It may appear that either my user account at RedState has been blocked (hopefully by some sort of machine glitch which will be corrected in short order)…

… or I have somehow managed to annoy one of the moderators enough that he or she lowered the banhammer on me.

Generally, the mods warn people once, maybe twice, and then “Blam” them (which means their account gets banned). And it’s usually pretty quick, as there is a large handful of mods, and it is not obvious to newer users who they are - as newer users might be inclined to further sass the mods after they’ve told the offending party to straighten up.

I’ve checked the last dozen or so posts I remember making over the past few days, and see no such warning from anyone with the “moderator tone of voice”.

Now I’ll grouse here a little, because if indeed I’ve been banned, I can’t see how. I realize that sites like RedState (hereinafter RS) and DailyKos tend to get some folks with moderator power who might treat things like the site is their private fiefdom … where in fact, it is to a certain extent. I know well about this, as I used to moderate a forum years ago and had to ban the occasional user who got out of hand.

So, I acknowledge this and try to play by the RS house rules of as best as I can, although I can see some instances where the banhammer gets dropped really fast…

A while back, a whole slew of people got banned (new accounts that had been created with six months of that ban were bulk-deleted) for trolling for Ron Paul.

Now, while I’ll admit that some RP supporters are either young or without a proper working knowledge of basic netiquette - thus resulting in the overcorrection done by RS.

The reaction does rub me a little wrong - but RS is privately owned, and people are allowed to participate there at the owners’ pleasure: i.e. you have no expectation of freedom of speech, because you are on private property. And some folks there are pretty blunt in telling you that if you don’t like that, then tough - go somewhere else.

Setting aside any possible partisan arguments for why someone may have lowered the boom on my account, let’s see if I broke the rules…

The RS rules are simple and few:

# No profanity.
# No personal attacks.
# No harassment or demonization of a particular individual.
# No disruptive behavior or off-topic remarks for their own sake.

There are a few other rules particular to the blogging engine (such as not self-recommending posts) and not spamming something across multiple blogs.

I may have self-recommended a post early on before I knew what that feature really was about, and having later seen that rule, have never attempted to do so since.

Now coming back to why I *think* I may have been banned (although I have not been yet informed that I have been banned yet from any RS authority)…

… I had been an ardent supporter of Fred Thompson during his run, and had advocated for him in a friendly way on RS.

Fred dropped out, as did several other conservative candidates I might have considered supporting sans Fred.

Coming up to the recent FL primary, the RS user community seems to have split into Romney and McCain camps, with the Management seeming to align moreso with the McCain camp.

Farbeit for me to presume that any particular mods were acting from bias, so I will try to review the general gist of my position on Romney vs. McCain on RS thus far:

I stated that I *will not* support McCain, neither in the primary nor in the general — even to the point of crossing party lines for the POTUS choice.

I stated that McCain will generally be expected to act in opposition to the conservative base of the GOP, whereas Romney - while liberal for my taste - is supportable because he wants to get re-elected in 2012, and will be more beholden to that base.

Never did I question his patriotism, nor his valour while in captivity — those facts are a matter of record that McCain conducted himself with utmost care as a prisoner of war.

But I do question his willingness to do things his own way, I question McCain-Feinberg, I question McCain-Kennedy (amnesty) I question McCain-Lieberman, and I question his choice to side with the Gang of 14.

I question his tendency towards statism, and his acerbic wit, and temperament to govern, much less compete in a race against a calculating liberal, and a silver-tongued orator both of whom will know how to press his buttons in a Presidential debate.

I do not dislike the man personally, but I abhor his politics, and believe with ever fibre of my being that he is the worst possible choice for POTUS…

…and should any mods from RS happen to read this, and decide to ban me for my opinions - then I very well have no control or further input into it. If that is the case that I can’t play in your bailiwick because we disagree - then I guess I really can’t be bitter about it.

But I am disappointed.