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Massachusetts Tuesday called on popular teen social networking Web site MySpace.com to strengthen protection of children against sexual predators, including raising the minimum age for users to 18 from 14. The arrest Tuesday of a 27-year-old man in Connecticut on charges of illegal sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl he met through MySpace underlines the risks of the fast-growing Internet site that boasts about 60 million members. "MySpace has not taken sufficient steps to ensure that the MySpace Web site is a safe place for minors," Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly said in a letter to MySpace. He said a...

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LA Times Discontinues Reporter's Column 40 minutes ago The Los Angeles Times said Sunday it is discontinuing the column and Internet blog of a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter because he posted items online using assumed names. The decision, reported in an editor's note on the Times' Web site, came a week after the paper suspended Michael Hiltzik's Golden State blog. It said Hiltzik would be reassigned after serving a suspension. "Hiltzik did not commit any ethical violations in his newspaper column, and an internal inquiry found no inaccurate reporting in his postings in his blog or on the Web," the editor's...

The American View In late January four members of congress traveled to Afghanistan to survey the situation. They were welcomed warmly and spoke with many different officials in that country. The leader of religious affairs in Afghanistan asked for the United States’ continued support as he thanked us for all that has been done thus far. In his requests he quoted Mohammed as saying this, “You will never become a good Muslim until you first want for others what you want for yourself.” He was of course showing his gratitude to Americans for giving to the Middle Eastern Countries and...

***scroll for updates...1230pm EDT Looks like the problem may be resolved, though several blogs still down...Glenn Reynolds confirms the attack originated in Saudi Arabia, as I suspected...Mary Katherine Ham of downed blog hughhewitt.com is guest-blogging over at Wizbang...Hugh's back up...looks like most are back up...update on Aaron's CC below...513pm EDT update several blogs reporting they are down again...*** Many Hosting Matters-hosted blogs are down--including Instapundit, Power Line, Hugh Hewitt, and tons of others large and small. Hosting Matters' own website is also down. Blogger Chuck Simmins e-mails: Denial of service attack on Hosting Matters. Most, if not all, their hosted...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Times has suspended the blog of a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who posed as an Internet reader to defend his own column and attack his conservative foes. The Times apparently learned of Michael Hiltzik's multiple identities from another blogger, Patrick Frey, who was slammed by the columnist under a pseudonym. Frey, author of a blog called Patterico's Pontifications (www.patterico.com), traced the writer back to Hiltzik's computer. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060421/wr_nm/media_latimes_dc_3

Settle in, because this one goes on a while. The story begins on April 5 when Mike Kopp put up on his blog this post: Jim Bryson, Jesus and a Mohammed cartoon. Remember that title, OK? The post was actually about Bill Hobbs, a Nashville blogger and conservative Republican. Hobbs' blog was, until he suspended it earlier this year, a meeting place for Tennessee conservatives and Republicans and a great source of news from the political front. After suspending his blog, Hobbs took it upon himself to organise an unofficial group blog for Jim Bryson, the new default Republican candidate...

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has taken some beatings recently in the liberal blogosphere. An online poll at the leading blog Daily Kos put her approval rating at 19 percent. By comparison, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean garnered 84 percent.When she posted to the blog last Wednesday, describing her resolution calling for ethics investigations, readers offered excoriating reviews: “She is out of touch and dragging down the party,” wrote one. “Pelosi has zero credibility with me,” averred another.But even as blog readers were pressing the submit button on their most withering opprobrium, Pelosi was preparing to take her...

CHICAGO (AFP) - With a new blog created every second, some media futurists have predicted that "citizen journalists" will be producing half of the world's news by 2021. A number of newspapers are trying to cash in on the trend by creating online venues where bloggers can share local news and opinions. "It really enforces your leadership in the community as the voice of the community," said Fran Wills, vice president of interactive and product development for the Denver Newspaper Agency, which publishes The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. The websites have turned into places where people can share...

Answering Arianna Huffingtons 20 Questions 1.) Last week, you insisted: "I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong... it's simply not true." Yet source after source after source suggests otherwise, including your former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neil, who has said that invading Iraq was a goal set out at your first National Security Council meeting, just ten days after your inauguration: "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'" Mr. President, is Paul O'Neil lying? Answer-...

