For a couple of weeks now, a person named “John” has been posting comments here. John strongly disagrees with the tenor of this blog. He’s called me some pretty nasty names and argued with my conclusions, but I’ve ignored him for the most part. I didn’t feel his facts, analyzes, or conclusions were compelling enough to merit my attention. Many of you, however, have been engaging with John, whether for fun (I know who you guys and gals are), or to try to make substantive points about what he’s said. I’ve enjoyed very much what you all have written.

Once other people engaged, John expanded the scope of his abusive language and his obscenities. I’ve turned a blind eye to a lot of it, because I do believe in having a free and open forum for ideas.

However, even I have limits. This was my limit:

That goes beyond the rhetorical pale. There is no place whatsoever in the civilized exchange of ideas to advocate drowning children. That’s not an argument, that’s vile abuse. I’ve therefore banned John from this blog. If I did the ban correctly, his past comments will remain, but he will no longer be allowed any future comments.

I’m heading back East(ish) to my Little Bookworm’s Obscenely Expensive Liberal Arts College. I’ll try to blog, but I really can’t promise anything.

Please don’t ignore the Bookworm, though. Even if I can’t blog, Wolf Howling will try to step in. Those of you familiar with my blog know that his posts are much better than mine and always worth reading.

[I’m sticking this post to the top of my blog for a little while because . . . well, because it worked.  Several people were kind enough, after reading this post, to donate.  Even I can see the takeaway lesson, which is to expose a few more victims . . . uh, readers to this post. You can scroll down for new content.]

I wasn’t reading Ace of Spades back in 2004, so I missed Ace’s Fall fundraising request.  Maetenloch, who presides over that website’s excellent weeknight “Overnight Threads,” was feeling a bit tired last night so, rather than write his own post, he reprinted Ace’s 2004 plea for a little support for the resident bloggers.  If you feel inspired, my PayPal tab is in the upper right side of this blog.  If you don’t, no worries.  I love blogging, I’m delighted when people take the time to visit the site, and no one has any obligation whatsoever to fund my passion. But money is nice too, so I’m not going to be too shy about passing on Ace’s suggestion and useful information:

I figure that just about everyone who reads this site would be willing to donate $1 — one buck — four times a year. I figure there are four reason most don’t:

1) Fear about using PayPal. All I can say is that the transactions are secure, meaning coded, the same sort of deal that Amazon and other on-line stores use. I never see your credit card number. Is there a risk? Well, is there a risk when you sign your name on your credit-card receipt and give it all to a perfect stranger when you buy Urban Culottes at Banana Republic?

2) But I don’t have a PayPal account! You don’t need one. Only the recipient needs an account. You just need a credit card, and the will to succeed in selling distress-sale real-estate. It’s what I call “Money Motivation.”

Seriously. PayPal is just how the money is collected. Donors just need to click on the PayPal button and enter their digits as if they were buying books from Amazon or, more likely, Japanese pornography.

And, actually, you don’t even need a credit card. You can send them a e-check, and then they credit me once that clears.

3) It’s a pain in the ass. Well, it’s a minor pain in the ass, but honestly, the entire process takes two minutes. I’ve donated myself, so I know.

4) It’s almost insulting to just give someone $1; it’s better to not donate at all. This is just totally wrong. I have a good number of regular readers, and if half of them — just half — gave me four bucks a year, I’d end up with a pretty sweet haul. Not an Andrew Sullivan gilt-edged bandwidth haul or anything, but enough that I could get my creditors off my back and finally have a good answer when my family asks me why I spend so much time screwing around on the Internet.

The big point is that it’s not really the size of the donation, it’s how big the donation pool is. And if all of my regular readers who haven’t donated before (anyone who has donated — your subscription is in good standing) donated, it would be– well, it would totally, utterly sweet.

Like I said, it’s a buck. About the cost of a cup of coffee at 7-11, and 133% of the cost of a single copy of the New York Times.

Of course, not everyone is going to donate– I think probably 1% of my readers donate at most — so if you felt like giving $3 or $5 or $10 or $20 or even $50, that would be pretty darn cool too.

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There is no way to say this without boasting:  I won!  I won!  (As did many of my blog friends and almost all of the legal thinkers I admire.)

For those bewildered by my boasting, a little context:  Every year, the inestimable Doug Ross publishes his fabulous 50 blog award winners:

So we’re more than pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards, the most prestigious new media awards in the conservative blogosphere.

Or, at the very least, in the 993 area code.

These awards recognize a variety of blogs and websites operating in the conservative hemisphere of the Internet, all of which have worked tirelessly to promote conservatism, free market capitalism, fiscal sanity, the sovereignty of the individual, and otherwise protect America from the cockroach-like Statists — some in very unique ways.

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I’ve noticed that a lot of my favorite sites are asking for end-of-year financial donations to help fund ongoing costs (e.g., National Review and Commentary). It seems to me that, if they can do it, there’s surely a message in there for me.

So I come to now you with begging hat in hand: If you aren’t still reeling from the Obama economy, and if the $18 trillion national debt hasn’t caused you to start hoarding your money, and if you feel that my daily maundering contributes some value to your life, perhaps you can see your way to sending me a little small change. You and I both know that I blog because I’m driven to do so, but that doesn’t mean I’m entirely immune to financial incentives.

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I’m making another change to my blog.  My hope is that this change will make the blog more accessible to everyone.  I like my new blog format, which most people find easier to read.  The one down side is that the larger text and narrower columns mean that my posts take up a lot of vertical space.  People who want to see, say, the last five posts I’ve published, will have to scroll and scroll and scroll to discover what’s new since the last time they checked (or, if they’re new to the site entirely, to discover what type of things I write about overall).

The logical answer is to insert a “read more” code into my posts.  I’ve hesitated to do so in the past, because the “read more” button was programmed to send the reader away from the home page and to the page dedicated to that specific post.  After reading the page, one then has to click back to the home page.  This seems like a little thing, but it’s not.  Most people want to stay on the home page.  They want to browse through the beginning of each post and, if one catches their attention, to read more of that post without leaving the home page.

Thankfully, I’ve finally discovered the plug-in to make the ideal a reality.  From here on out, the “read more” link will expand a given post without navigating away from the home page.  Moreover, if you finish reading the article and click the “read more” link a second time, it will close the article up again, still leaving you on the same page.

You can experiment with this new system here:

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