All comments will be moderated from now on. You are encouraged to comment, but they will have to be vetted before hand. You know the rap; the actions of one ruined it for all...

So from now on, comments should be civil. The problem arises when people disagree. That is fine but don’t disagree by submitting a rant on tangential or peripheral topics, ad hominem attacks, or assertions based on assumption. State the problem and, if you want, try to debunk it. But keep your head and I'll try to as well for I am no innocent party in this.

An example of what I'm not looking for would be if a commenter thought I had misrepresented a quote. The commenter then replies with conjecture and ad hominem attacks:

Did you just hear something on TV, think you heard it right, and then rush to blog about it. Because I KNOW you didn't read about it. If you'd read about it, like I did, you'd have seen that he wasn't talking about intelligence agencies, he was talking about idiots like you who love to mischaracterize, obfuscate, and, well, lie...

This instance contained ad hominem attacks, assumptions, and lack of critical thinking before commenting. This comment and subsequent responses were deconstructive, and that's not what I'm aiming for here.

I like to blog, but I'm also a double major in Physics and Political Science and am in my senior year. I don’t have time to endlessly reply to the pointless ramblings from the people who hate people like me and are unwilling to accept freedom of opinion.

A more appropriate response would have been to point out where I was believed to misrepresented the speaker and civilly provide a reasonable explanation of your case. In this case I was taking a bush quote, an attack on democrats and critics, and applying it to his own intelligence agencies. The disagreement was warranted had it been civil, I would have happily explained the concept of a hypothetical superposition and the basics of ‘if’ and ‘then’ logic, but I implore readers to think a little bit before they get all uppity. In this case calling me an idiot and a liar is deconstructive and, therefore, will be ignored.

I'll end this with one of my favorite quotes by John Stuart Mill in "On Liberty" which is relevant to this subject:

The necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-beings depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, [rests] on four distinct grounds. . . .

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very often does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Third, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect of the character and conduct -- the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction from reason or personal experience. . . .

If you want to get to the truth, then keep it civil and lose the great man syndrome. It pains me to limit the few comments I get here, but this was my only alternative given my current situation.

[UPDATE 10/04/06]
I've removed those annoying fill in the blank tests that determine if you are a human, since I'll be reviewing each comment it is no longer necessary. I'll deem the anonymous comments worthy based on substance. Since it is easy to deceive when behind a cloak, I'll stop any comments that are critical of any target. If you are here to criticizre within the above rules, you should be able to put your name on it. Here is a recent example:

###### represents the side of the Republican party (or any party, for that matter) that is truly offensive - and keeps those of us interested in hearing both sides from doing so. ###### - you're a disgrace to the party that you say you represent.

A Republican

I'm serious folks, this is borderline, and with no name it will not pass. In case your wondering it was the last sentence that did it, that and being unsigned.