THE WASHINGTON POST has pulled down comments in response to “personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech.” Some people are unsurprised, while other enterprising folks have dug up the comments after deletion, thanks to Yahoo’s cache.

It’s hard for me to get very exercised about this. Given the Post’s addition of technorati links to many of their stories, they’re in a better position than most to say “the blogosphere is our comment section.” And, you know, it is.

UPDATE: Related post from Jay Rosen.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mister Snitch asks: “At what point did we become obliged to put up with obnoxious houseguests? Why would anyone care whether some ass thinks they are “engaging in censorship” because someone’s attempt to derail a train of thought was moved off a blog? If the argument’s good, the commenter can start his/her own blog for free, and do the work needed to get the word out. If the argument stinks, why is it smelling up our blog? Don’t our other readers have ofalctory rights?”