Some back ground:
One day in February 2007, an A-list blogger¹ decided that his blogroll was unfair to the little blogger folk². Back in those days, oh-so long ago, linkage was web capital. You got linked by a big blog and it wasn’t so much traffic from their link that helped, but the Google rep from their link that helped you. Alas, the A-listers decided to “reform” their rolls and off came the little dudes. Mostly they just linked to themselves at that point³.

The little bloggers struck back. “Oh, yeah? Well, we’ll show you.” And Blogroll Amnesty Day was born.

According to Blue Gal and skippy, one must link to blogs with less traffic than you and one must not whine that they have the less traffic of all.

I’m going to be different only so far as I’m just going to link to folks who answered my Twitter call. They obviously would like the link and so I shall give them a link (though their PR is probably higher than mine and probably their traffic⁴. I’m also going to link to blogs that are on my blogroll, whether they want it or not.

William K. Wolfrum is hilarious. I don’t even know how I found him on Twitter, but somehow he ended up in my feed. He insists that smaller blogs shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military or get married. Can you imagine the kind of insanity either of those would cause? It’d be the end of blogging as we know it!

I started following David during the early part of the health care reform debate because his is an interesting story. He’s frustrated because his son needs this reform, so David is fighting for him. He is, honorably, trying to take down the teabaggers one at a time. I wish him luck with that as these folks, emboldened by the firebaggers, are a tough bunch to crack. Perhaps he should offer them a free buffet lunch?

El Presidente– who I follow on Twitter as notsotrue– forwarded this very thoughtful and lengthy post onto me. He (or she!) wrote a very good counter to the President’s state of the union address. It’s exceptionally well written, if I do say so myself⁵.

Now, Floyd used to post mainly about politics and I started reading his blog way back when I had my blogger blog⁶. He’s mostly doing blog techy stuff now, which I find totally awesome as I too love that stuff, so I don’t know if this technically falls within the rules of B.A.D.. I don’t care, though.

I’ve been reading Kvatch and co. for some years too (since the old blog). He’s one funny frog. They have a news service that is downright hysterical.

These are my 5 selections for Blogroll Amnesty Day. If you feel I forgot you and you’d like to see yourself there, well, leave me a comment and tell me why. Otherwise, I’ll try to catch up with more next week. Yes, I think I’ll do more “Stumblin’ My Roll” posts as those were always fun and I’d forgotten how to have fun in blogtopia (y!sctp!).

1. Atrios
2. Not the A-list
3. They pretended not to know why linkage was important and pushed the meme that it was traffic from their rolls. They knew that.
4. Stop it! PR 5 blogs are generally wider read. Just sayin’.
5. Moreso than a lot of tripe you see on the A-list blogs– or their “commuity diaries”…heh.
6. He’ll probably remember “Gratis”