Protecting and Defending Marriage in the 21st Century

Margaret Romao Toigo

Some gay and lesbian people seem to feel that their somewhat ambiguous social and cultural status requires them to tread lightly, unpresumptuously defending the validity of their families and values while humbly requesting the recognition of their basic human and civil rights. And this attitude is quite understandable in members of an oppressed minority that has been legally marginalized, demonized by political propaganda and religious dogma and victimized by hateful people who think that their anti-homosexual prejudices are justified by religious and cultural traditions. However, the people who should be on the defensive are those who support DOMAs and other oppressive policies like the Federal Marriage Amendment, for the tenability of their collective positions rests solely upon the vast majority's uneasiness with regard to homosexuality -- either as it pertains to others or to its own tendencies and temptations.

Advocates of gay rights who are also members of the recognized majority of heterosexuals feel no such obligation to exercise political humility, which leaves us free to go on the offensive and demand that same-sex marriage be recognized as a civil and human right. And the case in favor of those demands is an excellent one filled with pragmatic arguments that are guaranteed to leave the bigoted and homophobic self-described "protectors" and "defenders" of marriage positively speechless -- or at least flailing about, muttering passages from The Book of Leviticus as they desperately rummage through their well-worn talking points playbook of red herrings, straw men and slippery slopes in vain attempts to re-gain the upper hand they never really had, save for the vast majority's discomfort with regard to the natural variations of human sexuality.

However, going on the offensive and making demands for human and civil rights that should already be recognized in a free and secular society does not address how the legal recognition of same-sex marriage is imperative to defending its meaningfulness as a social institution and how the redefinition of marriage is essential to protecting it from the unavoidable implications of changing cultural mores with regard to the significance of gender in contemporary marriage and society.

Family Values

To treat marriage as if it is nothing more than a license for two people to have sex and reproduce (as if one is required in the first place) diminishes the idea that loving commitment, trust, loyalty, mutual respect and cooperation are the basic moral values that are essential to maintaining successful marriages and building strong families. If we keep prioritizing the basic biological function of procreation as a value in marriage, we will eventually lose sight of how the moral values commitment, trust, loyalty, mutual respect and cooperation help married couples and their children to better deal with the challenges of family life in the modern world.

Defining families according to a conventional model of demographic composition is especially cynical in these days when families are perceived by so many as being in a state of decay. The suggestion that the foundations of successful marriages and strong families are biological connections and specific configurations of people demeans the true purpose of families and diminishes the value of the bonds of love, commitment, trust and loyalty that are the most significant factors needed to keep families stable and healthy. The recognition of a diversity of family configurations will strengthen these worthwhile family values because moral emphasis of marriage will shift from a clinical demographic prescription to a model in which people make serious commitments to work toward meaningful and purposeful relationships.

The notion that children are better off being raised in a home with a mother and a father (or the equivalent) distracts us from the fact that biology and demographics have never been guaranteed to provide a good and loving home for children. Effective childrearing requires a moral character that is not relevant to genetics or statistical designs. Children learn about how a good marriage works by seeing two loving people treating one another with consideration and respect and doing their level best to communicate and cooperate with one another (especially as this pertains to productive conflict resolution), not by merely observing an example of traditional gender identification within a specific demography.

When family composition and gender roles are seen as a priority over the coping skills that are conducive to productive human interactions and relationships there is a danger that children will get the mistaken impression that the foundations of successful marriages and strong families are simple and automatic as long as the demographic and biological requirements are in place, which devalues the importance of the moral character they must develop in order to someday have successful marriages and strong families of their own.

The "Culture War" is a Bad Influence upon our Children

We should all be worried about how the children will be affected by the adults battling with one another over sexual and gender issues rather than getting together on the practical issues in order to help make a better world for children and families.

The combative climate of a "culture war" over the recognition of same-sex marriage is not only politically divisive but also diverts attention away from the practical problems and goals of families in today's society. The controversies surrounding family demographics, gender roles and sexual orientation keep traditional and non-traditional families from the realizing that they have more commonalities than differences when it comes to the challenges and objectives of people who hope to have successful marriages and strong families in these uncertain times.

