No response yet from Astaro, the security company providing schools with web filtering software that is blocking Mere Rhetoric. So obviously we left another ticket through their form, since we're patient that way (also because they promise in really big letters to respond to all requests within one business day, but we must have slipped through the cracks).
We've been categorized under "Political Extremism / Hate / Discrimination", and we're not even sure which one they're blocking us for. But we sure hope it's political extremism - "hate" and "discrimination" are so 1990s. In the meantime, we're hoping to start a kind of running list of sites that are, according to Astaro, less politically extreme / hateful / discriminatory than Mere Rhetoric. Today's site: the Democratic Underground, where the phrase "Bush Family Evil Empire" is used so often that it is routinely written by regulars as BFEE. Astaro's judgement: less extreme than Mere Rhetoric.
We're still all but sure that this is a result of their text parsing algorithm not understanding that blogs sometimes copy and paste quotes that they don't endorse. In the meantime, if you want to have some fun finding sites that Astaro considers less extreme than MR, you can use this frontend to their database. If you'd like to urge them to get back to us, their contact form is here.