A note to commenters

Our community of commenters has been a relatively congenial group for a long time. The comments have added an element of fun and fellowship to the site. We therefore try to afford our readers a wide ambit for robust comments, but the current campaigns seems to be bringing out the worst in enthusiasts of various of the candidates. I have previously observed that Donald Trump is not only vulgar in himself, he is the cause of vulgarity in others. However, he’s not the only source of the problem, and the same applies to other contentious issues.

In recent days many more commenters have joined in and pseudonymous commenters have proliferated. We discourage pseudonymous commenters because we believe that attribution promotes responsible commentary. We do not have a staff to police or moderate comments. I review them to delete spam and weed out the most vulgar and abusive.

Herewith a few notes:

We prize civil discourse and ask our commenters to observe elementary courtesies.

Extreme vulgarity is prohibited. Extremity is in the eye of the beholder (me).

Personal abuse of Power Line authors and commenters is prohibited.

Anonymous/pseudonymous comments are discouraged. If you have a good reason for hiding behind a pseudonym, send a message to my attention at our email address and I will entertain it.

These guidelines are not exhaustive. They may be applied inconsistently and their violation may result in the deletion of comments and the banning of commenters.

Thank you for your courtesies and consideration.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

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