Issues such as family finances, insurance, taxes and parents' work schedules affect all families, despite their individual configurations. And all good parents, notwithstanding their marital status or other personal circumstances, are concerned about their children's safety and health care and how extra-curricular activities, youth sports and the entertainment industry might negatively or positively affect their children. There are over 1000 federal and state laws regarding the protections, benefits, responsibilities and obligations of marriage and all manner of families should be working together to ensure that our state and federal marriage legislation protects the basic, pragmatic interests of families and children.

Averting the Grave Threats to Marriage in 21st Century Society

In these tumultuous days of casual sexual relationships, no-fault and "quickie" divorces and cavalier attitudes toward marital fidelity, the institution of marriage is under siege from the continuing shifts in social and cultural mores of the last half-century. As a result, these changes in our modern society could cause marriage to become obsolete, which is a grave threat to the basic foundations of society and civilization itself.

Since there has never been a practical way to turn back the tide of social change, we must now reinvent marriage to preserve its viability as an institution that brings people together in love, commitment, loyalty, trust, mutual respect and cooperation to form the essential building blocks of civilized society known as families. In order to strengthen the social institutions of marriage and family, we must expand their definitions to include more people so that we can prevent the moral values that make successful marriages and strong families from being lost and forgotten in the midst of the pointless battles of a senseless culture war over the relatively trivial issues of sexual orientation and gender identification.

The gender roles and sexual preferences of loving people who possess the moral values and courage to actually want to make a real commitment in these confusing days of moral turbulence should be the least of our worries. In fact, such people -- be they gay or straight -- should be applauded for their fortitude and encouraged in their committed and loving relationships no matter the conventionality of the demographic configuration they believe will be most conducive to the success of their marriages and the strength of their families.

Tales of the Coming Media Powershift

Margaret Romao Toigo

There is something in the virtual air and the winds of change seem to be blowing harder out of that growing division of cyberspace known as the blogosphere. I am, of course, referring to the MSM (mainstream media) scandal known as "Easongate" (will that "-gate" suffix ever be excised from the national vocabulary?), which has lead to the resignation of CNN chief news executive, Eason Jordan, who fell victim to not only his own misstatements but also to what has come to be known as either a blogswarm or a blogstorm (there is some dispute as the font of blogmemes is overflowing these days), after he said, during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month, that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been "targeted."

Although Mr. Jordan quickly backed away from his remarks, saying that he had misspoken and that he never believed that coalition troops in Iraq had targeted jounalists, his clarifications came too late to prevent the controversey. Blogger Rony Abovitz was in attendance at the January 27, 2005 World Economic Forum panel discussion entitled, "Will Democracy Survive the News?" when Mr. Jordan leveled his accusations, "Due to the nature of the forum, I was able to directly challenge Eason, asking if he had any objective and clear evidence to backup these claims, because if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park." Mr. Abovitz reported in a blog entry dated January 28, 2005, "Eason seemed to backpedal quickly, but his initial statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real 'sh--storm.' What intensified the problem was the fact that the session was a public forum being taped on camera, in front of an international crowd. The other looming shadow on what was going on was the presence of a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator in the middle of some very serious accusations about the U.S. military."

Bloggers Spring into Action

The events that followed were nothing short of amazing. A few bloggers picked up on Mr. Abovitz's story and refused to let it die, which got the attention of hundreds of other bloggers who began pounding away at their keyboards. Soon after, Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail created the group blog Easongate to collect information related to Mr. Jordan's statements, provide analysis of the developing story, advocate that CNN take disciplinary action against Mr. Jordan, offer an online petition for the public to express its displeasure and gather information about CNN's advertising clients. N.Z. Bear of The Truth Laid Bear also pitched in with an Easongate tracker. All of this ultimately lead to Mr. Jordan's resignation from CNN after 23 years at the network, "to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq." Mr. Jordan wrote in a letter to collegues.

It's Not All About "-gates" and Partisan Lynchings

Not all blogstorms/swarms have something to do with exposing the lies and scandals of partisans and the media elite in order to take them down. The power of the blogosphere was also apparent in the wake of the December 26, 2004 earthquake and tsunami disaster that devastated wide areas of Southern Asia and Africa. The sudden tragedy of the tsunami spurred fast cooperation in the blogosphere as bloggers mobilized quickly, across international borders to break news, link needy communities with donors and monitor relief efforts. When reporters from CNN, BBC and other worldwide networks couldn�t physically get to Southern Asia, bloggers kept the world informed by posting videos and eyewitness accounts.

