Bull. As a mod he can still have an opinion and still be able to voice it. As a moderator, one should be expected to enforce forum rules fairly and consistently through use of edits, deletes, public/private warnings, requests for temp/perm bans etc.
But a moderator of an internet discussion forum should also be expected to stimulate discussion. If this means having an opinion and voicing it, then so be it. A pretense of impartiality is just that in forums such as
World Events and
Politics. Moreover, there are two moderators in those forums so balance can be provided, even if they are politically aligned.
However, as I was typing the above rant, it occured to me that "everyone who voted for Bush" includes a subset of sciforums members, which means that he insulted one or more members (assuming that multiple members were stupid enough to vote for Bush
).
WCF, I've had your back up til now, but Wes has a point. Still, I don't think "strip/ban" is something that should be decided by members. That should be up to the administration/moderation team.
As far as paulsamuel's gripe, as far as I can see its a "he said/she said:" WCF's word against PS' word. From my standpoint, they cancel each other out and the issue should be discarded. It was possible for any member (or guest for that matter) on sciforums to have contacted him.