Matthew E Jackson, at your service! No, not the guy who owns Jackson Ford (He's a Matthew Jackson, but not this one! I think his middle initial is something else). I'm a guy from Cerro Gordo who went to school at Millikin, got a degree in Computer Science from there - went off and became a consultant, got a MS from ISU (again computer stuff - they called it Applied Computer Science), hit on this blogging thing and found it was pretty fun. I'm devilishly handsome, incredibly modest, and very happily married! ;)

It came to me in a flash! Actually, I had an account over on Blogspot, and I just didn't like it. It couldn't handle really long threads (The DMH thread had around 650 posts). I also didn't like having to type "blahblahblah.blogspot.com". Blogdecatur.com sounded so much better. It's focused, it's direct, and it's short.

I'm a leftie, of course! Actually, I consider myself a true philosophical Democrat. To many, that translates to leftie...I think that laws apply to everyone. I think the sprit of the law is at least as important as the letter of the law, and I think moderation and tolerance are the keys to moving our nation forward. I believe radical extremism, be it from the left or the right is fundementally detrimental to our way of life. I believe that, right now, the radical right poses a huge and real threat to our nation. I believe there is a growing gap between the haves and the have nots - A gap that is not only disproportionate, but totally unnecessary in a country as great an prosperous as ours.

Yes and No. The name is mine, and the server is mine, so in that sense - yes. Right now only I and a handful of folks post, but I'd really like to see that change...It's easy to set up an account (it's free, too) and if you don't want to bother with doing that it's easy to post anymously.

I wish! It costs $100 a month to run the server. All the advertisements you see are gratis (they're free!) I'd love to have a couple thousand readers a day, charge tons for ad space, and retire to my own little table at Panera, but I don't think it's happening any time soon!!!

Yes I discourage parroting! If you have a point to make, please, by all means post! I will ask that you express your ideas in your own words and try to keep the "cutting and pasting" from other sites to a minimum. Putting a link in a story is easy - just use the HTML Anchor tag: <a href="www.blogdecatur.com">blogdecatur.com</a> If you really need to cut-and-paste make sure you tell us where the material comes from, and keep the material copied as compact as possible. Pure cut-and-paste diatribes are nothing more than brain-dead spam - and will be dealt with accordingly... Remember - it's what *you* think that is important!