I totally agree. Although I have never written a diary myself, I am a long-time reader who occasionally comments, but I prefer to read all the posts, not just the ones I agree with.  And I have read some of the diaries from the people banned, and I didn't see a problem with their diaries.

I COMPLETELY agree with you.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed that.

Also, censorship refers to the government restricting your rights of free speech.  A proprietary website with specific political ideals regulating their comments so that the site doesn't become a mockery of those ideals isn't censorship.

Some of the anti-Obama posts on here are so over the top that they could be cross-posted at FreeRepublic without a single word changed.  What do you expect the moderators to do?  How do you think they would react if there were post after post after post about Vince Foster?

Well I'm not going to link to the stories, for obvious reasons, not least of which the links are now broken in spite of Universal's attempts, from memory, to post the diary elsewhere.  And of course this would apply to all the candidates supporter's diaries.  I just can't think of any Obama ones which were equally inflammatory, although I know the administrator's deleted a few of those too.  Universal's diary included a mashup video of 9/11 which was apparently quite controversial.

Universal made comments in a diary on Hillaryis44 which lead me to believe he is a sincere Hillary supporter, but that's not the point.  If he can't understand the difficult position he puts the MyDD proprietors in with that kind of thing he loses the privilege, at least that's my interpretation of Todd's comments.  Personally I found some of the diaries on race way out of line over the past few weeks.  It's not that it is a forbidden subject, it just requires way more sensitivity than was shown, on both sides.  The site has a certain duty of care in what they permit to be posted here, for everybody's sake.

As a consequence of that incident I think the administrators realised they would have to take a tougher stance on the whole content issue.

I was touched by Linfar's diary also, it was very personal and very introspective and gave me a lot to think about in terms of where we are and where we came form and where we want to go as a party. .

Look, I wouldn't know, I don't remember reading it.  I am just trying to explain what seemed to me to be the context of the recent banning.  I notice Texas Darlin' is back so I guess the administrators are open to a dialogue about it.

... and found it incredibly offensive.

It reeked of David Duke.

She used the rhetoric of an emotional appeal to promote the "poor, put-upon white people" message of wannabe white supremacists, and it turned my stomach to see it.

Did you like the bit where she talked about her Typical White Person T shirt?  Sheesh.

StormFront is a white supremacist forum. It's terrible.

But I don't mean in one's own home, I mean that in this day and age, you can speak your mind and broadcast it anywhere. There are thousands of communities, dozens of Democratic ones.

Did the people that got kicked off lose their ability or to talk? No way! They just got tossed off of here in an attempt to stop the talk of candidates in terms of good and bad. In terms of, "I'm never ever going to vote for __. Who's with me, people?"

Which, if I recall, was the ultimate point of Linfar's post. Don't get me wrong, I liked it and it was very well-written. But it was also something that made me angry to see on a Democratic blog where people were using it as a rallying cry.

ou know what crap some 0bama supporters are writing about hillry on this site?

THEY CALL HER A LIAR!

It's disgusting and has no place on a Democratic blog, know what I mean?

She didn't just compare them, she wrote as best as I can remember, that Obama's was worse than George Wallace. Specifically, that the alleged claims of racism where, in her opinion, non existed, were a worse form of racism than Wallace's. Worse than segregation now, segregation forever.  Worse than police dogs and fire hoses.  Now that I think about it, comparing a poster getting banned from a blog to people tortured and murdered by their government isn't so outlandish.

No, you can put me down as thinking that one can do whatever one wants on one's own site.

And I will put you down as one who relishes places words in other's mouths.

You have gone beyond trying to support Linfar and are now just trying to be divisive for the sake of being divisive.

Ridiculous.

I believe this poster has been identified as a troll posting under multiple identities.

Geez, I wonder if I want to have a "conversation" with Hillary on her website, will that be free of censorship?

That was a case involving government action, so no.

Are you for real?

You can 'contend' all you want, but, the fact is that this is a blog, not a shopping center (modern or otherwise)

I would hope that the owner's of this site have better things to do with their time than taking into consideration such silliness. In fact, I am sitting here wishing that I had better things to do with my time!

Beautiful points!

Great, uhm, which aisle are the canned peaches on?

If your theory was accepted, think about what the logical implications would be.  First, no administrator would be allowed to delete ANY posts unless they could show they were unprotected speech.  Are you really arguing that the First Amendment requires such a result?

Second, Web sites like this are, fundamentally, the associational speech of their administrators.  Under Hurley v. Irish American GLIB Association, groups have a first amendment right to  control the content of their message and to ensure that contrary messages are not interpreted as their own.  So your proposed solution would actually infringe upon Jerome's First Amendment rights.  

And that's just off the top of my head...  

Come on - there is not a diary here where Hillary supporters are not peppered with 1 ratings, for the sole reason that an Obama supporter didn't agree with them.  

Try it next time - check out the 1's and go to the ratings page of the person who is giving them, and you'll see often that person gives out about 10-20 1's a day routinely to Hillary supporters for the most mild-mannered comments - just because the person disagrees, they give them a 1.

You say you see it happening the other way around and I will trust you are right.  But don't make it sound like this is a one-sided thing - that is not accurate.

I suspect some of these people who are doing this on both sides got wind that there was an actual debate going on over here (as opposed most of the other mainstream blogs which are nearly 100% pro-Obama, where Hillary supporters have been driven out).

And they didn't take the time to become part of the community and learn the unspoken rules of the site (1's are never spelled out in the rules that I can see) - that the ladies and gentlemen here on both sides don't post 1's just because we disagree with each other.

...and the false equivalence argument rears its head.  That didn't take long.

Who cares about another site?  We're talking about this one.

Please link to any comment or diary of mine that contains these terms. Here's my Daily Kos user page. Knock yourself out, champ.

BTW, "Clintonistas" isn't considered offensive. That term originated in the Clinton White House, AFAIK.

and dKos is a KKK site.  How does that excuse linfair?  Oh, and punctuation is cool.  Look into it.

You just stated the reason that I would not ever be able to vote for Obama.  When he injected race into the campaign, I knew that he is not a person that I will work for, donate money to, or even vote for.  That is really a big thing to me because kerry was my last choice in the last election and my husband and I worked as hard as we could to get him elected and donated more money to him that we should have afforded.  I had been willing to support Obama but he lost me for good with the race trick that he apparently believes was so successful.

user accounts you are posting under?