUST PLAIN WRONG with significantly higher criminality CERTAINLY NOT IN THE SECOND GENERATION, CERTAINLY NOT WHEN COMPARED TO HOMEGROWN AFRICAN-AMERICANS. and much lower academic success rates IN THE FIRST GENERATION PERHAPS. SOMETIMES IN THE SECOND, AND MOST OFTEN NEARLY DISSAPPEARED IN THE THIRD.

You don't have to agree with him to admire the fact that someone with plenty of formal outlets for expression -- books, a syndicated column, a PBS show -- is willing to jump in to the rough-and-tumble of the blogosphere.