A Note on Comment Deletions

Word has reached me that some prospective commenters may have been somewhat intimidated by the appearance of deleted comments in the comboxes. I wish to assure anyone so concerned that, in the footsteps of the great justice Hugo Black (for all that he was a bitter despiser of Catholicism), I am slow to wrath where comments are concerned, preferring to counter bad speech with good. I will only remove such comments as are obscene, or are generated by spammers. As the late Duke of Wellington famously said, in quite another context, Publish and be d---ed. You will meet with no censorship from me.

(For a while, as I was expecting the HFH Reading Group posts [the original purpose of this blog] to involve more discussion from members of HFH, I limited discussion, in theory, on those posts; any such restriction is hereby, and retroactively, removed.)

Anyhow, I am able to see all comments in their original form, even if deleted by the poster, and can assure everyone that, to date, all deleted comments have been merely duplicated comments, where the poster has removed the inadvertent duplication.