I Hereby Challenge #1

I hereby challenge former Lewes City Councilperson and several-time Sussex County Council candidate Judson Bennett to Get Your Own Blog (GYOB).

Jud is a prolific e-mailer. He maintains a private mailing list he calls the "Coastal Conservative Network" to which he sends a constant stream of updates which read, to this jaded liberal reader of conservative thought, as blog posts.

Here are some subject lines from Jud that are still in my inbox:

• Future Scan-the Development of the future of Lewes?????????
  Repeating charges from some no-growth activists that a regional planning initiative by a local group is developer-controlled.
  
• Group threatens to stop Prayer at Sussex Council Meetings/Prayer Breakfast
  Jud is shocked that Americans United for Separation of Church and State object to explicitly christian prayer before county council meetings.
  
• Legislating or "Dictating Morality"- A Response
  A sort of "comment -rescue" in which Jud forwards a rebuttal by a local pastor to something he (Jud) had to say in a newspaper column.
  
• The sailing ships Nina & Pinta-coming to Lewes
  Cool local news.
  
• Marine Corp Band to Perform in Lewes JULY 1st !!!!
  Also cool, local and news.
  
• Lewes Council Goes for Carrying Capacity Study
  Lewes City Council agrees to try to get funding for a traffic study.
  
• Sussex County Council will sue DNREC ??????
  Jud questions the wisdom of the county suing the state.
  
• I endorse Joan Deaver
  Jud had recently lost the republican primary and endorsed the democrat running in the race. Big news locally.
  

I'm know I've deleted a few others over the months, and I left out several purely procedural e-mails. But there's enough here to illustrate my point: Jud is a blogger without a blog.

There was a period of time when Jud was contributing a regular "Jud's Rant" to the "First State Politics" blog (which became Delaware Politics after some other name, which escapes me). But that stopped. And he does appear occasionally as a "from the inbox" post on Nancy Willings' Delaware Way blog.

Other than the occasional guest spot, Jud continues to generate content that is only going out one-way and is not really part of a back and forth discussion (except when contrarians like me pester him back with argumentative e-mails).

I think the Delaware body politic would be better served if Jud left the closed-circuit of e-mail and entered the world of blogging, on his own blog. I think "Coastal Conservative" would be a great name. Blogger and Wordpress are both easy to use.

So... I hereby challenge you, sir. Get Your Own Blog.