By the way, just a note reminding those in the L.A. area that I’ll be speaking at GodBlogCon 2006 Friday morning (9 a.m.) and Saturday morning (10:30 a.m.).
I hope y’all’ll join me and other Christian bloggers (including Hugh Hewitt and La Shawn Barber) for the event.
The bigger the Catholic turnout we can raise for the event, the better.
GET THE STORY.
P.S. I’ll try to blog from the convention itself if I can!
I have issued a new authentic interpretation of Rule 1, which is as follows:
UPDATE: Commenters whose
interaction on the blog consists principally of discussions of the same
subject over and over (e.g., the writings of John Dominic Crossan, whether the pope is the pope, or the
evils of Vatican II, the current rite of Mass, or a
particular political figure or party–or any other single subject) are
being rude. Conversation involves an ability to talk about more than
one thing, not an obsessive harping on one subject. Say your piece and
move on, per Rule 2.
Individuals who continue in violation of Rule 1 as authentically interpreted by me–the legislator–will be disinvited to participate in the blog or banned, per Rule 5.
No more riding hobby horses. May I suggest riding real ones instead?
First, I’d like to thank all those who expressed support over the last few days and who have patiently borne the lack of blogging that ensued. I very much appreciate your kind words and understanding.
Receiving the threat of a lawsuit is a delicate matter–even when you know that you have not violated the law–and one must proceed with the utmost caution in responding.
There is an old saying that "A man who has himself for a lawyer has a fool for a client," and even people who are themselves lawyers (I am not) are wise to obtain representation when they are being threatened with legal action. Nobody–not even a lawyer–should respond on his own behalf to threats posed by other lawyers. Even those who know the law intimately need someone who has the kind of cool head and situational detachment needed to help navigate such waters.
Consequently, upon reading the letter from Mr. Moyers’ lawyers, I immediately contacted my friend Stephen Dillard (who has a really cool signature) of the law firm James, Bates, Pope, and Spivey and he most graciously offered very timely assistance. I wish to thank him most of all for his effort, support, and wise counsel in handling the matter.
I’d also like to thank the other lawyers and legal professionals who offered their services in the event such were to become necessary.
As individuals have surmised in the combox, I have been advised not to comment on the matter in detail, though Stephen has examined and cleared this post for publication.
I regret that Bill Moyers did not choose to contact me privately and simply ask that I present his side of the story. As individuals have surmised in the combox, I would have been most willing to do so as a matter of basic fairness.
Such an approach would have been in keeping with the Golden Rule on my part and, on Mr. Moyers’ part, it would have been in keeping with Jesus’ directive to approach a brother privately and solve problems on the lowest level possible (Matthew 18), as well as St. Paul’s directive to be hesitant to engage the legal system in settling matters among Christians (1 Corinthians 6). Mr. Moyers is (or has been) an ordained Baptist minister, and I wish that he had attempted such private efforts first.
Finally, I would like to thank the other bloggers and news sources who have linked the story. Though they have expressed a variety of views on the subject, or run the link without comment, they have in any case publicized Mr. Moyers denial and thus helped spread his side of the story, both among those who read the stories on their sites and among those who clicked through and generated the tens of thousands of hits on the Moyers Exchange post on mine. These blogs and news sources include:
Instapundit
Salon.Com
The Corner
Crime & Federalism
No Left Turns
Amy Welborn
The Curt Jester
The Evangelical Outpost
Conservative Bulldog
Irresponsible Journalism
PowerBlog
BillHobbs.Com
The Evangelical Ecologist
No Silence Here
Three Br0thers
Daily Pundit
Hierodule
The Boring Made Dull
Because this exchange is likely to raise in the minds of bloggers and blog commenters the question of how libel law applies to the blogosphere, I felt it would be appropriate to link an article by law professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit that should help others understand what the law requires. This is presented as an informational source only and not as legal advice (which I can’t give, anyway):
Glenn Reynolds’ paper "Libel in the Blogosphere: Some Preliminary Thoughts" [.pdf]
One final note: In the interests of fairness to both sides, I plan on covering whatever responses Dr. Beisner and the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance make public and whatever response Mr. Moyers has to them. If the responses are not too lengthy, I will endeavor to post them in their entirety. If not, I will post a relevant excerpt and a link to the originals (assuming they are presented online). If the latter approach is necessary, I will extend both parties equal space.
Had to write some notes for a meeting I have Wednesday, and it chewed up my blog time after work.
See you tomorrow!
I’m looking for an application that will allow me to download the entire contents of a web site in one throw. In the old days, I would have used GoZilla for this purpose, but GoZilla seems to have fallen on hard times.
Ideally, I’d like to be able to download just the pages on a site that contain particular keywords, but the whole site would do.
Can anybody recommend an application that does this that (a) runs on Windows XP, (b) ain’t spyware, and (c) is free- or shareware?
Thanks much, folks!
I just got the final schedule for GodBlogCon 2006, and it turns out that I’ll be speaking on two panels instead of one.
The first panel will be "Bridging the Christian Divide" and will focus on how Christian bloggers of different stripes (Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox) can work together to promote the common good and how they can handle their theological differences.
This panel will take place at 9 a.m. on Friday, October 27th. I’ll be serving as the Catholic representative and will be joined by Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost, James Kushiner of Mere Comments, and moderator Joe Shroeder of Blogotional.
