Any number of “how to”s on blogging will say that the following is a no-no, but I just want to apologize to the general public that may regularly visit J’s Notes for the lack of meaningful updates as of late. Many things have happened at once and as blogging is low on the list of priorities it suffers. Ideally this is temporary, but please feel free to keep coming back and looking for more and, hey, while you’re hear you can play through the archives or visit any one of the many great sites I like to on the right there. Thanks for your support and visits and all that good stuff.

The playlist and some thoughts on last night’s show is now up at the Under The Covers webstie.

From 8-9 pm EST you can catch yours truly Under The Covers at WVCW. Hope to see you all there.

Here’s a trick on “abusing” them. Not a bad little hack.

Last night, Shaun Kenney and Bobby Orrock squared off in a debate that clearly defined the differences between thet two candidates and what can be viewed as a fight for what kind of Republican party the 54th wants to see. I’ve got a slew of notes to go through before I can go into any real details, as does Matt who was there as well (and we’ll probably be sharing notes). I hope to have those up this evening.

The Free Lance Star has a good write up on the debate, highlighting their differences and touching on an emotional part of the evening when members of the audience hounded Shaun over his college education. And when I say hounded I mean HOUNDED. But from the tone of the audience afterwards it seems it was understood that this was inappropriate. See Matt’s post for more.

Ultimately, it was a good conversation. Both gentlemen clearly stated their positions and definately showed their differences on many issues facing not just the 54th District but all of Virginia.

Shaun Kenney and Bobby Orrock will face off in the square ring tonight at Germanna Community College’s Fredericksburg campus tonight at 7 p.m. Admission is free, audience participation is encouraged, just, please, no foreign objects.

I’ll be there and hope to have an update once I get home. I’ll do my best to be objective. Really I will.

Blogebrity has me as a C-Lister. That’s mighty generous of them. Though I was pulling to rule the E-List.

Heya, folks, just wanted to let any and all interested parties know that tonight, from 8-9 pm EST (finishing just in time for Desperate Housewives if any of you all catch that) will be the debut of my radio show, UNDER THE COVERS on WVCW.

http://www.wvcw.cc

UNDER THE COVERS is a whole hour of nothing but cover songs hosted by yours truly. Unfortunately WVCW requires RealPlayer to listen, but if you’ve got it and your computer doesn’t hate it and you’ve got time, please give me a listen and let me know what you think. Any input would be appreciated.

And, hey, check out the UTC website I’m working on:

http://wvcwutc.blogspot.com

And if you’ve got any covers that I should add to my play list, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll do what I can do dig it up.

My upcoming radio show Under The Covers with J~ has a blog! I used the WVCW site as a template but expect that to change in the future. This is also the test run of seperate sites for specialty shows at the studio so let’s see how this goes. Any recomendations how how to improve the site, what other features you’d like to see, stuff like that, please let me know and I’ll do what I can. I want to try and figure out what works and what doesn’t so I can tell other radio personalities (or DJ’s or whatever) what works best. And be sure to tune in Sunday at 8pm for the debut of Under The Covers!

Jaded JD posted a question today to anti-taxers:

At what point do you guys pack up your “our taxes should be lower” message and switch to some other issue to drive your faction? I mean, assume you get your factional majority in the General Assembly and the Executive Mansion in 2005, or 2007, and start slashing and burning the state budget. At what point, before $0, do you say, “OK, folks, that’s it. We’ve trimmed all the fat, so government has reached maximum efficiency. We’ve shut down all those unnecessary government programs that should have been the province of the private or charitable sectors. Government is now right-sized.”

To which Shaun Kenney, one of the “ilk outside the General Assembly” and primary challenger in the 54th District, replied:

Big government liberals love to make the argument “where should government cut” as if feeding our government should be a working family’s first priority. Yet where do tax-and-spend politicians expect working families to cut from their budgets to feed big government? Food? Clothing? Rent? Mortgage? Car payments?

