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June 30, 2005

6/30: The Fifth Estate

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Yesterday afternoon the Blogometer caught the tail end of the FEC's 2-day hearings on how and whether to change existing rules regulating political activity on the Internet. The hearings arise out of an '04 opinion by D.C. Circuit Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, ruling on a challenge to the FEC's implementation of BCRA by Reps. Chris Shays (R-CT) and Marty Meehan (D-MA). As More Soft Money Hard Law puts it, "Kollar-Kotelly found mostly in favor" of Shays/Meehan. That led to this latest round of hearings, as the FEC decides what to do (for more, see the Blogometer for 6/28 and 6/29; at More Soft Money Hard Law, Bob Bauer describes the 1st hearing of the day on 6/29).

The hearing we attended featured a panel (L to R opposite the commis.) of Malchow Schlackman Hoppey & Cooper consultant Michael Bassik and Eschaton blogger/"recovering economist" Duncan Black, plus ex-FEC members Trevor Potter and Karl Sandstrom.

Black, like Markos Moulitsas and Mike Krempasky yesterday, was especially interested persuading the FEC to expand the press exemption now granted to all brick-and-mortar outlets (and even some existing solely online, such as Salon). Sandstrom in particular opposed extending the exemption, calling it a "futile endeavor" to fit the old definitions into the new ones. Ex-Dean consultant/MSNBC contributor/blogger Joe Trippi was brought up as an example -- in running a campaign his actions are regulable, when solely working for the MSM they are not, nor are they (currently) at his blog. Sandstrom asked, rhetorically: "Do we determine what hat he's wearing that day to determine what rights he has?"

If the traditional press is the 4th Estate, he said, then "the Internet should be considered part of the 5th Estate.

FEC chair Scott Thomas was concerned that a blogger with substantial traffic could provide links to aid a particular campaign's fundraising -- an in-kind donation that could be worth a great deal of money to a campaign. On the other hand, Ellen Weintraub seemed to speak for the commis. when she said they had no interest in limiting bloggers' rights to republish written campaign materials.

One sticking point for the panel were the particulars of adding disclaimers to web ads -- it's simply not always feasible, to say nothing of enforceable. To illustrate, Sandstrom held up his BlackBerry, displaying a CNN logo in the corner, with no explanation of who paid for it or what country it was from (well, assuming you've never heard of CNN). Such a logo could just as easily belong a political campaign. Another was what would happen if a candidate paid for a blogger to provide editorial content; Black allowed that a disclaimer or some such regulation would be acceptable. Bassik advised them against being "too specific" in their rule-making, pointing out: "Nobody could even have predicted that blogging would be the topic of discussion today [when the earlier regs were approved]."

Ironically, several FEC members were unsure that they even had the authority to make certain changes, and FEC commish Bradley Smith asked Sandstrom and Potter if they, as former members and now representing watchdog groups, thought the FEC had this authority. Assuming that they did make changes, Smith asked Potter: "Can you promise you won't sue us? Can you promise that Senator McCain won't sue us?" Potter declined to say for sure. Things got a bit contentious when Smith noted that Potter's org. had "cast aspersions on my honesty." When Potter said they had not, Smith read the relevant section.

But that was the exception, and the mood lightened a few times. Several FEC members jokingly described blogger-specific allowances a "carve out." At one point Smith exclaimed: "Markos Moulitsas is like Cher now -- he's just Markos." Weintraub added: "It's even shorter than that -- he's Kos!" Things got a bit out of hand when someone suggested that commish David Mason could simply go by "Mas" (pronounced like the P. Diddy protege, not the corn).

More on the FEC below, and our latest Blogger Spotlight.

TRACKBACKS: Lost In A Hayes

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • Bloggers of all partisan stripes are jumping on Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC) for telling CNN: "Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11." The liberal blogs highlight the story more than the right by about 2-1, and it makes sense -- many have argued since the beginning that the Bush admin. conflated the Iraq war and 9/11. Those on the right who link tend to be on the moderate side, and they're concerned about the credibility problem it presents.

    >> Liberal Mahablog writes, Saddam had "no operational ties to the terrorists who perpetrated September 11. It was not until after we invaded Iraq, and because we invaded Iraq, that Islamic extremists began flocking to Iraq to fight us." No More Mister Nice Blog: "Rove needed a body to tell this lie, as a follow-on to last night's speech. I guess this guy either volunteered or was assigned the task. This wasn't spontaneous." AmericaBlog: "This is a big deal. The man knows better, or he should resign. He's the vice chair of the TERRORISM subcomittee in the House. Good God. And he's this much of an idiot?"

    >> Conservative PoliBlog: "I am wholly sympathetic that a case can be cogently made that the war in Iraq is part of the overall war on terrorism," but Hayes stating a connection for which there is "no evidence ... simply bolsters the arguments made by critics of the war that the whole thing is based on falsehoods." Neo-libertarian QandO concurs.

    >> Others linking to the story: DCCC's Stakeholder, The Sideshow; Brad Plumer; David Sirota; Ezra Klein; The Moderate Voice; MoxieGrrrl; Think Progress; Balloon Juice; Outside The Beltway; Ed Cone.

FEC: Hey, Where Did All The Bloggers Go?

In remarks the Blogometer did not see, GWU prof Carol Darr argued that leeway given to journalists means that the FEC will likely "grant the exemption widely to bloggers, or you will send it back to Congress and they will specifically include bloggers. But this broadly granted media exception contains within it an absolutely unavoidable consequence. And that is, there is no way to keep big money out of this picture. ... The issue before the FEC goes to the heart of the fundamental questions that define a democracy's relationship to a free press: Who should be treated as a journalist, and what special privileges, if any, should they receive?"

  • Moulitsas replies at Daily Kos: "'Special privileges.' The 'privileged status'. Now she admits that the media exemption fits "the good, the bad, the hacks, the partisans, and the crazies.' But f--- the bloggers. Because -- why? Because it threatens the special privileges and privileged status of the press? Nah, that argument made her look like an ass the last time we dealt with this issue. Nah, the reason now is that it would allow -- gasp! -- Halliburton to start a blog! And somehow, this blog would cause the collapse of the campaign finance regime. I wish I was kidding."
  • A commenter toward the top of the post opines, verbatim: "I know kos DESPISES what this woman is saying, but like you, I wonder if there could be a some reasoning behind her words. I actually CAN imagine FoxNews financing a deceptively named blog, dropping ads for it all OVER the net and the real world. Sure, kos and atrios would help US see through the BS, but with the right marketing, they could become huge with the not-so-with-it FoxNews/CNN/MSNBC watchers."

At his blog, Duncan Black offers a fairly optimistic take on the FEC hearings, prior to his 6/29 testimony: "Reading the tea leaves, my take is that enough of the commissioners are moving towards a reasonable place on this stuff, though whether they make it all the way remains to be seen. At the heart of the issue, really, is why anyone would imagine those communicating through outlets blessed by Time Warner, Disney, and General Electric should get a pass from intrusive regulation while those operating on the internets, where there are no scarcity issues and no barriers to entry, should face scrutiny. Hopefully I will help them to understand that just a bit more, though I think they're starting to get it..."

The Talent Show announces: "In order to avoid any potential pitfalls, let me use this opportunity to announce that this post will be the last one on The Talent Show blog. Starting either late today or tomorrow, I will relaunch (without any fanfare whatsoever) my new web magazine, The Talent Show. I will still be the primary writer around here, but the traditional blog posts will be replaced with articles of varying lengths and topics. I will also be replacing the comments with article specific message boards. The look of the site, the writing style, the subject matter, the content, and the technological back-end will be identical to what I'm using now, but the change (as least as far as the FEC is concerned) will be drastic. Starting tomorrow, my days as a blogger are ending and my days as a writer begin."

