Thomas Haughey, assassinated Republican congressman from Alabama

On this day in 1869, Rep. Thomas Haughey (R-AL) was shot while giving a campaign speech. He died five days later.

Born in Scotland, Haughey moved to the United States at the age of fifteen and became a doctor. He lived in the hill country of northern Alabama, which became a Unionist stronghold during the Civil War. He served as regimental surgeon of the 3rd U.S. Tennessee Infantry. In 1867, he was a delegate to the Alabama constitutional convention. The following year, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

I agree in principle that dumping a link to an external site (blog pimping) without detail or discussion isn’t very useful or complementary to the aims of FreeRepublic. But unlike robinmasters or some of the blog pimps Michael Zak has participated in the conversation. He hasn’t engaged in blog-pimping.

I find your attempts to quash discussion that doesn’t meet your preconceived notions every bit as offensive. Trying to get the thread pulled because the subject matter is uncomfortable to you is contemptible.

You can argue the merits, or state your opinion and then walk away. Anything after that just makes you look churlish.

“I find your attempts to quash discussion that doesn’t meet your preconceived notions every bit as offensive. Trying to get the thread pulled because the subject matter is uncomfortable to you is contemptible.”

I find your hollow outrage amusing. I posted an example of someone against whom I made the same argument, even though they actually has a pretty sound blog and one with which I do not disagree.

I know you hate this idea that someone else gets a chance to express an opinion in opposition to yours, but I was not “trying to get the thread pulled” as you so lamely put it.

I was using the same rights as you ... expressing my opinion...and that opinion was about the inappropriate use of threads to seed advertisements within (many) individual posts...not the content. I even supplied you with the proof that I had done this before on a completely unrelated topic. Your inability to cope with that fact is amusing to me. As for getting the threads pulled, I don’t wish that, I welcome them! It gives me a chance to refute you.

It is the riding of the publicly funded train by a huckster that I object to. If this is the best you can do, switching the topic in the face of the evidence, I think you have sufficiently proven you are inadequate to the task of debate. But, please yourself. I expect you are no stranger to excessive self gratification.

Let me start by saying that I had no knowledge of this thread, but was told through PM by another FReeper that I was being quoted here.

I noted that the Admin had already weighed in with his opinion on this blog and, as always, I defer to Management's judgment of what they want to tolerate on FreeRepublic.

Given the indication that this blog might be of some interest, I read the text up to the point where it said “(Excerpt) Read more at grandoldpartisan.typepad.com ...”

Here's where I have a problem. I clicked, hoping to find out more about a little piece of history of which I was previously unaware. (I'm always eager to learn new things.)

Much to my dismay, I discovered that the piece posted above is not an excerpt. It is the whole article! That's right, those six sentences, broken into two little paragraphs, are the entire text.

The balance of what is to be found on the BlogSite is a mini-bio of Michael Zak, and ads, mostly promoting Michael Zak as a speaker/lecturer.

Now, I make no judgment as to Mr. Zak's abilities as a speaker or writer. For all I know, he may be really great at both, or not.

But I do think that it's pretty tacky to post a two paragraph article, and pretend it's an excerpt, just to get hits on a site that is largely self-promotional.

As I said in the beginning, I defer to the Admin. I will not post anything derogatory or harassing on Mr. Zak's threads, simply because after being teased into giving a hit to his ad campaign, I will never click on one of his threads again, much less his blog.

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