The Times Picayune: "Conservative website hotel blackouts..."

"[T]he curious matter of conservative websites consistently getting blocked at the Hyatt Place hotel in Riverhead, Long Island. The company that runs the desktops available to guests there, Uniguest, did finally respond to my query, but several e-mailers from around the country described similar experiences at hotels blocking access to perfectly legitimate conservative websites."

The Uniguest e-mail was "sent on behalf of Uniguest's Marketing Director who was traveling and not able to respond personally." Here's the meat of it:

"Was sorry to hear about your disenchantment in being limited in your ability to surf freely. As I trust you can appreciate, in an effort to protect our Internet users in hotels and other public spaces throughout the world, content filters are placed on our software that attempt to provide a safe browsing experience free from explicit sites and hateful content. Importantly, in some instances, the filters rules have unintended consequences and block sites that common sense would deem safe. For example, occasionally small portions of content will trigger the filter until that content is removed. This can temporarily affect websites with frequently updated content as the filter operates in real-time. The block would occur whether the domain name was Disney.com, CNN.com or any other site that meets the filter's threshold of flagged keywords.

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It appears that the problem has resolved itself and the websites you pointed out in your article are available for viewing at the writing of this email."

I was a bit puzzled by that "hateful content" bit, and unsure if Uniguest means sites like The Drudge Report, Instapundit, and PowerLine are now available on all the company's computers or just at the Hyatt Place in Riverhead. I've asked for clarification on those points.

The column also generated considerable e-mail, almost all of it from people who said they have experienced very similar blackouts of conservative sites at hotels across the country. (read more)

Opinion Columnist Ezra Klein Attempts to Correct Fellow Liberal Colleague

"In his column Tuesday, Richard Cohen explores the more reactionary edge of Iowa's Republican blogosphere. "Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled," he writes, "about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children."

Given the context of the column, I think that Cohen is using "conventional views" to mean "culturally conservative views." But insofar as "conventional" means "based on or in accordance with what is generally done or believed," acceptance of interracial marriage is overwhelmingly conventional. A July poll from Gallup finds that 87 percent of Americans approve -- up from 4 percent in 1959. 

Ezra Klein Washington Post  (bold added for emphasis)