I Read it on the Ineternet - (so it has to be true!)

I've already blogged about the cause of my being blocked at htrnews.com over cautioning that names you find on CCAP (Wis. Circuit Court Access Program).  What caused the censoring is that I pointed out that a "Simple Case Search" for Robert Ziegelbauer yielded the case records for someone with some serious problems and obviously not the Manitowoc County Exec.  Yet, bloggers there were using CCAP to dredge up alleged dirt on pretty much on anyone they decided they did not like without any consideration of who they had actually found.  Beyond that there was virtually no attempt to understand what was legitimately attributable to those parties even if the case had been decided in their favor.

But that same caution applies to the entire internet.  Recently an even more bizarre example of mistaken identity cropped up in Texas politics.  (What a surprise!)

It seems that a man named Bill Martin wrote a children's book titled "Brown Bear! Brown Bear! What Do You See?"

In the book there are the lines,
"Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see a red bird looking at me.
Red bird, red bird, what do you see?"

Wait a minute!  A Brown Bear and a Red Bird!  Surely these are subliminal substitutions for the old USSR and Comunism!  Our children are being brainwashed!

A search of the internet reveals that a man by the same name wrote a book called "Ethical Marxism".

Enter the Fort Worth Texas Library Board which based on that scholarly research decided to BAN THE BOOK!

Unfortunately The Fort Worth Star Telegram did a little fact checking and found that the William Martin who was in fact the author of "Ethical Marxism" was actually a professor at DePaul University and NOT the author of the now notorious "Brown Bear" book, Bill Martin.

The difference in that case of course is that the newspaper applied a little critical thought and legitimate research in reacting to the board.  In the case that lead to the creation of this blog Steve Reed and Amy Hanson at htrnews.com failed to read the actual content of the posts.

Despite the fact that Texas has more than its share of loony nut cases - at least they still have literate journalists.

Click here to read original article:

Addendum: I also noted a similarly ridiculous post on the article about the Avery's denial of a new trial.  One blogger posted that there is an article at www.wpri.org that Gov. Doyle hid a provision in the State budget to free Avery and others like him supposedly as a cost savings measure.

Considering that the standard they applied to their own misreading of my posts was that it "... could not possibly be true" it would seem that truthiness published by right wing PACs is just perfectly fine. At last viewing the post remains on line.

Read Avery - WPRI post here: