Matthew Sheffield's blog

Hours after New York blogger Christian Browne wrote on his blog, “The New York Conservative,” that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be quickly executed, Google shut down his blog, which was hosted on Google's free Blogger service.

While the blog – including the post that appears to have triggered its deletion – have since been restored, the circumstances of its deletion by Google remain murky – and raise a serious issue both for Google and for conservatives who use the web to spread conservative ideas and messages.

Color me confused.

The media are fixated today on something Mitt Romney did way back in high school, almost 50 years go, and is hyping it as evidence that he's a gay-bashing bully or something (even though the actual facts of what happened nearly 50 years ago are very much in dispute.)

But on the other side of the election campaign, there's a candidate who -- admittedly -- assaulted a girl on the playground in school, then used cocaine in college and hung out with fellow druggies who had a penchant for violence.

You've probably already heard about how reforming Wisconsin governor Scott Walker managed to get more votes than his top two Democratic challengers in that state's primary. What you may not know is the reason why: The state is booming contrary to the dire predictions of the union bosses who swore that Walker's reforms would destroy the Badger State. Walker's choice to reform and cut the budget instead of raise taxes has proved for a perfect contrast with neighboring Illinois which did the very opposite, with poor results:

Does Alex Trebek owe Republicans equal time on his Jeopardy! game show? Answer: Yes, the show has become overrun by Democratic politicians and is only going to get even more politically imbalanced in the days to come.

Last week and this week, the popular game show, in which contestants are given clues and must provide the answer in the form of a question, has been presenting its annual "Teen Tournament" shows with young Americans as contestants -- and First Lady Michelle Obama presenting some of the clues. The show is being broadcast from Washington DC during the Teen Tournament.

In today's Wall Street Journal, top economist Robert Barro has an important essay on why so-called "stimulus" spending really is a drag on economies. It's must-reading for anyone opposed in principle to wasteful liberal spending passed off as some magic Keynesian pill:

After vice president Joe Biden stated that he supported gay marriage and provoked a media and public firestorm, President Obama just moments ago made it official that he supports the idea as well.

Do you see his announcement as having any bearing on the presidential election due to black or Hispanic socially conservative Democrats being disenchanted with Obama or would such individuals vote Obama anyway?

The liberal press clearly are going to be positively beside themselves over the announcement as well so stay tuned for some particularly egregious media bias.

The Obama Palace Guard is waging a losing battle to suppress the truth in a new ad from Americans for Prosperity, which explains how more than $2 billion in “stimulus” money went to foreign companies.

The “Wasteful Spending” ad, airing in 8 states with a media buy of $6.1 million, has also drawn criticism from the self-styled arbiters of political truth at the Washington Post.

You can imagine why: Obama promised the “stimulus” would “create or save” millions of American jobs, but with election day now less than six months away and millions more Americans jobless than before Obama took office, an ad questioning why Obama sent tax dollars to foreign companies really undermines the  campaign's efforts to distract people.

While its leftist critics continually ignore them, Fox News Channel employs a number of liberal commentators. Unfortunately, it is continuing to stand by one of them, Democratic strategist Jehmu Greene, who insulted Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson as a “bow-tying white boy.”

Greene, former national director of the liberal group Project Vote, made the insult during a debate with Carlson on last Thursday’s “America Live” show and has since apologized privately, however in an interview with Accuracy in Media, the network did not indicate that Greene would face further repercussions for her racist outburst.

It happened yesterday but still big news today is the exit of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich who announced that he is ending his campaign for the Republican nomination.

Now that he's out, what are your thoughts on his campaign? Do you think he ran it as well as he could have? What major flaws or mistakes did he make in your mind that prevented him from winning the GOP nomination? Do you feel like his candidacy will have an impact on the general election? Sound off on this and any other topic you'd like right here.

They've tried and failed repeatedly to install the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" as a means of using the government to silence conservatives, now a George Soros-connected "ethics" group is taking another route to censorship.

The Hill reports that Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is asking the Federal Communications to cancel Fox's broadcasting licenses in the United States because of the phone hacking scandal involving a newspaper owned by a sister company utterly separate from it in the United Kingdom.

The leaders of the plot to bomb an Ohio highway bridge are members of the "Occupy" movement, but you won't find that information in much of the mainstream media coverage of the story.

The FBI arrested five people in a federal sting operation in which FBI agents provided inoperable explosives to suspects allegedly intending to bomb a bridge about 15 miles south of Cleveland. The suspects, Douglas Wright, 26, Brandon Baxter, 20, and Anthony Hayne, 35, are described as self-proclaimed anarchists in a Justice Department statement. All three are connected to the Occupy Cleveland group.

Former Saturday Night Live star Jon Lovitz is learning the hard way that despite liberals' claims to love humor and comedy, they can't stand it when their own side is being criticized. The liberal comic is facing a huge amount of criticism on Twitter for taking exception to President Obama's continual assertions that wealthy Americans don't pay a "fair" amount of taxes.

While Lovitz has been bashed on Twitter, he clearly wasn't expecting to be accused of making some sort of violent threat against Obama. And yet that's exactly what happened last night on the HLN show Dr. Drew where the host, Drew Pinsky, seemed to genuinely believe that. Lovitz was clearly taken back by such a bizarre assertion, making for some very awkward television before a producer rescued Pinsky from embarrassment. Video and transcript below.

It's a given that despite the trillions of dollars in government spending, the U.S. economy is continuing to limp along instead of growing rapidly as is normally the case after bad recessions. So spending isn't the best way to stimulate a flagging economy.

Besides the future debt problem, there's another one that the free-spending is causing America: the possibility that the dollar will lose its status as the world's de facto reserve currency, something upon which our country's economy relies on very heavily:

Apple -- the world's most valuable business and an engine of economic growth and personal freedom across the United States and around the world -- is coming under fire because it had the nerve to structure its global business in such a way that saves the company on taxes.

The New York Times has a very lengthy story exploring all of the ways that Apple minimizes its tax bill. The article, entitled "How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Taxes," makes a great effort to tie Apple's strategy, which is legal, to the ongoing budget problems faced by California, where Apple has its global headquarters, and to the federal budget deficit.

Twitter is blaming an automated spam filter for the multi-hour shutdown of a conservative activist group's Twitter feed on Earth Day, just as the organization was seeing a surge in interest on Twitter and the web for its scathing video critical of the Obama administration.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Twitter has blamed technology for silencing a conservative activist group on Twitter.

As regular readers of NB know, the site's notoriety and audience has grown over time. This has been a blessing in terms of influence but also a curse to our servers. To keep things faster, we are going to be moving soon to a new commenting system which will make for some important differences when it comes to commenting on NB.

One of the things this will mean is no more need to be logged in to NB to make a comment. That's because our comments will be stored on an external server operated by Disqus, making our servers be focused solely on processing page requests. If you are a regular NB commenter, you need to read this post.