Amanda Marcotte

I will allow her statement to speak for itself.

At Kos it took a matter of minutes before the "she was forced to resign"brigade showed up.

What do you think?

Please use this as an open thread.

Official statement from the candidate's blog:

The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte's and Melissa McEwan's posts personally offended me. It's not how I talk to people, and it's not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it's intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word. We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.

Melissa and Amanda also made statements -- they are below the fold.

It didn't take long for the Edwards campaign to get schooled on Swift Boating -- by proxy, no less. And the two newly hired bloggers are in the crossfire -- depending on where you're surfing, they have either been fired -- or fired and rehired. 

The right-wing banshees of the blogosphere hopped on the smear train as soon as they learned that Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister were hired by the former NC Senator and 2008 presidential candidate to work as, respectively, blogmaster and netroots coordinator. The fact that the righty blogs went on the attack is no surprise, as this is what political sport has come to.

All the bloviating on the winger blogs can be taken with a big grain of salt -- there are a lot of mouths on both the left and right that shoot off indiscriminately, if passionately, about politics -- and that has no bearing on the ability to write well in a professional capacity, which is why the two were hired to begin with. Melissa has written as a journalist for Raw Story, for example. Her work there in no way reflects her writing style on her personal blog. Alas, that doesn't matter when hardball politics get in the way.

Read more after the flip.