Was Easongate another "Rathergate" (what is so appealing about that -gate meme)? On the surface, it might appear as such because this was indeed another case of bloggers causing enough of a stir in cyberspace to get the attention of the MSM. However, there are some troubling dissimilarities. Rathergate was a scandal that involved journalists using forged documents as supporting "evidence" in a television newsmagazine story which was broadcast over the public airwaves -- a grave violation of journalistic ethics and public trust. Contrast that with the fact that Mr. Jordan did not fabricate proof and admitted that he didn't have any. While it is clearly unethical to make accusations without proof, that same lack of evidence relegates such accusations to the far less credible status of conjecture. It is also important to note that Mr. Jordan did not broadcast his specualtions over the public airwaves and that there is currently no definitive account of what Mr. Jordan said at the World Economic Forum that has been made public, including the videotape of the forum's off-the-record session. This is significant not because it calls into question what Mr. Jordan might have said or not said, but because whatever he said was clearly not intended as a news report produced for mass public consumption.

Was Easongate "Blog Storm Troopers or Pack Journalism at its Best," as Jay Rosen of PressThink asks in his February 10, 2005 article? That seems to depend upon the points-of-view of the people making those evaluations. Steve Lovelady, managing editor of Columbia Journalism Review's CJR Daily emailed Jay Rosen, "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail. (Where is Jimmy Stewart when we need him ?) This convinces me more than ever that Eason Jordan is guilty of one thing, and one thing only -- caring for the reporters he sent into battle, and haunted by the fact that not all of them came back. Like Gulliver, he was consumed by Lilliputians." On the other hand, Hugh Hewitt wrote, in a February 11, 2005 blog entry, on HughHewitt.com, "The trouble was the cover-up --which continues-- and the pattern of innuendo and reckless charges which Eason Jordan and CNN had laid down vis-a-vis the military, especially the charge Jordan made about the American military torturing journalists from last fall. The press is now fully alerted to the story. Perhaps they will ask the still relevant tough questions of Jordan and CNN."

Has the blogosphere imposed accountability on the mainstream media, as "Captain Ed" of Captain's Quarters submitted in his congratulatory post-Eason-resignation article entitled, "The Moral Of Eason's Fables?" Perhaps, to some extent, it has. In a February 12, 2005 blog entry called, "The End of Honest Mistakes?" Garrett Graff of FishbowlDC writes, "We now (sic) entering an age where journalists are so closely scrutinized by thousands of people with almost limitless time and limitless research power that the slightest misstep can end a distinguished career."

But others are not so certain. Jim Geraghty of National Review Online wrote in his February 11, 2005 blog entry, "A Shocking, Sudden End to Eason Jordan Story," "I would have preferred the tape come out, and that the public's reaction to what Jordan said and didn't say determine just what consequences, if any, he deserved. But he did not escape accountability, which is what I was expecting the past couple days. And we learned that a lot of people in major media institutions thought this was a tempest in a teacup, unworthy of even a paragraph of coverage." And Jude Nagurney Camwell of The American Street offered this assesment, "The �Right-wing mouth machine� would like us all to think that Eason Jordan was 'bad' and 'unAmerican' for saying what he said. CNN has been complicit by their reticence to talk about tough issues. They wound up to be the biggest loser. They lost Eason Jordan. Eason was guilty before being proven innocent by no other process except one: the blog-trial."

"Gannongate"

Of course, any discussion of partisan conspiracies must also include a reference to "Gannongate" (again with the -gate thing). James Dale Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, is the reporter who became the target of online scrutiny by a group of bloggers who were suspicious of the "softball" questions he asked at White House press conferences.

Pseudonymous Blogging

Some bloggers use their real names while others use pseudonyms. At first glance, it might appear that anonymous bloggers are merely hiding behind a false names in order to avoid being held accountable for their blog's content -- and that is probably true in some instances in which an anonymous blogger regularly writes inflamatory or rumormongering posts -- but there are valid reasons why some bloggers elect to use a pseudonym, so take a look at their work before passing judgement.

Aesthetics: For some bloggers, a nom de plume might be used when the blogger's real name is phonetically unweildy or so common as to be undistiguishable. And sometimes bloggers use an alias in order to avoid being confused with someone of prominence whose name is similar -- or indentical -- to theirs.

