Is Jennifer Aniston blogging? The Defamer seems to think so, or it could just be a joke.

LiveJournal data center Internap has suffered a critical power failure, leaving the SixApart owned LiveJournal and its millions of bloggers offline. At the time of this post the server has been offline for over 12 hours. Updates available here.

Duncan Riley> Just when I promised to not post about Kosgate any more Slate published the following: “Moulitsas’ crime isn’t taking money from Howard Dean. He, too, can get away with a suspended sentence for insufficiently disclosing his role in the Dean campaign once he was off the payroll. The hanging offense is that Moulitsas took money from other, undisclosed, political clients. And while he may have disclose-in 2003-that he wouldn’t disclose them, that’s not good enough. DailyKos raised money for a dozen congressional candidates this past election. Which, if any, of them paid Moulitsas for the honor of directing his grassroots minions to part with their wallets? If you gave one of Moulitsas’ preferred candidates money, wouldn’t you like to know if Moulitsas’ endorsement was purchased?…..If Moulitsas takes money from political candidates in 2006 and 2008 without telling you who’s paying him, stop giving his recommended candidates your dollars. Here’s what Moulitsas wrote about payola pundit Armstrong Williams’ assertion that “There are others” on the government dole: “Until names are named, we can assume every conservative pundit is on the White House’s payola rolls.” That’s questionable logic, but let’s take Moulitsas up on his challenge: Until names are named, we can assume every Daily Kos candidate this past election wrote him a check for his consulting work.”

Looks like Kosgate may be here to stay.

Duncan Riley> Kosgate has erupted across the Blogosphere with many prominent bloggers now commenting on it. Instapundit and BuzzMachine are worthy of reading on the matter.

A common theme is that Kos has done “nothing wrong”, which is, legally right, but I would argue morally incorrect. Kos points out to a disclosure he posted at the time here, which is fair enough, but unlike the Marqui Bloggers there was no disclosure on the main page, just one post long since berried in the mass of content posted to the site. At the end of the day, most of us did not know that he was paid by the Dean Campaign, in their words, for favourable comment. Does the fault then lie with us, the readers, for not knowing. Kos would undoubtedly argue yes. Yet he made little effort during this time to disclose the knowledge in a manner that would assure reader awareness.

Would this be such a big deal if it had been a smaller blogger? probably not. Kos is an uber-blogger who has been quick to attack others that have taken money for comment, yet was ready to do so himself, although in this case, some time in the past. He argues that there is a world of difference himself and Armstrong Williams, as in Williams case he took taxpayer funds and Kos took campaign funds. In an open, transparent democracy I see little difference, only that the public funds are obviously on public record, and will always (although not always immediately) be open to public scrutiny, whereas the funds of a campaign in a US political system that does not have the same disclosure laws as other countries (such as Australia), would be secretive, and therefore different.

I don’t intend to editorialise further on this matter, as there is an important exercise that must emerge from this. The debate on Blog Ethics must continue, and we must, as bloggers, establish what is right and wrong so that others do not make the same mistakes again in the future.