I am of two minds as to whether I should restore PayPal myself. I know many of you canceled your account in sympathy. I would probably have canceled my own account, except that when it was frozen, I wasn't permitted to do so. On the other hand, I do believe in rewarding good corporate behavior, and I do regard this as an example of such. I was not asked to change or remove anything from my site in order to have my account restored. My position all along was that Daily Pundit was a legitimate news and commentary site, and I would not tolerate efforts from anybody to censor the content of this site. This seems to have established to some (unknown) extent that my stand has merit, and with any luck will provide a precedent should other legitimate news-commentary blogs undergo similar problems.

For those of you who thought I should turn this into a huge legal fight on principle, here's what I told Bill Quick when he asked my thoughts via e-mail:

I am a lawyer, a busy one, and the last thing I want to do when I'm not working is spend time on lawsuits--particularly my own. Most lawsuits get settled, after a lot of time and energy and aggravation, and usually, no one is better off for it, except perhaps the lawyers. Also, I started TalkLeft because I enjoy blogging. If I had to fight paypal, I'd be using up valuable blogging time.

So, during two years of PayPal providing me with a stable, secure payment service, I had one unsatisfactory incident which was resolved quickly and fairly. That's a better record than most service providers. I'm confident your Paypal donations to TalkLeft are safe, and I will withdraw the money every day or two as further security. I hope you will resume making donations, as TalkLeft has not had any since this mess occurred a week ago. They truly are very important to the continued vitality of TalkLeft.

TalkLeft's PayPal Page