Mr. Ehrisman provoked the bear, just a little. South Dacola pointed out last week that blogger-turned-patronage beneficiary Pat Powers was advertising his services as a private campaign consultant while working for the state’s chief election officer, Secretary of State Jason Gant. My commenters and I said a thing or two on Powers’ apparent conflict of interest as well.

Mr. Ehrisman has since updated his post to show Mr. Powers’s response. Powers has not quite shut down his DakotaCampaignStore.com website, but he has deleted most of the pages on the site. He has also redirected hits to the homepage to drag viewers through three different sham sites before finally dropping them on the infamous “Rick-Rolling” video (go ahead, click: you could use Rick Astley pop-rocking you through your day).

One of the sham sites is “DakotaOtaku.com.” Otaku is a Japanese term for someone obsessed with technology or some other pursuit to the detriment of social skills. Powers is thus suggesting that bloggers should get a life rather than spending their time looking into the business activities of government employees charged with maintaining fair and free elections. Oh, how quickly some people change….

Powers hasn’t changed in his snarkiness. Instead of a mature admission of unprofessional conduct, Powers doubles down with a standard Republican tactic familiar from his blogging days: when you do or say something wrong, you (a) try to make a big joke out of it and (b) take poke at the people who pointed out that you were wrong. Add that to the evidence of arrogance run rampant in the Secretary of State’s office.

If any of you see reason why these two should not be wed, speak now…

The South Dakota Newspaper Association is inducting longtime newspaperman Noel Hamiel into its Hall of Fame this month. I herewith tender my official protest, or at least least my official asterisk, to Hamiel’s exaltation.

SDNA President Lucy Halverson says her organization is bestowing this honor on Hamiel because he “has had a positive, powerful impact not only on the newspaper industry in South Dakota, but throughout our state as well.” However, during his two-year tenure as a Representative from District 20 in the South Dakota Legislature, Hamiel sought to have a negative impact on that online citizen journalism that complements and competes with his industry.

Hamiel was the prime House sponsor of the 2010 Blog Control Acts. This vague, sloppy legislation would have imposed onerous legal burdens on bloggers and other citizens using the Internet to share news and commentary. Hamiel’s two bills would have required bloggers and others to keep detailed records of every person who visited their websites and created new legal liabilities for folks who maintain websites that allow comments. These record-keeping requirements and legal risks would likely have shut down blogs and chilled online speech across South Dakota.

Hamiel disingenuously claimed he was simply trying to put online media and traditional press on a level playing field, while he blocked efforts to allow online media to compete with the traditional press as outlets for public notices. His confused and inconsistent rationalizations for his Blog Control Acts were as shakily revealing of ignorance of and spite toward online citizen journalism as the defenses this year of HB 1234 were of K-12 education.

Hamiel’s legislation failed in committee. The South Dakota Legislature has since followed the advice and counterproposals of various bloggers and stayed out of trying to fix an unquantified problem that must not have been as pressing as Hamiel pretended.

In advocating the Blog Control Acts, Hamiel came across as an advocate for one special interest, the newspaper industry, seeking to impose chilling burdens on the free speech of others to preserve his industry’s competitive advantage. I suppose if you are the newspaper industry, that’s plenty of reason to honor one of your fellows.

I know my protest is thin. I’d try to phrase it in terms of the newspaper association’s bylaws and specific Newspaper Hall of Fame qualifications… but, predictably, one can’t find that information on the SDNA’s website or on the website of the SDSU Journalism Department, which keeps the Hall of Fame plaques and records. And even if I could, Hamiel’s résumé contains all sorts of other evidence that he’s a generally nice guy who has served his industry and his community well.

But it bears remembering that Noel Hamiel supported significant First Amendment restrictions on the online speech of all South Dakotans. Such advocacy against the First Amendment warrants at least an asterisk on Hamiel’s nice new plaque in the Newspaper Hall of Fame.

Easter Sunday can’t go by without Dakota War College burping up some peeps-induced indigestion. The fake-named SDGOP mouthpiece blog flogs its favorite son, Senator John Thune, as a rising star in the Romney veepstakes. In a bizarre twist, DWC ignores Thune’s own statements and my agreement therewith that Thune doesn’t want to be vice-president. Of course, it’s not so bizarre if you assume that DWC’s “Bill Clay” is really working for Thune and trying to stoke the speculation his boss quietly craves but must for appearance’s sake plausibly deny.

But let’s not go Sibster on the conspiracy theories. Let’s focus on refuting the horsehockey that DWC actually puts on the record.

