Another blogger packs it in.

I've calculated your chance of survival, but I don't think you'll like it.


      -Marvin The Paranoid Android, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Shortly after Waldo undertook this venture in 2007, he came across another political blog, The Delaware Libertarian. It only took reading a couple of posts to know that prose style. We sent the owner a note: "I KNOW YOU!"

DL's founder was a college contemporary of Waldo's 35 years ago, and has gone on to a distinguished academic and publishing career. He is- as he was then- an uncommonly smart and thoughtful writer and the scope of his erudition seems to know no bounds. As Waldo tried to build a readership, DL directed traffic our way- and readers followed his recommendation. During some patches when the conservative blogdom in SC was targeting Waldo personally, he called them under the scrutiny of his much greater, international, audience. It helped.

Waldo has always been envious of DL for the candor with which he has mixed his views of the world with the quotidian challenges of being a husband, dad, and grandfather and teacher. He knows from the madness of the current health care plan. In the political climate of SC, DL has a different meaning for bloggers.

So now, he says, it's time to pack it in. He's taken a look at his life and found there are other things he needs to give more attention to.

It's a completely understandable- and laudable- decision.

But for Waldo- and thousands of other readers- the world has just gotten a little smaller. A little meaner. Bloggers on the Right, driven by what they oppose, or hate, or both, never seem to run out of energy.