In an article concerning insurance and blogging, Christopher Boggs tosses out an interesting bit of information concerning lawsuits against bloggers:

Nearly 77 percent of ALL civil cases were found in favor of the blogger or saw the charges dropped by the plaintiff. And 92 percent of blog-related suits making it to trial end in blogger triumph (additional information availble at Media Law Resource Center). Odds at trial are overwhelmingly in the blogger’s favor, but there is no guarantee that this propensity towards blogger victory will continue.

As Boggs notes, nearly all of these victories have been on the grounds of the First Amendment. But that will only hold up as long as the bloggers themselves are responsible:

First Amendment protection requires, among other standards, bloggers, like journalists, to practice and prove due diligence in the gathering and reporting of “factual” information. Bloggers must also prove that no actual malice was intended by statements or information ultimately found to be incorrect or untrue. Opinions, stated as opinion and not fact, published by bloggers are also potentially immune from charges of libel under the First Amendment since there is no such thing as a false opinion.

The article specifically looks at a SLAPP, a lawsuit that is meant not necessarily to win but to scare others out of the conversation.  A “don’t talk or we’ll sue you, too,” type thing.  There are anti-SLAPP statutes in 27 states.  Virginia is not one of them.

Red State, Blue State has some interesting graphs of the ideology of voters compared to Congressmen and Senators:

Arlington School Board member Dave Foster has sent out a letter announcing that he will announce his candidacy for Attorney General after the November elections. Whether that announcement will change should Tim Kaine become Veep is anyone’s guess.

The Letter - Page One -Page Two

UPDATE: Belated thanks to Steven for the scan.

Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale have filed for bankruptcy.  While Bennigan’s is no big loss (expensive box store that serves the same stuff as every other one, though I do feel bad for Butters) I had heard good things about Steak & Ale but haven’t had a chance to go.  Ah well.

Back on the 15th the John Brownlee for Attorney General campaign put out a press release that his campaign out raised Ken Cuccinelli’s in the quarter. Certainly the overall numbers speak for themselves (Brownlee - Cuccinelli) but looking deeper into Brownlee’s numbers something really stands out.

The largest contribution to the John Brownlee campaign was $25,000 (nearly a QUARTER of his total income) from R. Ted Weschler. I don’t know Mr. Weschler’s roots, but I can see how he’s contributed in the past and that has me a little concerned for the Brownlee campaign:

$20,000 to Mark Warner’s One Virginia PAC

$20,000 to Tim Kaine’s Moving Virginia Forward PAC

$20,000 to Tim Kaine for Governor

$500 to Warner for Governor

And perhaps quite notable to Conservatives:

$12,500 to Virginian’s For Responsible Government

Virginians for Responsible Government was set up in 2002 by a group of business leaders to defend the Senate “Gang of Five” Republicans — Chichester, Norment, Stolle, Stosch and Wampler — from intraparty challenge from conservatives.

Brownlee has shown his concern for questions of his conservative credentials (see BD: Brownlee takes exception to Kenney comments). Given his lack of a legislative record, there are going to be many more questions and people are going to look at things like donors for answers.

This is not a very good answer to Conservatives.

UPDATE: D.J. McGuire has another find in Weschler’s contributions:

One of Weschler’s “Republican” recipients (to the tune of $19,500) was James C. Wheat, a 2007 candidate for Delegate in Henrico County who endorsed Kaine (Elephant Ears) and has since endorsed Mark Warner (Lynchubrg News and Advance).  So Weschler’s $60K to Democrats looks a lot more like $80K.

The introduction of Leslie Carbone’s series on writing well is now up and well worth the read.  Keep your eye for future Friday installments.

The Gospel According To Gerard Barker:

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

Were I a cricket this would be AWESOME news!

Google’s tweaked their backend and says Google Bombing is now a thing of the past:

That’s right, the online behemoth best known for its search engine says that it has rejiggered its legendary and proprietary technology so that online efforts by bloggers to manipulate its top-secret search algorithm to create cheeky, offensive and decidedly off-message answers to searches will no longer work.

Is that so?

So why haven’t bloggers stopped trying to game the system? Work-arounds may be one reason. So might the increasingly sophisticated nature of today’s Google bombs — what Open Left’s Chris Bowers calls a “2.0 version of the Googlebomb” — where the goal is to influence the search rank of a slew of negative news articles about a politician rather than tie his name to a keyword.

Klau said that he’s “not aware of any [successful] Google bombs or equivalents over the past year” — but the new efforts aren’t Google bombs, per se.

The web will adapt faster than Google so someone will always be out there gaming the system.

Back on my birthday I posted a list of things I’d like to do before I’m 30:

- Write another novel.
- Record an album.
- Go to the beach.
- Catch a major league baseball game.
- Visit Yankee Stadium (I’d have to do that this year anyway)
- Graduate.
- Get back in touch with old friends.
- Learn to dance.

Two and a half down (half is the “old friends”, I’ve gotten back in touch with some but need to do so with more), many more to go.  I’m trying to think of other things to add but at this point I’m having enough trouble with this list, why should I add more?  Suggestions are certainly welcome, tho.

What can you buy for five dollars? takes you on a world wide tour of $5 items.

Last week I posted my brief thoughts on a Slate article that said the Long Tail might be all for nothing.

As a follow up a few links have been shared through a mailing list I’m subscribed to and I figured I’d share them here:

The Slate article was based on a study by Anita Elberse who’s article can be found here in Harvard Business Review.  Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail”, replied here and Anita responded to him here.

Seth Godin spoke up in defense of the Long Tail with this point:

A lot of people don’t seem to understand a key implication of the long tail: Given the choice, it’s better to make a hit.

If you have a choice of cutting a top 10 record or making a track of Jamaican polka music for iTunes, go for the hit.

Style Weekly’s Power List is out and rounding out the 75 are a couple familiar names among the RVA blogosphere:

75. Ross Catrow and John Murden

Richmond’s online community has a streak of serious civic engagement because of the infrastructure provided by John Murden and Ross Catrow. Murden built, modeled and then shared his template for neighborhood blogs. Now a dozen outlets across the city keep tabs on micropolitical issues and neighborhood meetings. Catrow’s aggregator, RVAblogs.com, serves as a central clearinghouse for each new post from more than 300 local writers on a myriad of topics, and a rash of play-by-play pregnancy stories. Their innovations have quickly built a new forum, nurtured a fresh pantheon of pundits and welcomed scorekeepers in the arena of public accountability.

Congrats to the gents.

Wikipedia: List of problems solved by MacGyver

It seems SWACGirl has had her blog labeled as spam by Google and a few folks are speculating on the hows and the whys.  Having seen what Obama supporters have done to Clinton blogs, I lean toward the flagged as spam by others option.

Google’s policy is bad, but considering how widely used and abuse Blogger is by spammers, it’s their quick fix until they can do something about it from the registration and use end.  It’s cheap enough to buy webhosting and set up your own site so you’re not bound by Blogger and BlogSpot or even WordPress regulations.