DWC claims, “Thune’s name is being discussed more and more as a possible vice presidential candidate.”

English students, pay attention: we have here a stellar example of the deliberately vague passive voice. Discussed by whom? DWC points to one article that mentions his name, then fails to offer any evidence of other sources who weren’t discussing Thune’s name last month but now are burning up with John-fever.

Beyond grammatical evasion of actors, DWC commits another fluffy sin: the Thune-booster avoids any quantification of its claim. As Romney puts Santorum away, one would expect VP talk in general to increase. Maybe the chattering classes are discussing Thune more and more, but maybe they are discussing Marco Rubio or Rob Portman more and more and more.

So, in the great South Dakota blogospheric tradition of DWC just saying stuff and the Madville Times having to clear things up with facts, let’s study some numbers. First, what are the players on Intrade saying about the GOP veepstakes… with their money?

South Dakota’s junior Senator is in eighth place on this scorecard. And if you look at the potential picks’ historical share-price charts (i.e., the amount of money folks are willing to lay on the chances of each person getting Romney’s nod), you see Rubio, McDonnell, Martinez, and Daniels showing increases over the last few months while Thune’s price has eroded. If more and more people are discussing Thune for Vice-President, they must be saying, “Don’t think so.”

But good or bad, let’s look at the volume of chatter about the above ten candidates. Let’s Google each potential VP’s name in quotes followed by “vice president” and see how many results pop up for each month this year and for April so far:

Those data are messy, since we’re dealing with differently sized time periods. One interesting artifact of this data: all of the potential nominees other than Rand Paul got produce more Google VP results in this first week of April than they do for all of January. That surge in chatter supports the rather obvious conclusion that as the primary battle winds down and blessed summer draws near, we will naturally hear more VP speculation.

But focus, people! Let’s look at the daily average Google mentions for each candidate within each time period:

You’ll notice that in each month this year and even last week, John Thune’s VP attention has been below both the median and the mean for Intrade’s current top ten possible nominees. Even the two guys below him, Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul, have gotten more daily Google VP mentions than Thune in every time period these charts consider. And last week, Thune has gotten the least VP attention of the ten folks above. If more and more people are discussing John Thune, they aren’t doing so on Google-searchable pages.

(My Sibby-conspiracy urge strikes again: maybe that’s exactly what Thune’s Web advisors noticed. “John! We’ve gotta boost our buzz! Call Pat— er, Tony— er, Bill Clay and tell him to make up some fluff mentioning you and the vice-presidency. You know Heidelberger will tear him apart, and Heidelberger will have to say ‘John Thune’ and ‘vice president’ a half dozen times. That’ll really juice our Google juice!” Clever devils.)

Now let’s compare how these average daily results have changed over the last few months. From January to February, Web VP chatter increased for all ten possible nominees. From February to March, daily chatter dropped for all ten (everyone was watching basketball, right?). In the last eight days, daily chatter has leaped for all ten. So indeed, by itself, DWC’s claim that “Thune’s name is being discussed more and more” is technically correct.

But does that matter if everyone else is being discussed more and more, too? Let’s see how each candidate’s Google VP numbers have changed:

The past week brought the man from Murdo a 361% jump in daily Google VP attention. 361% sounds spectacular… until you notice that’s still below the 423% average early-April spike for Thune’s top competitors for VP attention. Even on the most generous metric I can cook up for John, he’s still in the bottom half of the top ten.

Therefore, by these numbers (actual numbers, to which Dakota War College and the South Dakota Republican Party appear terminally allergic), John Thune does indeed continue to warrant VP consideration… about as much as Jon Huntsman warranted Presidential consideration on January 1.

As home to high-tech Dakota State University, you would think Madison and Lake County would be among the best places in South Dakota for broadband access. Data from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration show that’s not quite the case:

Source: http://www.governing.com/gov-data/broadband-speeds-availability.html

As of June 30, 2011, 83% of Lake County’s population could get 6Mbps download speeds or better. 65% had access to 25 Mbps download speed or better. That’s not bad. But check out those darker green counties. Along the James River corridor from Aberdeen to Yankton, the eastern 212 corridor through Watertown, and predictably in Minnehaha and Lincoln counties, folks not sitting within tin-can-telephone range of the premier computer school in the state have more access to broadband Internet.

Can you say spillover…not?

