Which blogging tool would you recommend and why?

I recommend WordPress for several reasons:

1. Hosting Support – many hosting providers have one-click installs or stated support for WordPress. If not, WordPress is a very straight-forward installation to do if you have experience.
2. Developer Support – there are tons of developers that have written plug-ins for added functionality to extend WordPress.
3. Designer Support – there are tons of themes available for WordPress and many designers know how to customize themes.
4. Active Open-Source Community – the WordPress code has been consistently updated with new features, so you shouldn’t be worried that the open-source code will get stale.

All of this combined means that you can make your blog do exactly what you want and make it look exactly how you want. Once you have things rolling, you can change the themes and plug-ins as appropriate. WordPress also has importers from other major blogging tools, so it is a win in all directions.

Lots of blogs are hosted for free through WordPress.com and I’m not specifically sure of the EULA for services like WordPress.com, Blogger, YouTube, Flickr and such. But it would seem to me that using one of these services includes some limits to your free speech.

So, if you are going to post things that aren’t nice to other humans, you may want to have your own paid account with a paid hosting company.