HOT AIR AND SLICKNESS FROM THE GAS AND OIL TRADE

"Drill Baby Drill," our cover story on gas and oil drilling in residential areas, sure struck a nerve. As of this writing, there are about two dozen comments, most of them long and heated, from a few very interested readers.

In this corner we have "NEOGAP," a poster obviously representing the Northeast Ohio Gas Accountability Project. And in this corner we have "samanthasam," who has unusually strong opinions on the issue — and time to express them, repeatedly — for someone who just lives in "an Ohio residential neighborhood" and is "proud that our community is producing some of our own energy."

Sure enough, through the magic of Google we determined that samanthasam was posting from the IP address of — can you guess? — the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. (Another likely industry shill, TelltheTRuth, at least had the sense to post from home. That IP address is owned by a cable company.)

So the supposedly lying tree-hugger propagandist from NEOGAP freely identifies his or her affiliation, while industry hacks attacking NEOGAP, and reporter Erin O'Brien, hide behind the easy anonymity of the web (samanthasam, whom I've already outed in the comments, is probably re-registering to post under some other name). Take from that what you will. — Frank Lewis