There's a point where we have to draw the line...

Unfortunately, anonymous comments to our blog have become too numerous for us to process. That's both good news and bad news. The good news is that we're getting more traffic and attention. Apparently, Vox Verax has hit a nerve.

The bad news is that allowing anonymous posts has created some problems. Most recently, an anonymous commenter sent us a whole article. While the article presents a valid point of view, and one which we hope to discuss later, we cannot post entire articles without the permission of the copyright holders. Hence, we had to reject the post.

Again, we encourage comments from all points of view. But please: Have the strength of character to indentify yourselves, don't ask us to post whole articles by third parties, don't be abusive, and keep it clean.

If you have something to say anonymously, there are many other blogs you can post to or you can even create your own blog.

Thanks for understanding.

LP & TM

Further comment posted Wednesday, February 8, 2006:

Our statement above elicited at least one anonymous response, which is below:

It's clear that LP & TM don't actually welcome opposing points of view on their blog. Between censoring posts and not posting them at all, LP & TM are doing the very thing they accuse the Bush administration of doing. I know of many blogs in cyberspace (from Minnesota even) that do not have these asinine "rules" of posting (by the way, in case LP & TM are from Rio Linda, asinine is not slang for the posterior of the body and is therefore not a profanity). The bottom line: if you don't agree with the rest of the children here, you can't play in their sandbox. I guess free speech only exists if you agree with the lefty boys of Vox Verax.

P.S. LP has attended conservative and Republican events in and around the Mankato area and he was never asked to leave or treated disrespectfully even though everyone knew he was not of like mind. It's too bad that he could not reciprocate the kind treatment. That is an example of what's wrong in politics.

This comment deserves a response if only to encourage the contributor to continue sending in his opinion; we only ask that he do so under his name.

And yes, I have attended public forums sponsored by the Kato Conservative Forum, and did so as "Leigh Pomeroy" not "Anonymous". Indeed, I probably spoke with the gentleman who posted the message above, as well as hobnobbed with my friends — Republican, Democrat and Independent — who were also there. At one event I recall the speaker being David Strom of the Minnesota Taxpayers League and found we agreed on some issues and disagreed on others.

Refusing to post anonymous comments is not disrespecting an opinion, it's simply keeping the playing field level. We make it clear who we are; we only ask our commenters to do the same.

LP