Ed Morrissey asks when it is OK to out anonymous or pseudonymous bloggers. Missing from the poll question is the answer I consider correct: when the blogger’s identity is so closely tied to the issue at hand that the news value of his name outweighs the harrassing effect of identifying the individual in question. Which, I might add, is very rarely the case.

Don’t know if this has been done as a meme before or not, so I shan’t tag anyone in particular. If you feel like participating, consider yourself constructively tagged. Pick a letter of the alphabet, and check it against your CD collection, listing all the artists whose names begin with that letter. The more interesting the mix, the better. Here’s my list, brought to you by the letter B:

• Bach, Johann Sebastian
• Bach, P.D.Q.
• Bad Company
• Barrett, Syd
• Beach Boys
• Beatles, The
• Beavis and Butt-Head Experience, The
• Beck
• Beethoven, Ludwig
• Benatar, Pat
• Black Crowes, The
• Black Sabbath
• Blue Öyster Cult
• Boston
• Box of Frogs
• Brahms, Johannes
• Brown, Julie
• Browne, Jackson
• Buckcherry
• Buffalo Springfield
• Bulletboys
• Bush
• Butthole Surfers, The

Via Patterico and Allah we learn that NOW has grown a spine and inducted David Letterman into their media hall of shame. Unfortunately, conservatives are represented there, too (though in that weasel Liddy’s case, I’d really like to know why NOW thinks “illegal alien” is a race).

I’m as happy as the next guy to see Creigh Deeds trounce Terry “I’m a Virginian” McAuliffe, but I could really do without a subpar editorial disguised as news reporting:
 

Only toward the end of the campaign, after Deeds began surging in polls, did his two opponents take aim at him for Senate votes against efforts to close a loophole in state laws that exempt firearms sales at gun shows from the background checks required of federally licensed gun retailers.

 
Note that the Ass. Press didn’t say Moran and McAuliffe accused Deeds of voting against laws to change a law they called a loophole that supposedly exempted firearms sales at gun shows from regulation.  That statement may very well be true.  In fact, given the track record of that weasel McAuliffe, it almost certainly is true.  However, it is not true that any federal or state law, voted on by Deeds or not, exempts firearms sales at gun shows from anything.  Federal law requires background checks for all retail handgun purchases, and so does Virginia.  Federal law does not require background checks for any private handgun purchases, and neither does Virginia.  Federal law does not treat a sale any differently based on whether it does or does not occur at a gun show, and neither does Virginia.  A decent argument can be made that private sales that happen to occur at gun shows should be regulated as though they were retail sales (I’ve offered qualified support for this view myself in the past), but it’s hardly a slam dunk.  Certainly not the slam dunk it would have to be to justify using such a loaded word as “loophole” in a news story.

Sex with clients is unbillable hours.

‘Hat tip: Anwyn

UPDATE: JVV dissents.

Linguists call it a “lexical gap” when a word doesn’t exist that probably should. Ain’t, for example, was once a perfectly fine contraction for “am not.” Once it fell out of favor, we were left with no first person equivalent of aren’tisn’t, resulting in such ludicrous tag questions as:

I’m really smart, aren’t I?

Yes, I are. But I digress. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to coin an antonym for sarchasm. The “sarchasm,” of course, represents the great gulf between your sarcastic wit and someone else’s understanding (example). But what do you call it when a misunderstanding occurs in reverse, where the other guy says something that sounds outlandish, you chuckle and say “Ha, that’s a good one,” but he was actually being serious?

Memo to jerk: When you out a pseudonymous blogger for no good reason, you are the one being irresponsible, not him.

UPDATE: Whelan apologizes.

UPDATE x2: More thoughts on outing anonymous and pseudonymous bloggers here.