JONATHAN TURLEY

RES IPSA HITS 33,000,000

jonathanturley

We have hit another milestone today with over 33,000,000 views. We are also expected to reach 35,000 followers on Twitter.  That hardly makes us competition for the largest sites but it is still an impressive collection of people seeking a place for civil but passionate discourse on legal and policy issues  of our time (and perhaps a few wacky stories).  We often use these milestones to look at the current profile of the blog and its supporters around the world.

As always, I want to offer special thanks for our weekend contributors: Mike Appleton, Larry Rafferty, Darren Smith, Kimberly Dienes, and Cara Gallagher (particularly Darren who continues help up with periodic technical problems etc).

I particularly want to thank our regular commentators and readers.  We try to keep this blog as an open forum with as little interference or monitoring of the comments as possible.  Given our free speech orientation, we try not to delete comments and, for that reason, we are deeply appreciative of how most people avoid personal or offensive comments in debating these issues.  We have had to delete a handful of comments with personal attacks or profanity but the number remains quite low for a blog of this size.  The success of this blog is due to the fact that we offer something more than the all-too-common troll-driven, angry, and insulting commentary of the Internet.  Thank you for voluntarily assuming restraint over the tenor and content of your comments.

So here is our current profile:

In the last 90 days, our ten biggest international sources for readers (after the United States) have been:

Canada
United Kingdom

Spain

Poland
Australia
Germany

India

France

New Zealand
Netherlands

 

Welcome to all of our new readers from those countries, particularly the sharp increase this year from regulars from Spain. I have always found our foreign commentators particularly valuable in giving us an insight from beyond our borders — and domestic media coverage.

The top ten posted in terms of readership in the last 90 days:

1. Court Rules Against Arizona Deputy on Swiping Lawyer’s Note — Arpaio To Defy Court

2.  Court Orders Arizona Deputy to Jail After He Refuses to Apologize for Swiping Attorney’s Notes in Court
3.  “Well-Beings Are Being Put On The Line”: Berkeley Protesters Interrupt Class To Protest The Midterm Exam As Too Stressful
4.  Ninth Circuit Reverses Lower Court Injunction And Restores Most Of Travel Ban
5.  Detroit Officers Posing As Drug Dealers Get Into Brawl With Detroit Officers Posing As Drug Buyers
6. Philadelphia Father Murdered After Trying To Remove Baby From Car During Car Jacking
7.  Britain Moves To Criminalize Reading Extremist Material On The Internet
8.  Reed College Students Shutdown Classes In Protest of Western Civilization Course As “Harmful”
9.  Pro-Life Rep. Tim Murphy Resigns After Emails Surface In Which He Reportedly Asked His Mistress To Get An Abortion
10.  CNN Analyst Calls For All Washington and Jefferson Memorials To Be Taken Down

The most frequent commentators in the last 10,000 comments were:

Allan

Karen

Paul Schulte

Late4Dinner

Aroundaroundwego

Olly

anonymous

Thank you to all of our regular commentators. We remain an extraordinarily broad and diverse body of commenters from different parts of the world and different political and social backgrounds. Thanks again.

Thanks again to those who try to keep our discussions passionate but civil. We obviously have relapses into personal attacks, particularly during these heated political times. However, I am impressed how most people are able to transcend disagreements to avoid making our differences personal or offensive.  There remains a core of people in this country that want to speak objectively about the problems in our country — both legal and political. Some have found their way to this blog and I hope more will join them. We hope that this forum can remain a pluralistic and open forum for mature people to engage in mature discussions. Such discussions have never been more important.

Thanks again everyone and congratulations on the latest milestone.