Jack, I find it bizarre that you think those questions are of any real importance or relevance to this incident. To answer them: of course the Post can dictate the terms of their site and of course they can moderate it any way they want. But those questions just serve to steer the conversation away from the central issues. The important issue was not that posts were deleted or that comments were shut, the issue that there was a concerted effort to steer the story from "Ombudsman messed up" to "people on the internets wrote obscene things" and then "how can the Post deal with all those nasty people."
It's just a way to shift the conversation away from the central issue and confuse people about the actual issues being discussed. Or, in internet speak, trolling.
The way the media generally puts it is like this: Let's not talk about whether the President has done anything wrong - let's talk about why the Left is so goshdarned ANGRY about it!