The folks involved in this panel have already been having an e-mail discussion amongst ourselves, and it has become clear that we do not take ourselves with supreme seriousness. Jokes at each others’ espenses are planned, so it should be a lively and entertaining discussion.
The second panel I’m on is a Roundtable Discussion that will take place at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 28th. This panel will focus on how Christians can make sure that their voices are heard in the blogosphere so that they aren’t shut out of the broader social discussion the way they generally have been on Television and in the news media.
Big names who will be attending the conference include Hugh Hewitt and La Shawn Barber. Info on the speakers can be found HERE, along with snazzy pictures of them.
I was particularly interested to see that, right next to my picture, there is a picture of another speaker who is perhaps best known for being the seventh president of the United States. All I can say is . . . wow, he looks a lot younger than I expected.
If you’ll be within spitting distance of Los Angeles during October 26-28, I hope that you’ll join us for GodConBlog 2006. It’d be great if a sizeable Catholic turnout appears. Many of the organizers of the conference are Evangelical, but they’re Catholic friendly, and any time our friends across the confessional aisle reach out to include Catholics in an event, it’s good for us to reciprocate.
MORE INFO HERE.
I just wanted to put up a note of thanks to all those who sent in Bible-related questions after my recent invitation for them–as well as those sending in questions on other topics.
So many folks responded that it’s taking me some time to work through the questions that were sent in, but I wanted to let you know that I’m still working on them and will let you know before your question goes up on the site.
Muchas gracias, mis amigos!
Just a note to let folks know that I’ll be attending and participating in the 2006 Godblog Conference or "GodBlogCon" being held later this month in the Los Angeles area.
The conference is devoted to the subject of religious blogging or "GodBlogs," and bigname participants include Hugh Hewitt and La Shawn Barber, as well as many others.
The convention runs from Thursday, October 26th to Saturday, October 28th and will be held on the campus of Biola University in La Mirada. (For those who may not know, Biola is a coined word meaning "Bible Institute of Los Angeles"–one of the most famous Chirstian schools on the West Coast and important in the history of American Evangelicalism.)
I’ll be participating in the panel "Briding the Christian Divide" on Friday morning at 9 a.m. along with co-panelists coming from Protestant and Orthodox traditions. Specifically, there’ll be
* John Shroeder (moderator; Blog: Blogotional)
* Joe Carter (Family Research Council; Blog: Evangelical Outpost)
* James Kushiner (Touchstone Magazine; Blog: Mere Comments)
* and myself
The purpose of the panel is to discuss how Christians of different traditions can and should interact as they promote the Christian faith through new media venues such as the blogosphere.
I’d really encourage anyone within spitting distance of L.A. to come to the event.
I’d also like to give a shot out to other Catholic bloggers and ask if they could consider promoting the event as well. The different Christian traditions need to work together to promote and preserve Christian culture in America and the world, and the new media tools that are becoming available will be central to that effort. The greater the participation of Catholics there can be in the event, the better for all.
So I hope to see you there if you can possibly attend! If you need any further incentive to attend, just remind yourself: It’s what B16 would want you do to.
Need a day off. See y’all tomorrow.
Have fun stormin’ the castle!
(Ooo. There’s an idea. How about a favorite movie quotes combox? Just be sure to keep it clean.)
See the image to the left? It’s a composite of two elements of a screencap that I took from a recent comment in the combox.
I selected these two elements to illustrate a problem that’s been cropping up of late.
I don’t insist on people using the same name or handle in the combox all the time. They can uncheck the "Remember personal info?" box and comment anonymously if they want.
I don’t mind this as long as it doesn’t cause problems, but lately there’s been a lot of it, which makes it hard for other commenters to respond if we’ve got multiple anonymous posters in a single combox thread.
The comment I took the screencap of is particularly noteworthy in this regard. Here we have one anonymous commenter commenting on another anonymous commenter, and that’s . . . well, that’s just wrong. It’s also going to make it really hard for other commenters to respond to either of them.
You’ll note that if you leave the personal info fields blank that the results reads "Posted by: | ". In typography, that vertical bar ( | ) is called a pipe character, so we could take to calling such anonymous commenters "Pipe," but that really wouldn’t fix the problem since we might have multiple Anons and Pipes running around the same combox.
Therefore, to really solve the problem, I’m going to make a new, unofficial rule, which is this: If you don’t want a particular comment to appear under your usual name or handle, that’s fine, but at least put something in the "Name:" field that will let people refer to you easily.
If the problem doesn’t settle down then I may have to make this an official rule and start deleting comments that don’t follow it in order to prevent confusion, so fair warning.
I want to be flexible about this and let people post without their usual name or handle, but as the number of comments has been growing of late, the problem of multiple Anons has been growing worse.
So: Thanks for your cooperation, and I hope this helps make the combox experience more enjoyable for everyone.
Also, I want to reiterate Rule 1, which is that folks need to be polite in expressing disagreement. We’ve had a number of distinctly non-polite exchanges of late, and I’ve gotten complaints about it, so be nice or you may find your comment ain’t there no more.
Oh, and one other combox note: You may have observed that of late the totals shown for a particular blog post [y’know, the ones that say (0) or (13) or (549) or whatever] have not been updating properly. This is a technical issue that TypePad has been having, and I’m talking to them about it. The upshot of it for practical purposes is that if you see a suspiciously low number of comments for a particular post–such as (0) when the post has been up for a while–there may well be comments there that aren’t reflected in the total.
