Hello Father John!

Well, I want to say I'm really happy to see a comment from you here, and generally I am, but this one feels... I dunno. Not good? I can't see what you've replied to (it's an odd quirk of the site - I get a comment reply, but it shows as a reply to the original POST itself, not any comment I or anyone else may have posted. Make sense? Eh, probably not.) Anyway, this latest from you looks like it may be a comment on one of my comment replies rather than the post itself. And... it looks... well, you end w/ an apology if you'd offended me, BUT it looks like something I wrote may have offended YOU! If so, I'm REALLY sorry for that! Not my intention at all, for sure. Not you of all people... you've only ever been kind and considerate and supportive and even a little protective of me, so I definitely didn't mean to offend you if I did. You wrote, "Many things might be said about me, but judgementalism is not one of them." Did I call you judgemental, or did I imply it? I really hope not! I wish I could see exactly what you're replying to here, because I'm, really disturbed that I may have said something unkind somehow. Did I? PLEASE let me know!
I agree with all of the points you made about comments tied to criminal cases, and I've certainly experienced a lot of what you talked about, especially how such comments based on crime blogs or police statements "assume guilt, as determined by the court, is truth. Anyone who has dealt with the system understands that the court does not always get it right." HERE HERE! Lol! That's certainly been my life in a nutshell- wrongfully convicted yet presumed guilty both morally and legally by obtuse goons who only see the court record but have zero interest in nuance and truth. So, I'm with you on all that! You are possibly the single most caring person who reads and comments these blogs, and I feel TERRIBLE if I've somehow hurt you with anything I wrote here. Again, please do let me know! I appreciate you and what you do for prisoners here on this site and elsewhere more than words can express. If anything I say ever rubs you wrong, please remember that THAT, my last sentence there, is how I truly feel. Thank you so much for being part of this, and part of my life.
- Dymtri

P.S.- On this subject, maybe I can recruit you to join me in asking BTB to reconsider their policy on comment editing. Personally, I will rarely or never ask for a user's comment to be deleted, but I'll almost always ask BTB to please remove the cut & paste portions of users' comments, such as when they plaster my blog with garbage "news" about the trial and bogus "facts" about my life. Since these are perfectly accessible via Google, I'd rather not have them trashing up my blog. Current BTB policy is to not allow bloggers to remove comments, or at least not portions of comments, unless they violate guidelines - hence, I cannot have the cut & paste stuff removed without removing an entire comment, or perhaps not at all (that's not clear, but BTB is generally very responsive to their bloggers, so I'm guessing full comment removal will be allowed).
My issue is this: Any other blogger on any other site can, I believe, remove or edit the comments people leave. Certainly any blogger with his/her own blog, self-hosted, can do this. Conversely, blog readers, you, of course cannot edit the posts in any way, as your remedy is to simply not read a blogger if you don't like his/her views. T.O.S. issues are separate, of course.
I ask you to encourage BTB to allow us prisoner-bloggers to have comments, or parts of comments, removed at will, like man-caged blogger can typically do for themselves. We have little control and no fast, direct way to address things here, but if someone posts non-original content or even just something the blogger finds especially upsetting or even potentially dangerous, please let us make that call for our own blogs, It's not much to ask and, if used with discretion, shouldn't have much effect on anyone's free speech.
Will you ask BTB to allow us this tiny modicum of control over the tone and content of our blogs? I'm asking anyone who's reading this to support the idea.
Or, I suppose, you could just leave a hurtful comment that doesn't violate the Terms of Service, and I'd have to accept that stain on my only link to the world. For now. :) Take care everyone!