To those well-to-do pundits that don’t understand the impact higher taxes have on working families, this might seem like a trite response. But for fixed income seniors, for working families, and for anyone struggling to make ends meet, the discussion is very real.

But let’s not stop there.

The Wilder Commission was very adept at pinpointing the waste in the state budget. $1.1 billion of it in fact, on top of a $1.2 billion surplus, on top of a $1.4 billion tax hike!

It took 400 years for Virginia to grow a $30 billion budget. It took tax-and-spend liberals (both Republican and Democrat) just ten years to expand our government to $60 billion.

…

The tax argument is simple indeed. Either one is fighting for working families and lessening the size and scope of government, or one is expanding bureaucracy at their expense.

There more to each post, follow the links, see what they say, but I’ve gotta side with Shaun on this one, especially, as he points out, that “when taxes are raised, it’s not those who can afford the tax hikes — it’s the one’s who can’t afford them that get hurt.” Elected officials are put there to find solutions to fiscal issues (among many other things). While raising taxes can never be completely of the table, it should be one of the FINAL options selected, especially when it only leads to a $1.2 billion dollar surplus (on top of $1.1 billion in government waste). Ultimately, a tax system based on the backs and shoulders of the people least able to afford it is doomed to fail.

Update: Norman has touched on this as well as the folks over at Bacon’s Rebellion.

As May 20, 2005 is the day blogging “jumped the shark.”

Isn’t it about time someone talked about bloggers?

Heh.

Via Virginia Centrist comes an article about St. Lawrence University’s attempts to out some anonymous bloggers:

The blog Take Back Our Campus!, which says it is “dedicated to fighting the right-wing assault” on the university, posts often raging criticisms of administrative policy and of students in conservative groups, and other faculty members and students they consider conservative.

The university filed a lawsuit in federal court in January alleging that the blog unlawfully used, and altered, copyrighted photographs. One picture of President Daniel Sullivan, gleaned from the university’s Web site, was spruced up with a bottle of gin and two bare-breasted women. The pictures have been removed, but the conflict continues.

…

St. Lawrence administrators said they are less concerned by the criticism of themselves than by the anonymous attacks on individuals, especially students. One posting that really bothered them, according to administrators, was a tally of how many times a student mentioned on the blog had been seen crying in public, presumably due to its content. Another post included a faculty member’s match.com profile and pictures (one in shirt and tie, one shirtless) highlighting the fact that the professor said he was not interested in dating black or Asian people.

But it’s not all mocking and satire:

Many of the site’s posts, of which St. Lawrence has not disputed the veracity, are based on apparently leaked documents.

In one case, the blog appears to have obtained an internal memo that is excerpted in a criticism of the university’s decision to cut Upward Bound, a tutoring program for low-income students. In another instance, the site published internal memos that it says challenge Sullivan’s public statements on why Take Back Our Campus should be blocked.

Now, I’m personally one for putting their name on everything. But I understand the need for anonymous posting on some sites, especially when you have situations like the one above where internal documents are being leaked. Being bloggers, we don’t have the same protections as journalists from repercussions or for covering our sources. I think it’s low that they’re getting personal in their attacks, but overall a blog like this is a graet service to a community.

Unfortunately, it looks like they might not be doing all that well in the long run, though:

When ordered by the court, Google Inc. turned over IP addresses from which comments to the blog were posted posted. According to Take Back Our Campus — placed right under a cartoon of a crying woman — the college has already spent at least $15,000 on the lawsuit. So far there is no indication if Time Warner Cable will turn over information for those addresses.

It will probably be forced to, just as Verizon was required to turn over information on file sharers, though for different reasons.

The site also hasn’t been updated since April 4, so maybe the university’s already won.

NYTimes.com is to charge a subscription fee if you want to read their OpEds.

Will over at Bacon’s Rebellion has gotten a good conversation started on creating a Virginia blogger “code of ethics” as well as laying the groundwork for more cooperation among VA bloggers and the MSM. Well worth a peek and anything you all can add to the conversation.