Black also declares that he no longer runs a blog: "Since I ceased being a blogger an hour or so ago and became the publisher/editor/chief political correspondent/cat photographer/scifi critic/media critic/missing persons expert/blogger ethics expert/janitor for an exciting new online magazine, my life has truly been transformed."

DEMOCRATS: Call From The Doctor

TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "My phone just rang. Howard Dean was on the line. I got a heads-up from Laura at the DNC about an hour ago. It was a great conversation. He explained the Dems new fundraising venture, Democracy Bonds, which launched this morning. ... I have to say, it was pretty exciting to get a live phone call from Howard Dean. I've met him before, at the blogger breakfast at the DNC in Boston last July, but this was much more special." Swing State Project got the call, too.

At Daily Kos, commenters hash out the merits of the old name, "Kicking Ass," as well as the DNC symbol's design itself.

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Hard Times

Conservative Ed Morrissey responds to a New York Times follow-up on the Bush speech: "The New York Times eats up several column inches on what has to be the pettiest controversy of recent memory -- The Case Of The Missing Applause. ... The Fort Bragg soldiers maintained the discipline requested by their officers and the White House. Yet somehow this has become an embarrassment for the Bush administration ... If the same soldiers had greeted Bush with wild cheers and hoo-ahs, or had repeatedly interrupted the speech with cheers, we'd be hearing that the White House had secretly arranged that reception. Instead, we now have Clapgate, which doesn't have nearly the fun that such a monicker might suggest..."

William Safire's 6/29 piece in the New York Times defending Judith Miller and arguing for reporter shield laws comes in for criticism today.

  • Right-leaning JustOneMinute is skeptical of the shield law: "He makes a concealed reference to the reporters in the Wen Ho Lee case, who are protecting government sources that apparently felt the government's normal powers of subpoena and arrest were insufficient, and decided to try Dr. Lee in the press. A free and inquiring press can be a check on government power, or an extension of it -- the Wen Ho Lee case does not look like an example of the sort of leak we ought to be protecting."
  • Left-leaning "citizen journalist" advocate Dan Gillmor is skeptical of Miller and the shield law: "I don't agree with Safire's view of Miller, whose journalism during the Iraq war run-up was atrocious. But she is a journalist, and does not deserve what is happening to her now. The nation doesn't deserve it, either, and the trend is dangerous. We are turning the act of journalism into a crime, giving the bad guys more license than ever. The effect on citizen journalism will not be obvious, at first. But there are going to be times when everyday folks, not normally journalists, deserve the same protections that we have given the pros in limited circumstances. If the pros are this vulnerable, the citizens will be in even worse shape when push comes to shove."

IRAQ: The Next Time An Interesting Document Leaks From 10 Downing Street, What Do We Call It?

Liberal PSoTD is keeping track of which House members have endorsed an investigation of the Downing Street Memo. So far, the only names checked off are those that signed onto letters by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and John Kerry.

Lefty expat sci-fi author Avedon Carol: "What a coincidence. The Knight Ridder reporter who was killed Friday in Baghdad was killed by a bullet that 'appears to have been fired by a U.S. military sniper.' I don't think anyone is actually saying it out loud but you know what I'm thinking: There have been an unusually high number of reporters killed in this war and I'm tired of pretending it seems like a coincidence."

SCOTUS: So When Does Patrick Fitzgerald Start Investigating This Source? Is RedState Going To Jail?