Regulators brought Internet political advertising under the nation's campaign finance law Monday but declared that all other political activity on the Internet would be untethered by federal rules.The three Republicans and three Democrats on the Federal Election Commission unanimously adopted a rule requiring anyone placing a paid political ad on a Web site to abide by federal campaign spending and contribution limits. But the rule also updates existing FEC regulations to make it clear that all other Internet political activity, such as blogging, e-mail communications and online publications, is not covered by the campaign law. "Individual online political activity will...

NEW YORK -- As reported Friday, Ben Domenech's new Red America blog at washingtonpost.com has expired after three days, amid charges of plagiarism against him. Some conservatives joined liberals in calling for his exit Friday morning. Domenech responded to some of the plagiarism charges in a lengthy post at the site he co-founded, Red State.org, denying or ratonalizing them. After that, he continued: "The truth is, no conservative could write for the Post without being subject to the gauntlet of the liberal attack machine. There is no question in my mind that any RedState contributor writing for this blog would...

The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded. Republican leaders in Congress pushed for the release, which was first proposed by conservative commentators and bloggers hoping to find evidence about the fate of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, or possible links to terror groups. The Web surfers have begun posting translations and comments, digging through the documents with gusto. The idea of...

The Federal Election Commission decided Monday that the nation's new campaign finance law will not apply to most political activity on the Internet. In a 6-0 vote, the commission decided to regulate only paid political ads placed on another person's Web site. The decision means that bloggers and online publications will not be covered by provisions of the new election law. Internet bloggers and individuals will therefore be able to use the Internet to attack or support federal candidates without running afoul of campaign spending and contribution limits. "It's a win, win, win," Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub said, adding that...

<p>The Internet's freewheeling days as a place exempt from the heavy hand of federal election laws are about to end.</p> <p>Late Friday, the Federal Election Commission released a 96-page volume of Internet regulations that have been anticipated for more than a year and represent the government's most extensive foray yet into describing how bloggers and Web sites must abide by election law restrictions.</p>

The Federal Election Commission last night released proposed new rules that leave almost all Internet political activity unregulated except for the purchase of campaign ads on Web sites. "My key goal in this rule-making has been to make sure that the commission establish clear rules to exempt individuals who engage in online politics from campaign finance laws," said Chairman Michael E. Toner, a Republican. "We tried to craft a regulation that would allow the maximum amount of freedom for people as possible," said Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub, a Democrat. Most bloggers, individual Web users, and such Web sites as Drudge...

In his first public comments since resigning earlier today as a blogger for washingtonpost.com, Ben Domenech says his editors there were “fools” for not expecting an onslaught of attacks from the left. “While I appreciated the opportunity to go and join the Washington Post,” Domenech said, “if they didn’t expect the leftists were going to come after me with their sharpened knives, then they were fools.” Domenech has been under a steady stream of criticism since washingtonpost.com launched the new blog, “Red America,” on Tuesday. Domenech, an editor at Regnery Publishing (a sister company to HUMAN EVENTS), was accused of...

***scroll for updates...statement from NRO...Domenech speaks to Human Events Online*** I just got home from Pittsburgh and am late heading out the door for the Abdul Rahman event in D.C., but I can't let this blog sit silent about the plagiarism debacle now engulfing young conservative Ben Domenech, the Washington Post's "Red America" blogger. I cheered for Ben, the editor of my last book at Regnery, when he announced his new position. I criticized unhinged bloggers on the Left who leveled vicious ad hominem attacks against him. It's clear, as the good folks at Red State (which Ben co-founded) note,...

Red America, my new blog at washingtonpost.com, has been under attack since its launch. It is a conservative blog on a mainstream media site, so many of the attacks were expected. If one bothers to read it, I believe it stands as a welcome addition to the opinion debate. The hate mail that I have received since the launch of this blog has been overwhelmingly profane and violent. My family has been threatened; my friends have been deluged; my phone has been prank called. The most recent email that showed up while writing this post talked about how the author...

NEW YORK A two-day effort by liberal bloggers to find, and publicize, numerous examples of plagiarism committed by new Washington Post blogger Ben Domenech culminated today in calls that he give up his new position--from some of his conservative supporters. One of them, most dramatically, is columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin. As an editor at Regnery, Domenech handled her most recent book. Conservatives had hailed Domenech's appointment to write the Red America blog. "I cheered for Ben, the editor of my last book at Regnery, when he announced his new position," Malkin wrote on her Web site today. "I criticized...