Job Security: There have been cases of bloggers losing their jobs over the content of their blogs. And some people might not want their bosses and co-workers to know their personal, politcal or religious beliefs.

Personal Safety: There are a lot of opinions out there and behind each one could lie an opinionated person with questionable mental health and violent tendencies and some bloggers fear for their own safety as well as that of their families.

A WARNING: Pseudonyms do not guarantee anonymity on the web. If someone is sufficiently motivated to investigate, the identity of a blogger can be found. When domain names are registered online, anyone can do a whois look up and get the name and address of the person who registered the domain name. Network Solutions and a number of other domain hosting services offer private domain registration for an additional fee. It would be prudent for people who wish to add an extra layer of privacy and security to look into these services.

Further investigation revealed Mr. Gannon's (Guckert's) real name and the address where his Internet domain was registered. Also discovered was that the domain names, hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescort.com, and militaryescortm4m.com (which are either inactive or require a password to access), web sites apparently devoted to gay pornography, were registered through Mr. Guckert's domain. Soon after these allegations and revelations came to the light of the blogosphere and subsequently the MSM, Mr. Gannon abruptly quit TalonNews.com, a conservative web site that has published articles referring to ''the homosexual agenda."

Has the blogosphere changed the shape of "reporting," setting a precedent for anyone, informed or not, to publish for the world, as Abigail Tucker and Stephen Kiehl wrote in a February 10, 2005 Baltimore Sun article? Apparently, the answer to that question depends upon the political leanings of both the subject of the controversey and those investigating it.

In his February 10, 2005 column entitled "The Destruction of Jeff Gannon," Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy In Media writes, "Left-wing bloggers have now made a name for themselves, and it is not pretty. They have taken the scalp of an on-line conservative journalist by the name of Jeff Gannon, who was virtually unknown until about three weeks ago. His crimes were that he was too pro-Republican, attended White House briefings, and asked questions unfair to Democrats." However, Meteor Blades writes in a February 12, 2005 DailyKOS diary entry called "Of muckrakers, blograkers, and future investigations," "As with so much in the blogworld, the investigation by Daily Kos Diarists and Media Matters that just popped Mr. Guckert out of his propaganda post as Karl Rove's pull-string doll arose and evolved and came to spectacular fruition at warp speed."

An Assessment

In order to make a "fair and balanced" assessment of how bloggers figured into these controversies, it is important to evaluate each example without consideration for partisanship, even if the motivations of many of the parties involved appear to be partisan. If political bias is allowed to color our perceptions of the seekers of truth and justice, then our perceptions of truth and justice will be likewise colored in the same fashion, which leaves all of us -- regardless of politics -- lost and confused about where to look for truth and justice.

There is still some specualtion about what Mr. Jordan actually said at the World Economic Forum as no tapes or transcripts have been made public. However, there were plenty of eyewitnesses -- including U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) and U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) -- to corroborate the general context of Mr. Jordan's assertions with regard to the deaths of journalists covering the war in Iraq. And they can't all have been blinded by partisanship.

Some might call Easongate a case of partisans smelling enemy blood in the water, and to some extent that appears to have been one of the motivating factors which caused that group of bloggers to stay on the story until they could affect what they perceived to be their delivery of truth and justice (we will never be certain of how hard those bloggers might have looked for evidence that Mr. Jordan was telling the truth). However, the ethical implications of making accusations without proof have nothing to do with partisanship and everything to do with truth and justice.

Mr. Jordan's allegations vis-a-vis U.S. and coalition troops targeting journalists were quite serious and it was irresponsible for him to make them without proof because it cost him not only his own personal credibility, but some of CNN's as well. Although Mr. Jordan has resigned from CNN, his former collegues and other journalists will have to endure even more scrutiny, especially when they file reports about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of journalists killed while covering Iraq.

The efforts of the bloggers covering Easongate were truly impressive. They were well-organized and very efficient in their tracking of the developing story and they served the truth with effective reporting. But I am failing to understand how justice was served because while Easongate was ignited by Mr. Jordan's submission of allegations without proof, it was the bloggers' coverage of Easongate that provided the fuel to keep the controversey going and growing. And to what end? Mr. Jordan resigned from CNN and, with his experience and expertise, will likely find another job soon (and probably write a book too). Meanwhile, the Easongate bloggers took the credit for that development, putting themselves into the roles of central characters in the story, which makes that part of the Easongate saga seem more like a tale of vigilantism than one of justice served.

