Great Moments in Free Speech

Media Matters is in full maumau mode demanding that the Washington Post fire its newest blogger, Ben Domenech. Tell me again, when did the Washington Post become a publicly owned company?

The reason this is news is because liberal newspapers hardly ever hire conservatives as reporters. But these are hard times for newspapers. They've got loads of money but they're realizing that the future is not in print, it's the internet. They've seen the influence of conservative bloggers on issues of the day, and maybe it has dawned on them that they've been ignoring half of the country with their biased coverage, a market which talk radio and Fox News have discovered and profited by serving.

So the reaction of liberal readers? Rage, of course. Forget their devotion to press freedom. free speech and academic freedom. They only see those things as rights when they will benefit them. All this squealing should be taken by the Washington Post as evidence that it's on the right track. If the crazed complainers are willing to boycott the paper's otherwise left-leaning reporting and opinion to spite its few conservative writers, let 'em.

Update: Based on evidence that Domenech has plagiarized the writing of others, I agree that he should be unhired. However, the decision to hire a conservative blogger, was not wrong; just the choice of Domenech.