If this is true, someone could also be violating terms of service and the posted privacy policy. I hope you post more of what you find.

If you want some commenter's IP address or identity, you really should explicitly be required by the host to get it from a judge through legal action. If you can't afford legal action, then forget about asking for it. To me, that's the only way people will trust that they can manage their own online identity and participate in an online discussion without petty retribution by the host.

Its no mystery the local newspaper has been deleting comments of its members of the forums, I dont know about the individual blogs either.

If you pick a controverisal topic with many responses you can usually see follow up posts of people discussing the deletion of comments more than they talk about the story itself.

There was one girl who was exposed in a round about way and I forget which story it was. Some of the people posting claim (CLAIM!) the newspaper posted comments that led to her exposure.

I stopped reading the newspaper a long time ago.