UPDATE, 10:15a: To clarify, these were the most read posts in 2009, not necessarily from 2009 – one of the surprises.
6:44a: I’ve never done a year-end post ranking. While many of the most popular posts weren’t surprising, some were. One was downright weird.
Thanks to moderator Chris for scouring for Google Analytics for stats. FYI, comments to all these posts are closed, an automatic blog shut-off software feature that triggers after several days to keep spammers at bay…
10. “Happy Halloween, pedophile-style,” posted October 16, 2007. This post’s ranking creeped me out. The only reason I can account for its popularity is that pedophiles are perusing it.
9. “Jackson kids potentially in custody contract quagmire,” posted June 26, 2009.
8. “Stanek: 1 month vacation announcement,” originally posted January 5, 2009. Chris’s comment, “Think your readers are telling you something? hehe.” I think the only reason this ranked so high was because it was the only post up for a month!
7. “One year anniversary of Barack Obama’s FOCA fest,” posted July 17, 2008
6. “World’s youngest surviving baby born in Miami,” posted February 20, 2007…

5. “Michelle Obama’s partial birth abortion fundraising letter,” posted May 20, 2008
4. “Abortion chain owner’s family died in MT cemetery plane crash – near Tomb of the Unborn,” posted March 24, 2009
3. “Smackdown: Patrick Kennedy’s bishop calls him ‘ignorant… a disappointment,'” posted October 24, 2009
2. “Stanek on the O’Reilly Factor,” posted September 4, 2007
1. “Bethany’s baby,” posted March 20, 2007. Top read Stanek blog post in 2009. It was over 2 years ago that I received an email from a brokenhearted mother named Bethany who had just miscarried her precious baby, who she named Blessing.
I posted Bethany’s note and photos she took of her baby, and Bethany and I have been stunned and touched ever since by the volume of attention her note and pictures have received. I became friends with dear Bethany, who is now one of our site moderators.
To this day I receive emails from both mothers who have miscarried and mothers contemplating early abortions that I forward to Bethany, who has developed a ministry from her tragedy. (“Naming France’s fetuses,” posted February 28, 2008, also ranked very high this year – #3 on another analytics report I checked – I suspect from hits to Google images for Bethany’s photos, which I reposted in this piece.)