Aloha all: Just so you know, we at Civil Beat did not remove Eric's comment. It looks like numerous members of the commenting community here marked it as a bad comment and thus it sunk under the weight of community condemnation. Interestingly, other let's just say provocative comments by Eric seem to be OK with readers. So it would seem the system is working the way it is supposed to -- the community, not Civil Beat, is policing its own.