Now the numbers are complicated. Compare Lake County with purportedly broadbandier Sanborn County two squares to its west. Sanborn County has a fifth of Lake County’s population and 14% lower median income, but the penetration rate for 6Mbps+ is 98%. Jump to 25Mbps, however, and penetration plummets to 14%.

Comparing Madison to Woonsocket should be small comfort my my techie hometown, which once tagged itself as “In Touch with the World.” We might just as well compare Madison to Ipswich, Edmunds County, where 25Mbps+ reach is 88%.

Pump up that WiMAX, Sioux Valley! Lake County is getting beat!

While the fading and fallacious Dakota War College resorts to the usual name-calling and needling over one candidate’s petition oopsie (the former is childish; the latter bears some mention), South Dakota Democratic Party Chair Ben Nesselhuf offers a few metrics on his party’s performance over the past year:

• Record attendance at McGovern Day 2012
• Six-figure positive turnaround in fundraising (and remember: Dems have raised more per registered voter than Republicans!
• Nearly 66,000 SDDP email messages opened
• Facebook fans up by over 375% (though Republicans still have us beat in raw numbers, 1870 to 1389, a 1.35:1 ratio, better than the 1.26:1 edge the GOP holds over Dems in voter registration)
• Twitter followers tripled (though again, GOP edge, 1107 to 764, a 1.45:1 ratio)

South Dakota Dems are still playing catch up with the GOP (we have been since the Kneip era… or maybe since our 1938 pounding at the hands of Red-Scare Mundt?). Nesselhuf needs to spend April touring the state to persuade some Dems to file Independent for several more seats in the Legislature. But unlike the SDGOP’s laggardly rookie recruit Tony Post (whose name I don’t have to make fun of to make my point), Nesselhuf is hustling hard to rouse his party for a hard campaign in November.

Uff da! Here’s a pen stopper on your next job application: suppose your prospective employer asks for your Facebook password. Do you hand that over, or do you say, “None of your business!” and seek work elsewhere?

U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Richard Blumenthal would rather you didn’t have to face that dilemma. They’re asking Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether asking for job applicants’ social media passwords violates federal employment and privacy laws.

I welcome my readers’ armchair legal opinions. Facebook says you violate your user agreement if you share your password with anyone. I’ll take a swing and contend that by asking for full access to applicants’ social media accounts, employers are potentially violating every rule the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lays out for pre-employment inquiries:

As a general rule, the information obtained and requested through the pre-employment process should be limited to those essential for determining if a person is qualified for the job; whereas, information regarding race, sex, national origin, age, and religion are irrelevant in such determinations.

Employers are explicitly prohibited from making pre-employment inquiries about disability.

Although state and federal equal opportunity laws do not clearly forbid employers from making pre-employment inquiries that relate to, or disproportionately screen out members based on race, color, sex, national origin, religion, or age, such inquiries may be used as evidence of an employer’s intent to discriminate unless the questions asked can be justified by some business purpose.

Therefore, inquiries about organizations, clubs, societies, and lodges of which an applicant may be a member or any other questions, which may indicate the applicant’s race, sex, national origin, disability status, age, religion, color or ancestry if answered, should generally be avoided.

Similarly, employers should not ask for a photograph of an applicant. If needed for identification purposes, a photograph may be obtained after an offer of employment is made and accepted [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, "Prohibited Employment Policies/Practices,"].

EEOC then lists the following items about which questions from prospective employers can be “problematic under federal law”:

• Race
• Height & Weight
• Credit Rating Or Economic Status
• Religious Affiliation Or Beliefs
• Citizenship
• Marital Status, Number Of Children
• Gender
• Arrest & Conviction
• Security/Background Checks For Certain Religious Or Ethnic Groups
• Disability
• Medical Questions & Examinations

It’s pretty hard to talk to folks on Facebook and not give clear indications about at least a couple of those items. And even though I take the general position that I won’t Tweet or Facebook messages that I’m not willing to take ownership of publicly, I still send and receive private messages through those media that my correspondents expect will be kept private. I would find a request from any third party—boss, cop, or judge—to be problematic under my sense of morality, not just federal law.

But hey, what’s good for the goose taking a gander at my password-protected online content ought to be good for me, too, right? Perhaps I have a right to ask employers to surrender their Facebook passwords so I can make sure they are the kinds of people I want to work for, people who share my values and won’t behave in ways that tarnish my reputation.

When you lay a password on online content, you’re defining that as a conversation space over which you have some rights. Your prospective boss has no more business demanding your Facebook password than she does demanding a key to your house or a seat at your kitchen table to listen to your conversations with friends and family. Let’s hope A.G. Holder comes to a similar conclusion.

