It looks like our old buddy Stacey Campfield from Nashville is getting some more press for his blog. Here’s the story in the Tennessean.com:

Freshman representative calls it as he sees it and says he doesn’t plan to stop

Rep. Stacey Campfield has been taking a beating over his blog.

The Knoxville Republican’s Internet postings about goings-on at the state Capitol have been called less than ‘’outhouse worthy'’ by one lawmaker. And Democrats, displeased over some of Campfield’s writings last week, all but killed his proposal to make it illegal to point a laser device at a police officer or firefighter.

Campfield said he won’t stop.

‘’Once you cave into pressure, you’re no good as a legislator,'’ Campfield said.

Campfield, 36, is a freshman lawmaker, and he’s brought a way of communicating that is new to many on Tennessee’s Capitol Hill. On March 9 he launched a Web log, known in cyberspace as a ‘’blog,'’ to give his constituents an unfiltered view of how legislation is crafted.

I just wish that with all of the traffic he must be getting that he would put up a google ad or two to pay for a spelling and grammar checker. It’s not that no one ever can make typos on a blog, but he’s an elected official giving a look into “how legislation is crafted” and it’s not an occasional typo, it leaves the reader with an impression of a lack of educashun. Spelling errors and typos are two completely different things. And these are spelling mistakes, mixing up possessive and plural, or using the wrong homophone, which indicates a lack of reading.

Before I rip into his spelling again, I would like to note that I do appreciate his efforts for openness, and his sense of humor, including the ability to laugh at himself. I just think he ought to proofread his postings or have someone else do it if he can’t. It’s not that hard to paste your text into Word and hit the grammar and spell checker before posting, and would greatly improve the public perception of him individually, and the image of Tennessee based on the educational quality of those that get elected to state office.

A couple of examples - and I’m not even going to bother with the grammar, just the spelling.

March 30:

Wow! What a day, this site just gets bigger and bigger. To the blogers that made this site grow thanks, if I knew how to link our sites I would but until I was elected I probably spent all of 2 hours a year on the computer ,if that (no need to say it, I will say it for you…. We know ,it shows) . Today was quite an experience I had everything from applause and congratulations, from people on both sides of the isle. To a few people ignore me and let me know that I wouldn’t be able to even pass gas in the state house .Most were very nice and took it with good temperament and even joked about it some were just nervous to be around me .The response from the other blogers,email,radio call in shows and telephone calls has been great I appreciate it all the good and the bad A few legislators came to me with story’s I should tell and encouraging me to keep it up don’t worry i am not going to change but I still want to encourage other legislators to blog. You don’t have to be outspoken but its still a great way to communicate. Come on in the waters fine and if I can do it so can you. For those I had dinner with don’t worry I wont reveal your name. In this one case I will protect the guilty;-)

Or how about this one:

Well it seems that the word is out as to what happened at the calendar committee last Thursday (one of my bills was for all intense and purposes killed by the speaker and friends for what was quoted on this blog)but,thanks to some of my fellow blogers in the room and a few critical interns for said speaker confirming the story by trying to rub it in(oops!!) the Tennessian is doing a AP story about this blog site and the stir it has caused I guess blogers really do hear it first .Hopefully this will open some eyes of voters to problems legislators face as well as the power of this new media to some legislators.

I saw a bunch more yesterday, but didn’t snapshot them and they appear to have been corrected, so I’ll stop there.

Mr. Campfield, I applaud your efforts. Just please, at least use Microsoft Word’s spell checking, and if you feel extremely enterprising, hit Shift+F7 too. I get embarrassed for you every time I read your blog.

UPDATE: Rep. Campfield has responded with a completely reasonable point. (See comments). To that end, here is a quick primer.

1. Open up Microsoft Word. (Start / Run, then type “Winword” and hit Enter).
2. Type whatever you want to say.
3. You will see that your spelling mistakes are underlined in red, your grammar mistakes are underlined in green. (Right clicking will give you some choices to fix them).
4. Once you have it right, highlight it by dragging your mouse until it turns reverse (dark background, light letters).
5. Copy the text by pressing “CTRL” and while holding that down, press “C” (or you can right click the mouse and choose “copy” or you can choose “Edit” from the menu and choose “copy.”
6. Paste it into your blog text area by pressing “CTRL” and while holding that down, press “V” (or right click and choose “paste”).

If that’s too much work, so be it. But there it is, now you know how. :-)

Oh, one more thing. Spell check only fixes spelling errors. “Isle” instead of “aisle” or “story’s” instead of “stories” will show up as green (grammar) not red (spelling).

UPDATE again: Wow. It just got even easier. Since you are using blogger as your blog host, go here and it tells you how to do it. One click is all it takes, right inside the blogger editing interface!!! Cool. But remember, it only makes sure that what you typed is a correctly spelled word, not that it is used correctly.