McClatchy noted that a California watchdog wants bloggers to report campaign connections. Why not start with the broadcast and print media reporting their income from individual campaigns before annoying bloggers.

Bloggers with ties to individual campaigns are normally rooted out by other bloggers. A lot of blogs are obviously politically partisan, including this one, but I took the Oath of Poverty back in 2005 and can guarantee that this blog costs me money [but no where near what a boat, or even a bicycle costs.]

As for advertising, on the ‘free’ sites, the money goes to the host, not the blogger. Some bloggers do have advertising as a revenue generator, but almost all of them use one of the ad networks to deal with it, and have limited choice as to what appears in their ad spaces.

If you write something in favor of a candidate, her/his campaign might direct an ad buy on your site. If you think that it will affect someone’s opinion, you haven’t looked at the cost of ads on blogs [hint: they won’t support buying coffee at Starbucks, and maybe not at 7-11].

Some campaigns buy against type, a practice easiest seen at PZ Myer’s place with all of Christian advertising that appears. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona has been advertising on leftie blogs lately, which is another ad buy against type. I have never seen anything nice said about him at any of these sites [well, nothing that wasn’t obviously dripping with sarcasm].

Blogging by its nature is rooted in opinion, and if someone suddenly starts writing against their established pattern, people notice. If there was as much attention paid to banks as is paid to lowly bloggers, we might not be in the ‘Great Recession’.

CBS reports on a looming problem for some people who use the ‘Net: Hundreds of thousands may lose Internet in July.

When the Feds busted a hacking ring, instead of just cutting off a half-billion Internet users whose machines were infected by the ring’s software, the Feds set up a clean server to allow those people to remain on-line and give them time to remove the infection. Apparently more than half of those infected haven’t done it yet, and funding for the server runs out in July.

DCWG.org is the official location to check to see if your Windows computer is infected, and the site has instructions for killing the sucker.

This was a redirection Trojan that also disables your anti-virus software, so many people are probably totally unaware that they have a problem beyond the fact that the ‘Net seems to be running slower than they remember.

This was a very nice thing for the Feds to do, but I wonder why they didn’t take it one step further, since they were redirecting these people’s machines and send them to a site that notified them that they were infected, before sending them to where they wanted to go.

A simple notice that told them to use an uninfected computer to get instructions to fix the problem from the maker of their anti-virus software, or another reputable site.

Only hacker sites ‘magically’ find a problem with your computer that they just happen to be able to ‘fix’ if you click on the link, so the Feds should not go beyond notification.

While the US media report on what the Vatican claims, the BBC thought to ask the those accused for a response: Leader of ‘radical’ US nuns rejects Vatican criticism

The leader of a group of US nuns the Vatican accuses of flouting Church teaching has rejected the claims.

“I’ve no idea what they’re talking about,” Sister Simone Campbell, head of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby, told the BBC.

“Our role is to live the gospel with those who live on the margins of society. That’s all we do.”

You should watch the video of the interview. At one point Sister Campbell expresses her opinion that the Bishops and Vatican “should grow up”. She backtracked immediately, but that is really her feeling about the matter – that the Catholic ‘good ol’ boy network’ doesn’t know how to talk to women, and hasn’t advanced beyond the ‘girls have cooties’ stage of elementary school.