Bonus Reading: Michigan Technical University lists illegal questions for its job interviews.

Forbes and Bitly get together to create an interactive map showing the most influential media outlets in each state. No, the Madville Times does not make the list yet. But here’s a nationwide snapshot of who’s clicking on what big news:

Popular Media by State Forbes-Bitly January 2012 (click to enlarge)

Of the 15 major media outlets sampled in January, CNN was the most popular in South Dakota… and South Dakota is the only state in which CNN came out on top. South Dakota also shows some of the lowest interest in Al Jazeera. Fox News was the top read in three states: Montana, Texas, and Mississippi.

Now these ratings are just one snapshot of media influence based on frequency of clicks through Bitly links. That’s not measuring all eyeballs on the TV or news page or ears on the radio. That’s measuring the number of times a link was shortened, shared, and then clicked by another interested reader. So these numbers could be measuring the influence of the given media outlet, but they could also be measuring the influence of the most active sharers of content within each state.

Forbes and Bitly plan to update this cool media influence month each month. Yum!

Bonus Tech Note: You can check the popularity of any Bitly link simply by adding a plus sign at the end of the shortened URL. For instance, click on http://bitly.com/GQ0U6G+, and you can see how often my story on the Charlie Johnson–Russell Olson Senate race has been shared via Bitly. Cool!

Organic farmer and Democrat Charlie Johnson from Orland wants you to know that he has taken out petitions to run for District 8 Senate against Senate Majority Leader Russell Olson. He needs you to know: after lengthy and serious deliberation, after hoping that someone else might take this cup, he decided just this week to take on the challenge of running against one of the biggest-money Republicans in the state. He thus needs signatures fast: the deadline for Johnson to file his 42 valid signatures is Tuesday, March 27.

I relish the prospect of a Johnson-Olson tilt for numerous reasons. When he makes the ballot, I will have all sorts of fun explaining why Charlie Johnson will represent District 8 much more effectively, intelligently, and honestly than Russell Olson.

But let’s start this morning with a comparison of each man’s appreciation of public discourse, as represented by their presence on Facebook. Charlie Johnson speaks to us on two main channels on Facebook, his personal page and his Johnson Farms Natural Farming business page. His Wednesday post on spreading organic fertilizer is clearly a signal of his political intentions. (Ba-dum-bum!)

O.K., seriously, Charlie’s farm Facebook page offers a enlightening combination of straightforward farmwork updates and discussion of important issues related to his business. He mentions hunger in America, the paperwork involved in organic certification, and his dad’s organic farm philosophy, which was that if something wasn’t safe to touch with the tip of his tongue, it wasn’t safe to put on his land. (I’m a little nervous to ask what that means about that pelletized chicken manure!)

Charlie engages his friends and readers in similar substantive conversations on both his own personal Facebook page and in the comment sections on others’. In just this past week, I’ve seen Charlie discuss the Governor’s education reform package (yes, Russ, expect Charlie to hold you accountable for your truth-bending support against the popular will of HB 1234), farm subsidies, the public assistance given to Hutterite colonies (Charlie lives just north of the Orland colony). He explicitly invites readers to share their thoughts. He welcomes opposing views and addresses them civilly and substantively.

So what does Russ use his Facebook page for? Well, not much. The Senate Majority Leader who claims that he uses his Facebook page to keep his constituents updated on his events at the Capitol has posted one update in the last month, three new family photos. The last post directly related to his work in Pierre was a photo of Rep. Kristi Noem not wearing cowboy boots at a Senate caucus meeting. “Great to have Representative Kristi Noem in caucus today,” Russ writes on Feb. 21. Since then, over the last two weeks of session and after legislators left Pierre and had time (and dare I say the obligation?) to sum up what happened, Russ has written nothing for his constituents. So much for updates.

Russ is also absent from the comment sections. Heck, his comment section is absent. As we all know, since he got mad at voters who tried to use his Facebook page to communicate their concerns about legislation, the Senate Majority leader appears to have shut off comments on his Facebook page and scrubbed previous comments from at least one vocal opponent. I click “Like” this morning on his page and still can’t leave a comment.

Where private citizen Charlie Johnson uses Facebook to inform and interact with his neighbors, public figure Russell Olson uses Facebook for one-way marketing, and darned thin marketing at that. Where Charlie responds to online criticism with conversation, Russ responds with censorship.

Get those petitions in, Charlie. We need a Senator who’s not afraid to talk with the people he represents.