The blogger coverage of Gannongate appears to have fallen victim to partisan spin that spun out of control. In their zeal to discredit Mr. Guckert/Gannon, the bloggers covering him got caught up in a salacious sidestory and lost sight of the most important issue which was suspicion that the White House might be engaging in the manipulation of the press -- a most grave breech of our founding principles, if it is true -- not that Mr. Guckert/Gannon used a pseudonym (Gannon does roll off the tongue easier than Guckert) or registered domains for gay pornography sites after having written anti-gay articles.

Certainly, the charge of hypocrisy is quite serious, but it really only affects Mr. Guckert/Gannon's credibility and conscience and Mr. Guckert/Gannon will likely disappear into oblivion (perhaps to write a book about his experiences) while the question of possible White House manipulation of the press -- which could affect all of us -- remains unanswered due to an apparent lack of interest. Meanwhile, if the allegations against the White House are true, there are likely dozens of other James Guckerts/Jeff Gannons lining up to take his place right now and bloggers and other jounalists who are still interested in that story will have to start gathering data and examining press conference transcripts all over again.

The Future

These events could portend an explosive upheaval of the mainstream media and journalism as we know it and only time will tell if the MSM, keenly aware of how closely they are being monitored by the blogosphere, will be inspired to produce more focused and thorough news coverage or be intimidated into narrowing their coverage in order to reduce the risk of controversey. Blogs could possibly become biggest thing to happen to journalism since the invention of television, but only if we bloggers hold ourselves up to the same standards of credibility and accountability that we currently expect of the MSM, which means that we must do our level best to remain unbiased and to report the facts fairly and accurately -- even if we do not care for what they might reveal or the controversies they may cause -- and reserve the partisanship for op/ed articles.

With the convergence of communications technologies causing the media sands to shift inside and outside of cyberspace, the awsome power of the blogosphere has the potential to change the way we view the news and the world, for better or worse. We can build bridges and communities and through cooperation become more effective at seeking truth and justice or we can isolate ourselves into cynical partisan clusters in which we preach to our own little choirs and trash anyone and anything we do not like without ever being challeged by opposing viewpoints. The choice is ours.

The Ceaseless Wonders of the Evolution Debate

Margaret Romao Toigo

After much reading and careful consideration, I find myself on the side of the religious right on one issue, even though I firmly believe that this ambiguous group of fundamentalists, evangelicals and fanatics has, through their political machinations and incessant meddling into numerous other matters of secular public policy, brought the injustice of Selman v. Cobb County School District upon themselves -- and the rest of us.

In Selman v. Cobb County School District, the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled on January 13, 2005 that a sticker placed into science textbooks is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The sticker in question reads, "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." In determining whether the government-sponsored message is in violation of the Establishment Clause, the court applied the "Lemon test," provided by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman, which asks whether the message: 1) has a secular purpose; 2) advances or inhibits religion in its principal or primary effect; or 3) creates an excessive entanglement of the government with religion.

Now, call me crazy, but the text of the sticker appears to easily pass the Lemon test because it has the secular purpose of encouraging critical thinking, which should be considered essential to any sort of education. And since the sticker doesn't even mention religion, it cannot advance or inhibit it. Thus it cannot not create any excessive entanglements of the government with religion.

Those who believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution without question might be offended by these assertions, but please lower your defenses ( I am quite sensitive to the deteriorating condition of that proverbial wall that is supposed to separate church from state), keep an open mind and remember that the theory of evolution is based upon empirical evidence and observation which cannot be completely verified which means that evolution is indeed a scientific theory, not scientific fact. Therefore, belief in evolution (and many other scientific theories and hypotheses which are still being studied) requires more than a few leaps of scientific faith, even if some of the faithful cannot accept that uncomfortable truth.

The theory of evolution is still a scientific work in progress and there are several big questions that it does not answer such as how evolution adds information to a genome to create progressively more complicated organisms, how evolution brings about drastic changes so quickly and -- most pertinently -- how the first living cell arose spontaneously to get evolution started. As more study and research are done, the theory of evolution will either become complete, answering those questions which are currently unsolved, or it will be replaced by a new theory that better explains nature's phenomena.

