Civility and Decorum Policy:
This blog is committed to the principles of free speech and, as a consequence, we do not ban people simply because we disagree with them. The columns solely express the opinions of the author and invite responses of readers. Indeed, we value different perspectives and do not want to add another “echo chamber” to the Internet where we each repeat or amplify certain views. However, the Turley blog was created with a strong commitment to civility, a position that distinguishes us from many other sites. We do not tolerate personal attacks or bullying. It is strictly forbidden to use the site to publish research regarding private information on any poster or guest blogger. There are times when a poster reveals information about themselves as relevant to an issue or their experiences. That is fine and is sometimes offered to broaden or personalize an issue. For example, I am open about my background and any current cases to avoid questions of conflicts or hidden agendas. However, researching people or trying to strip people of anonymity is creepy and will not be allowed.
Frankly, while I have limited time to monitor the site, I will delete abusive comments when I see them or when they are raised to me. If the conduct continues, I will consider banning the person responsible. However, such transgressions should be raised with me by email and not used as an excuse to trash talk or retaliate. I am the only one who can ban someone from the blog and I go to great lengths not to do it or engage in acts that might be viewed as censorship. We do not delete comments as “misinformation” or “disinformation.” Yet, we have had a few people who simply want to foul the cyber footpath with personal name-calling, insults, and threatening or violent language. We will delete personal threats and openly racist comments. If such posters will not conform to our basic rules (which should not be difficult for any adult person in society), they will have to move on.
We do allow comments as well as anonymity, which some sites have disallowed. It is a curious thing how anonymity will unleash vile and dark impulses in people. Yet, anonymity is part of free speech and, while we have discussed eliminating anonymous comments due to abuses, we are trying to preserve this important element to free speech. It is possible to be anonymous but not obnoxious.
The blog is for civil dialogue on all manner of topics and not the promotion of commercial interests. If you have a product or service for sale, please refrain from including that in the comments section. Also we will delete long reproductions or copying of the work by other authors or publications without their consent.
Given my family and professional responsibilities, I cannot continually monitor the comments. It is a challenge to post multiple stories early in the morning each day. This is reflected by the typos that sneak into my posts at 5 in the morning while I am trying to pour caffeine into my body. For that reason, this site relies heavily on its regulars to preserve decorum and civility. The failure to delete or respond to a post is not a reflection of any agreement or content-based review. All comments are solely the view of the poster and not the blog, myself, or the guest bloggers. We get thousands of comments and have only limited screening ability for foul language. For that reason, your help is not just welcomed but absolutely necessary in maintaining the character and tenor of this blog.
Like all sites, we attract trolls and juvenile posters who want to tear down the work of others. It is a sad reality of the Internet and the worst element of our species. Don’t feed the trolls. Ignore them. They are trolls and live under cyber bridges for a reason.
We have often been described as a place where people can have passionate but respectful discussions. That is not for everyone. Indeed, one of the leading legal blogs expressly rejected a civility rule as boring and unnecessary. We disagree. If you find it difficult or unfulfilling to discuss issues without personal insults or foul language, please move on. Our Guest Bloggers are asked to avoid any tit-for-tat fight with trolls and critics. Likewise, most of our regulars refuse to engage in such exchanges. Please help us keep this an island of civility and mature discourse on the Internet. Address the issues and not the individuals in our debate. Be passionate but don’t let it get personal.
And thanks again for being part of our blog community.
Jonathan Turley
Kay Frank’s comments above are a great example of the ‘cult of personality’ you spoke of with Megyn Kelly.
Thanks for your vigilance on the matter of executive privilege as stated before congress and on The Kelly File!! I am very concerned at how no one from anywhere but conservatives have, until you, expressed even a smidgen of interest in this outrageous breach of Constitutional intent. Those guys are whirling in their graves. Keep on warning.
Mr Turley
I saw you on Megyn Kelley’s show tonight.Will your remarks which she referred to tonite be available in full at some point.I thought it was quite interesting.
Thanks DL
I was surprised that you appeared on The Kelly File to belittle our sitting POTUS. If Republicans had been trying, even in the smallest way to work with Obama, it would be a different story. However, the Greedy Obstructionist Party is the reason Obama is using his authority to get things done. It’s beyond over-due and you should have noted such. If we do not have a Congress that is willing to work with their President, then we have a problem and it effects ALL of us.
I need more coffee. I realize there is another 7 letter word beginning with a ending with e that is a synonym for anus. I recognize Keith Alexander’s ideas on security may be asinine and none of our interested in his a**h**e
Hmm. If I understand 2, then anus is allowed but as*n**e is not?
I’d rather discuss how NSA policies are as*n**e but have no interest in Keith Alexander’s anus.
But I’d also suggest that as*n**e is not actually a synonym for anus.
We are from France.
Yep. You reected it.
I have had comments rejected. No comment back to me as to why. I will try again and If I do not get a reason sent to me, on blog or back to me on email, then I will consider this to be my banishment and I will take my bark elsewhere.
