Seven Days Blogs: 802 Online

Judge rules in favor of free speech on web

An interesting AP story about a Washington man and his website.

The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday a trial judge overreached his authority when he restricted a man from posting information on a Web site.

Paul Trummel was jailed for more than three months in 2002 in his free-speech standoff with the judge over the Web site he used as a forum for attacking the Council House, a federally subsidized retirement home where he once lived. Trummel posted the phone numbers and addresses of Council House staff, directors and residents - something that King County Superior Court Judge James Doerty characterized as harassment.

Apparently the higher court ruled that Trummel was, in fact, harrassing these people, but it said that he should have been allowed to print their info on his website.

Sound at all familiar?

Slandering Jill Carroll

Not everyone likes reporters who risk their lives to do their jobs! Saw this quote about freed reporter Jill Carroll on Andrew Sullivan's blog this morning:

"She strikes me as the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. You know, walk into the, try and sneak into the Green Zone ... She cooked with them, lived with them ... She may be carrying Habib's baby at this point," - Bernard McGuirk, Don Imus' executive producer, Thursday morning, on the just-released American captive, Jill Carroll.

Sick. Sullivan gives McGuirk a Malkin award (a reference to blogger Michelle Malkin): "for shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric."

The Meatrix II

Revolting. And Meatrix I.  Have you seen the Meatrix?

Correction: Kirby Mtn is not conservative!

Got an email from Eric at Out of Kirby Mountain who complains about being included in the conservative edition of my Tuesday Deadline Linkdump. He writes:

"Imagine the prospect of 'conservative' viewers anticipating a sympathetic voice in my blog and finding instead a site that supports vegetarianism, animal rights, the environment, economic justice, and anarchism. What will they make of the recent posts against meat-eating, about U.S. soldiers massacring families in Iraq, and the march of fascism? Perhaps they will follow some of the links and become avid readers of Emma Goldman or check on the day's historical events in the labor struggle!"

I responded, saying that every time I looked at the blog, it had some anti-wind post. And it sounded to me conservative, i.e., conserve the ridgelines. He wrote back saying he's a conservationist, but not a conservative.

"There's a disturbing lack of criticism of industrial wind from the left, or even honest assessment of both its impacts and its benefits (or utter lack of, apart from being an efficient means of moving scads of public money into the pockets of investors)."

So I guess I have one fewer conservative on my blogroll than I thought. I've been looking hard to find other conservative voices in the VT blogosphere. I know they must be out there. If you know of any more, please advise.

The Blier Watch Project*

Ok, so I finally had time to make phone calls and investigate the Blier Watch site. I didn't find out much. The FBI says they won't comment on whether or not there's an investigation, and the woman I spoke with at the FCC says "we don't regulate the internet." Kevin Blier's not saying if he's going to file a lawsuit, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's thinking about it.

In other words, the investigation rumors may be true, they may not, I couldn't find out for sure.

I wrote a story this week about Blier Watch regardless. Feel free to use this thread to let me know what you think.

*I'm indebted to Bill Simmon for suggesting the title of this post.

The Weekly Post: from Dohiyi Mir

N.Todd Pritsky of Dohiyi Mir is the author of this week's Vermont blog post spotlighted on the Letters page of Seven Days. In a post written on my 31st birthday, N.Todd disagrees with Congressman Barney Frank about the value of all the talk recently about impeaching G Dub. 

Barney, what do you think the impeachment debate would include if not the disastrous war in Iraq and the lies that led to it, not to mention illegal, unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping and all the other sins of this administration?  This is a way for the Dems to control the debate.

Read on...

Also, it looks like Dohiyi Mir came in third in this year's Koufax Awards for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition. Though frankly, I'm having trouble figuring that out. But it looks like he did...

UPDATE: Yes, I really am that dumb... Bill Simmon writes, "I don't think the Koufax results are posted yet.  Notice how the list you linked to is in alphabetical order?" Whooops! Sorry for the confusion.

Tuesday Deadline Linkdump: The conservative edition

More Vermont linkage from a reporter with too much on her plate:

* Jeff Soyer of Alphecca chastises Massachusetts whiners who blame Vermont for their violent crime.
* Charity Tensel of She's Right would like to correct your misperceptions about conservatives.
* Frank LoPinto of Cool Blue says the peacekeepers rescued in Iraq last week are acting like "brats."
* View from Kirby Mountain offers a first-hand look at why wind turbines are destructive.
* The anonymous lass at Tirade Parade offers a pithy and amusing... um, tirade on her required hip hop lecture. To sum up, she didn't like it.

Here are some of the things we discussed in this intro to the hip-hop unit (this is not a joke):

1. The symbolism surrounding the wearing of leisure suits paired with a large clock on a chain around the neck. Followed by a discussion about rappers donning big tasteless pieces of jewelery.
2. The importance of changing one's name, construction of a hip-hop persona (i.e. D.J. Jazzy Jeff, Grandmaster Flash, etc). (In my rap career, I'm known as Master T. 'Rage - short for tirade and outrage).
3. The definition and use of "flow." Again, this is not a joke.

Tip to T. 'Rage: This would sound much more interesting if you were backed up by beats. If you're having trouble finding your flow, study flowmaster Leslie Hall (pictured right).

Not to belabor the plagiarism point, but...

Washington Post blogger resigns after discovery of plagiarism. Ben Domenech had been hired to write the "Red America" blog for the WaPo. A bunch of liberal bloggers uncovered evidence that he had been guilty of plagiarism in the past. He resigned, but apparently would have been fired anyway.

Jim Brady, executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, which operates independently from the newspaper, said he would have dismissed Domenech if the former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer had not offered to quit first. He said there was "enough smoke" in the allegations of plagiarism "that we needed to sever the relationship."

To their credit, even the conservatives recognize that what Domenech did was wrong.

Michelle Malkin, a prominent conservative blogger, wrote before the resignation that Domenech had edited one of her books and she had been cheering for him. "But now the determined moonbat hordes have exposed multiple instances of what clearly appear to me to be blatant lifting of entire, unique passages by Ben from other writers." That, Malkin said, is "unacceptable . . . And, painfully, Domenech's detractors, are right. He should own up to it and step down."

Keep in mind, all of this controversy is about material Domenech wrote before he was a blogger. Imagine what would have happened if he had plagiarized material directly on his blog.

 

The Weekly Post: from Vermont Daily Briefing

This post o' the week comes from Philip Baruth at Vermont Daily Briefing . He writes about a peace rally in Rutland last weekend that drew a bunch of folks. Find a shorter version of his post on the letters page of this week's Seven Days.

And if you're looking for interesting reading, you might pick up Philip's 1999 novel about Burlington called The Dream of the White Village. It's actually a collection of interwoven short stories that touches on the two degrees of separation thing we've got going on here. I read it in a book group years ago and really liked it. And I'm not just saying that because I was on VPR with the guy. 

Seven Days site back online

Lucky you! Now you can read my State of the Arts column about Stowe resident Tom Evslin and his quest to win a Blooker Prize.

I also summed up the whole Explore New England blogger fired thing for the print audience. Because material like that should be shared. Heck, all those offline readers should have a chance to weigh in on what a tattletale careful reader I am.