For quite a long time, she did. I did not notice that it was no longer there. That has been quite some time ago, and I no longer see it as relevant.

What a writer has done or is doing is rarely relevant to the substance of the argument they are making. It can add to the veracity of opinions, but not of facts. Let me give an example. A former co-worker of mine embedded with the Mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When he gives his opinions on the Afghan people, his opinion carries great weight with me, because it is opinion. If he were to say that average August temperature in Kabul is 32 degrees Celsius, his statement would be have no more weight because he made it.

A logical argument does not depend on the person making the argument. An opinion does. Since opinions show the bias of the speaker, there is no need to advertise that bias.

As to the “substance” of the original post, I don’t see Ms. Muffett complaining about George Stephenopolus (Senior Advisor on Policy and Strategy to Pres Clinton), or Tim Russert (Chief of Staff of Patrick Moynihan), Bill Moyers (Special Assistant to President Johnson), Chris Matthews (worked for 4 different Democrat Congressmen, Speechwriter for Pres Carter, and even ran for Congress as a Democrat), and on and on and on.

Claiming this is about “ethics” is hooey. Why don’t you post on top of your blog that you are a Democrat who (unsuccessfully) ran for office? You unethical?

Too much rumor mongering and slander is pumped out through the blogs, and damned too little honest discussion of alternative ideas, or the offering of compromise solutions, are displayed.

When someone is blogging and is on the payroll of a political party or one of the “think tanks” or one of the supposedly non-partisan non-profit groups, then that should be voluntarily disclosed. I would even support an industry standard that calls for voluntary disclosure of affiliation.

I’m not in favor of handing over any more power to the federal agencies. They do too much to harm our liberty already.

On the subject of banning voices from blogs, while that is obviously the right of the blog owner, such practices destroy the credibility and the underlying value of a blog.

It has been sad to see an increasing number of blogs become increasingly one sided while opinions that differ from the particular party line are edited out or banned. Blogs such as, Bearing Drift, SWAC girl and Deo Vindice, and many other, have become useless, since we can now only find partisan propaganda on their pages. The deeply ironic part about these blogs who are so quick to censor others, is that they generally espouse a commitment to “free speech.” Of course, as soon as that speech is contrary to the views of the sponsor or the host, then the response is increasingly to just ban those thoughts.

Apparently, it is easier to ban views that differ than to actually meet any ideas with facts of one’s own or to openly discuss a compromise solution.

Just for the record, the Republican Party proved during the Bush regime that they are corrupt and that they did not care what the Constitution says. The Republicans turned the power of our federal agencies against our own citizens, and for that alone, the Republicans must NEVER be trusted to lead this nation again.

And had you bothered to read through the links, you would note that I’ve written about this before. Has nothing to do with Ds or Rs; rather, it is an issue of ethics.