That is how the scientific process is supposed to work. As new discoveries are made, new theories are created and expounded and existing ones are modified in order to explain that which was previously misunderstood or unexplained. For example, Newtonian physics answered many types of problems -- and still does -- but it did not explain the many things that were eventually answered by Einstein's theories of relativity.

And yet, there are many disciples of Darwin who insist that evolution is a fact, sometimes with a closed-mindedness which is not unlike that of which they readily accuse creationists who believe that the Biblical accounting is the absolute truth. To these believers, this talk about critical thinking with regard to the questions still surrounding the theory of evolution is nothing but religiously motivated nonsense. Can you smell the irony?

Are We Journalists or Gadflies?

Margaret Romao Toigo

In his article in the February 2 edition of The Christian Science Monitor, correspondent Randy Dotinga asks the question, "Are bloggers journalists? Do they deserve press protections?"

Well, are we? Do we? Does the First Amendment apply to us bloggers as "the press," or are we merely citizens exercising our freedom of speech and expression? Are we commentators, analysts and pundits or just opinionated rebels, gadflies and malcontents posessed of cyber-soapboxes? Are we indeed journalists, or just another manifestation of the "entertainment masquerading as news" trend?

Blog Content: Quality or Quantity?

Some bloggers post new articles sporadically and infrequently while others bloggers post one to several new articles every day. Some blog readers complain about irregularly updated, stale blog content and others complain about the quality of blogs which appear to be populated with large quantities of whatever random esoteric thoughts and/or speeen ventings happened to pop into the bloggers' heads.

Naturally, the frequency of blog updates often depends upon pragmatic factors like the efficiency of bloggers' researching, writing and proofreading skills (and whether or not they wish to bother with such formalities), how much time they have to devote to blogging -- which sometimes depends upon whether their blogs are personal hobbies or commercial ventures -- and of course, whatever is currently happening in the world.

Practical matters aside, how often should a blog be updated with new content, weekly, daily, hourly? There appears to be no set rule other than how the frequency of updates might affect web site traffic. Is it better to update as frequently as possible, even if quality might be sacrificed? Or is quality content more important than fresh content?

These ethical and legal questions are not simply fodder for academic specualtion and discussion. On January 4, 2005, Apple Computer filed a lawsuit against unnamed individuals who revealed inside information about forthcoming Mac products. Also named in the suit was the Mac enthusiasts' site, Think Secret, which helped to publish articles written by a 19-year-old blogger who leaked information about new products weeks before Apple unveiled them to the public. The suit, filed in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, California, seeks to identify who is leaking information and to get an injunction preventing further release of trade secrets. Apple claims that the information posted on Think Secret could only have been obtained by someone who had signed a confidentiality agreement and that Think Secret induced those individuals to breach their confidentiality agreements.

Whether Apple Computer's lawsuit is ultimately about a blogger's First Amendment Rights or a business protecting its trade secrets is a matter for the courts to decide once all of the facts and evidence have been examined. However, in the meantime, the fact that such a suit was filed demonstrates that bloggers have become major players with widepread influence over politics, entertainment, business, journalism, etc. -- just to name a few areas. Remember, it was Power Line blog which first implied that the documents shown by Dan Rather on a 60 Minutes segment about President Bush's National Guard service were forgeries. More than 500 web sites linked to Power Line's story and the mainstream media followed up, which led to an investigation and the subsequent ousting of four CBS News employees who played a role in preparing and reporting that blogger-debunked story.

We bloggers are quite adept at expressing our claims of and demands for all manner of civil, human and other rights. And those skills are just one of the reasons why we have become such a force not only in the world of journalism but also in the ongoing fight against tyranny -- whose worst enemy is the free flow of information.

If bloggers are indeed journalists, entitled to the same legal rights and protections as journalists, such as the "shield" laws that protect reporters from revealing their sources, aren't we also obliged to verify our facts before posting our blog articles and to publish corrections or retractions if we later learn that we were wrong? Shouldn't we subscribe to journalistic ethics with regard to protecting the identities of our sources and disclosing our conflicts of interest? Is it unethical for a blogger to accept money to promote or endorse commercial products or political ideas and policies?

Technically, our rights are unemcumbered by definition, but doesn't our power come with a certain amount of responsibility?