Bloggers "Sitting in Pajamas" Awake! A Judge Balks at the Really Free Press: "Has Judge Sentelle never heard of Peter Zenger, one of the heros of American journalism, the gutsy guy who ran an unofficial, which is to say ‘personal’ little press in New York during the colonial period? He’s the one who was tried for seditious libel. He printed a truth the royal governor didn’t like. Since revolution was already in the air, Zenger was acquitted. The soon-to-be born United States of America was going to have an unmuzzled press, which some of us still cherish. If Zenger were living today, he’d be a blogger.

Benjamin Franklin also churned out newspapers that weren’t always popular with the powers-that-be. In fact, those were the great days of pamphleteering in England, too. Think of Thomas Paine. Think of Addison and Steele and so many others we still read and admire. They were lone wolves, often, and fiercely partisan, but they were often right.

They were the bloggers of their day."

Before anyone things I'm getting self-rightous or something, lspol is not a true blog, more of a lossy repeater out on the Internet, a router sniffing the wire and relaying interesting echoes...

(Via WhirledView.)