This morning I received a message from Mark R. Picton via our website contact mechanism. 

Mark’s message appears below in full. 

‘Hi folks, 

A few days ago I registered to comment that the purported Reagan quote about Bush (from the reagan diaries …..) was a joke and did not come from the Reagan diaries. I see that the post has been removed and that (obviously) my comment didn't get published. 

I think this is unwise. It would be better practice to append a note to the post or edit the post with strikethrough text to indicate that it turns out that the post wasn't right. Making mistakes is not a problem. Trying to pretend they didn't happen is, particularly when it conflicts with the site's ethos: 

"Values [...] (3) Transparency, fairness and honesty in Your Democracy’s operations", the claim that the site is "archived in the National Library of Australia in perpetuity." and the fact that it is easy to find evidence of the deleted post in (for example) the Oz Politics aggregator (http://www.ozpolitics.info/feeds/from-the-cache-of-the-rss-aggregator/?bdprsscacheitem=16577&bdprsslist=1)or prior use of the same quote a year ago by the same poster (http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/5014#comment-7339). 

I mostly skim Australian political blogs through the Oz Politics feed. For what it's worth - and I know I'm just some random guy - this sort of thing is a bit of a credibility buster.’ 

Under the circumstances, I can understand Mark’s scepticism regarding the post he refers to however, the facts are as follows: 

·                     I published the post (see below) on April 19, after receiving it from a previously trusted source; 

·                     I try & check for new posts to our site, including comments, on a daily basis however, due to other commitments, I can’t always manage that. Nevertheless, I did see Mark’s comment some days after he’d posted it & did publish it. I then immediately replied to his post, along the lines of “Thanks Mark …. I’ll take it down”, before proceeding to delete the original post; 

·                     What I didn’t realise was that as soon as I deleted the original post, both Mark’s comment & my response would disappear from the site along with it (this circumstance is evidence of my technical competence in trying to manage the site, rather than of any lack of integrity); 

·                     Now Mark (along with other readers) might think that it would have been better to leave the original post in place & hope that anyone reading it would also have the benefit of reading his comment, where he effectively rebutted its content. 

If that is the case, I apologise for its removal however, on the spur of the moment, not wanting to leave an inaccurate post in place that could continue to mislead readers, I decided to delete it. That was my decision & as I’ve already explained, it was done without my realising that Mark’s correction & my acknowledgement of same would disappear as well. 

I’m hoping that Mark (& any other offended readers) will accept my apology/explanation, as the last thing I would want is for our site to be discredited because of my poor judgement. 

I’ve also emailed a copy of this post to Mark & have requested him to re-post his comment to this blog, thereby affording readers a fresh opportunity to learn (courtesy of Mark) about the inaccurate nature of my original post. Hopefully he will oblige us? 

I’ll leave this post in-place at the top of our home page for a week, to try & ensure that as many readers as possible see it & will also leave it in place on the site thereafter. 

Thanks finally to Mark for taking the trouble to send your message .... had you not bothered, I would not have realised the potential damage that I could have caused our site, albeit unintentionally. 

Beneath the photo from the REAGAN DIARIES is an actual quote that Reagan wrote about George 'W' in his diaries, recently edited by author Doug Brinkley and published by Harper Collins.?(YOU MUST READ THE CAPTION BELOW THE PHOTO. )

"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his n'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida; the one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."