My hat is off to Prof. Turley for starting this blog and Otteray Scribe for his help. I have found that so many people with weak vocabularies just strike out with profanity when met with an argument they can’t respond to. Profanity is so commonplace that it has lost the intended purpose–shock value. I am not a prude as I hear this in court all day, but then again I am dealing with murderers, robbers and rapists and I won’t even mention the lawyers.
I like the photo at the top of this post. The location is Horneytown, North Carolina, the home town of several trolls.
Juliet,
Is respond but it would be to a nonexistent post here…. The best thing I have found is to ignore those folks…. When they attack you they are responding from something lacking inside themselves… If the reveal personal info the professors email is readily discernable and he will remove the post and hopefully ban the person so responsible….. Just saying…. This is a pretty good site to blog upon….. Like the seasons there are always change….
Before and after I lived in Chicago, Illinois, (Bears’ fan turf) for about ten years or more, I lived in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, for about ten years or more, and that leads me to wonder about the civility of any commercial sports team’s fans teasing the fans of another commercial sports team.
Alas, I have a funny notion of what is, and is not, “professional,” perhaps because of being licensed in a particular profession.
However, given the use of Latin for legal maxims, perhaps a good legal civility maxim is, “De gustibus non est disputandum.”
I continue the work of my bioengineering doctorate, which work I have mentioned on the Turley Blog in the past, sometimes, to my dismay, apparently triggering responses that did not always seem of flawless civility to me. But then, who am I, that I might competently judge that?
I continue to observe that the notions of actually avoidable accidents, actually avoidable mistakes, and any other form of actually avoidable event that actually happens, are all forms of hypotheticals that can never be actualized.
In November, 2012, I asked the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to put my doctoral dissertation on the UIC Indigo web site with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The dissertation contains a scientific approach that appears to me to effectively demonstrate, using the methodology of null-hypothesis/alternate-hypothesis, that no mistake ever made either could or should have been avoided.
That dissertation may be found by going to the UIC web site and doing a search for “Indigo,” and then searching for my name. The statistics report indicates that my dissertation has been downloaded more than 400 times, and no one has ever informed me of a way to refute my finding that actually avoidable mistakes or accidents or events are apparently absolute existential impossibilities.
I suggest that those who can read the article in the Association for Psychological Science November, 2013, Observer, “Inconvenient Truth-Tellers: What Happens When Research Yields Unpopular Findings” (pages 24-29). I do not expect my work to initially be particularly popular with folks who intensely believe in law and life as inescapably adversarial.
While I do not particularly favor the Bears over the Packers or the Packers over the Bears, I do strongly favor civility over incivility.
The January, 2014, issue of Scientific American has the lead article on the cover titled, “Our Unconscious Mind – It exerts a profound influence: shaping decisions, molding behavior–and running our lives.”
By what form of justice as fairness can a person’s conscious mind be accurately and truthfully be held accountable for decisions and behaviors that were totally and absolutely within the locus of control of the person’s unconscious mind? (Consider, if you will, John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness; A Restatement,” The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.)
What might happen if my biosemiotics-oriented bioengineering research regarding the nature of life and law were regarded here on the Turley Blog within the domain of civility (and so without examples of the ad-hominem fallacy)?
If my work can be scientifically demonstrated to be invalid, surely that might be useful for the legal profession. If my work cannot be scientifically demonstrated to be invalid, might that also be useful for the legal profession?
J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E., Wisconsin Professional Engineer No. 34106-6
Life Member: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Member: Association for Psychological Science, Biomedical Engineering Society, Institute of Biological Engineering, International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, International Society for Social and Psychological Approaches to Psychosis, National Society of Professional Engineers, Wisconsin Society of Professional Engineers
Also: Wisconsin Certified Master Electrician, No. 660912
Packer fans teasing Bear fans apparently is banned too. Otherwise, I like your policy.
Just a technical point regarding # 4: words rhyme when they have the same vowel sounds. Thus, “custard” and “bustard” rhyme. But “bas” and “bus” do not.
OS,
Thank you kind sir…. And the C letter word should be banned anyway….
Thanks for the clarification OS!
The four words that will take a comment to the trash bin automatically are:
While it is not yet on the official list, anyone dropping the “C-bomb” (rhymes with “punt”) may find their comment removed, since no one I know can think of a legitimate reason to use it.
Keep in mind there are legitimate words which may contain the last two words on this list, and there are a few legitimate (non-pejorative) uses for those words. Those will be snagged as well, since the WordPress system is not sophisticated enough to discriminate context.
Two links in a comment are the maximum allowed. Three or more links go to spam. Spammers frequently have multiple links and this is an anti-spam measure. Commenters wanting to share more than two links must break the information into more than one comment.
Some commenters may find comments with formatting snagged in spam. Spammers often use formatted comments, and Askimet (the spam filter) is set to “extra grumpy” lately.
Sometimes comments disappear into the WordPress black hole of doom, and no one knows where they went. If your comment is stuck in the spam filter along with several hundred spams, it may be hard to find. Some spams run hundreds of lines long, and there may be several hundred spams in the filter at any given time.
Probably should close comments here, as well as kinda spell out the banned words so that posts won’t be placed in moderation.
The picture depicts a short bridge that goes upward. It suggests that someone jump off.