In my opinion, Wretchard's "Belmont Club" is one of the best blogs on the Web, ref. http://belmontclub.blogspot.com . Wretchard's poliitcal commentary is First Class. However the "comments section" which is easy to overlook can be as good as Wretchard's main article. Wretchard attracts contributers to his comments section who appear(?) to be university academics, military scholars, State Department employees and CIA analysts. I have never posted anything in Wretchard's comments section (only lurked there) because quite frankly, I don't think I'm qualified to add anything.

Anyway, the comments section had been increasingly unpleasant to read due to the efforts of a single noxious troll. In the beginning this troll provided sort of a liberal counterpoint that the more knowledgeable contributors could bounce around. However the troll opted to go into sabotage mode and was dumping long screeds with fairly high frequency. On a kilobyte basis, I'd say about a third of the text in Wretchard's blog was coming from this single troll (I guess the troll was unemployed). I was on the verge of giving up on Wretchard's comments section when Wretchard himself finally had enough. Wretchard recently banned the troll and deleted all of the troll's posts. The effect has been refreshing. With all the troll's manure washed away, what has been left behind is positively gleaming. Once again this refutes the myth of the "open forum". Supposably communication is best in an open forum where anyone can express his or her opinion. However in a totally open forum the trolls and lunatics reign supreme while the rational people leave in frustration. Free speech is at its best when their is a active moderator who will expel the screwballs and keep the discussion civil and on topic.

Gary