It was 10 years ago today when I launched this website with a simple announcement on Facebook. When I started, I was very unclear about what I was going to do with it. If I had never had lunch with an old friend, it never would have happened.
Tom Briscoe had been the editorial cartoonist for a newspaper I had owned and he and I got together for lunch one day in the spring of 2011. He told me I had to start publishing a blog. I gave him all sorts of excuses about why it was a bad idea, but he somehow talked me into doing it anyway.
For the first couple of months, the content was all over the chart. It was mostly bad. By summer, I had settled into writing something that was heavily political and I gained a nice little following that amounted to a couple thousand readers a day.
My big break came when something I wrote — some original reporting from an event I happened to cover — was shared on a popular national political blog called Instapundit. From there, the piece was picked up by conservative and libertarian radio shows around the country, including that of the late Rush Limbaugh. I had 30,000 readers that day — and many of them stayed with me.

I wanted to be Capt. James Kirk; have I become Ignatius J. Reilly?
As I faced my father’s narcissism, I had to confront who I’d become
A year later, late-night phone call and suicide threat still echo in me
If elections could bring freedom, voting would have been outlawed
Corruption trial prosecutor wrong: Power is for sale to highest bidder
Visit with high school best friend leaves me pondering my old fears
Obama’s plan to ‘tax the rich’ is simply class warfare — and politics
Advocates of ‘limited government’ are the true utopian dreamers
Outraged folks around world letting Diane Tran know she’s not alone