Sam Spade's San Francisco

The Daily Kos is a political blog that presents the progressive point of view. It also offers a community forum and group blog.

In the photo: Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States. More about him later in the story.

The Dkospopedia is a collaborative project of the Daily Kos community to create a political encyclopedia, with a progressive tint, of course. It can be astonishing at times.

For example, this morning Mark Morford's column on SFGate.com asks the question, "Just how gay is the GOP? Senator Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, just another in a long daisy chain of homoevidence."

Morford referred to Dkospopedia, so I went to the site myself. Most of the entries were short, blunt and crude. As an example, here is the entry on the late Senator Strom Thurmond: "Now dead Republican Senator from South Carolina and racist, impregnated a 15-year old African American maid." That's the entire encyclopedic entry for Strom Thurmond. Not another word about him.

Or this entry about Arnold Schwarzenegger: "Republican governor, had sex with a 16 year old when he was 28. Numerous allegations of gropings, harassment, in California."

I live in a California Registered Domestic Partnership and it is a committed, monogamous same-sex relationship. I support the Democratic Party, but I'm NOT aligned with the far-left progressives of the Cindy Sheehan variety. I'm a sensible Democrat.

Having made that point, I want to blast the Dkospopedia. It is a shameful act of academic impersonation and the result of amateur journalistic irresponsibility. Dkospopedia is NOT an encyclopedia and it is NOT a valid objective reference. It does a disservice to reference guides worldwide.

The most damning entry I found at Dkospopedia is the entry about President Ronald Reagan. There was no mention about the economy during the Reagan years. There was no mention about the dissolution of the Soviet Union or President Reagan's demand to Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" and no mention of the end of the Cold War under Ronald Reagan's watch.

Here is Dkospopedia's entire entry about our 40th President: "First president to be divorced (from a woman who had been married two or three times before him - the record is unclear, none of which seems to bother the religious right)." Other than the opinionated parenthetical statement, the entire entry consists of five words. The entry would be absolutely laughable were it not so insulting to the American people.

Dkospopedia is an embarrassing product, a useless waste of broadband, and an insult to every American citizen.