RedState's Erick Erickson: "So, drumroll for today's edition of speculation, which is actually Monday night's speculation, but I could not release it until permission was obtained via Instant Message a short while ago. Rehnquist is out. It'll happen on or about July 5. ... POTUS is leaning toward [Michael] Luttig. If, however, O'Connor beats CJ to the White House (though POTUS & Co., Inc. does not expect her till Labor Day), we go with [Emilio] Garza first and Luttig second. If Luttig doesn't want it, we go with John Roberts next -- Rehnquist is pushing Roberts. Roberts is a Rehnquist protege. If O'Connor does go at Labor Day and women are not back on board GWB's bus (a current POTUS & Co., Inc. concern), he scraps Garza and goes with Edith Brown Clements, an under the radar conservative from the 5th Circuit. If any other spot opens, he goes with (a) Gonzales or (b) a sitting United States Senator from a state that currently has a Republican governor. Oh, and there just might be a third spot opening, but not until after January 1. Your guess is as good as mine on that one."

RedState's Josh Trevino follows up: "A completely different source from Erick's tells me that the Rehnquist rumor is pure bunk. He is dead set on being the longest-serving Chief Justice in history: 'dead set' as in he'll die in office if necessary. Also, it appears that O'Connor has just had her offices renovated for her husband's sake, so take that as you will."

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Oliver!

Today the Blogometer talks to lefty Oliver Willis, author of the eponymous Oliver Willis, which carries the tagline "Like Kryptonite To Stupid."

What is your full name?

Lloyd Oliver Willis, Jr. (I have my parent's Jamaican heritage to thank for the very British sounding name).

What is your age?

27

Where did you grow up?

A combination of Silver Spring, MD; Montego Bay, Jamaica; and Fort Lauderdale, FL,

Where do you live now?

Takoma Park, MD.

What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?

I'm currently a web producer at media watchdog Media Matters for America. I've never worked for a campaign or the mainstream media.

When did you start blogging and why?

I started blogging when the Los Angeles-based dotcom I was working at was slowly going under in 2000. I had extra time on my hands, an internet connection, and a ton of anger about the 2000 election result.

What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?

Outcome notwithstanding, the election has probably been the most fun to write about -- since it was a day in, day out battle. And on occasion, the Democrats looked like they knew what they were doing.

Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?

It varies, depending on how angry the headlines get me. Sometimes it takes a quick blurb while other times a long, rambling essay gets the job done.

Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

I don't have a favorite. Everyone's got their deficiencies of one sort or another. As far as non-political blogs go, Andrew Baio (Waxy.org) digs up the most fun links on the web.

Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?

While most newspaper columnists write as if it's still 1930 and they've got the ear of the president, I enjoy Dan Froomkin's column in the Washington Post because it shows the questions the media would be asking if they weren't so defanged.

What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?

"Countdown" and "The Daily Show." Everything else is unmitigated garbage.

What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?

MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NYT, WaPo, ABCNews.

What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?

DailyKos, Atrios, Crooks and Liars, Pandagon, Ezra Klein, Political Wire, Balloon Juice, Raw Story, Wonkette, about 40 others.

How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?

I regularly read the Sunday Times because the web just doesn't do it justice, and occassionally I thumb through the Post Express freebies that litter the subway.

How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?

The new media will attempt to declare itself the hot new thing while the old media will try to jump on the bandwagon to seem hip and cool, when in reality both need each other like a parasite needs its host. Old media will become somewhat more responsive but also vulnerable to pressure attacks. Sleazy tabloid journalism will always triumph important investigative work.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Everyone Knows "The Jews" Actually Means "Alien Reptiles In The Illluminati"

At the Huffington Post, Richard "Bradley" Blow tries to figure out what Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) was getting at when he criticized "the culture" for the Catholic pedophilia scandal: "So we return to the media and the non-Catholic universities, both chock full of the people ostensibly behind all this moral relativity: Jews. Because I'm sure it's not all those other churchgoing types that Santorum blames for Boston's 'sick' culture. What Santorum is really saying then -- using all-too-familiar code words -- is that the Catholic Church child molestation scandal is really the Jews' fault."

LEST WE FORGET: Yeaaahhhhhhh!

SC-based The Right Times live-blogs the SC GOP's "Howard Dean scream contest": "Right now there are about six people here to scream. There are a gaggle of media here and a Howard Dean doll even made an appearance. The contest will start in just a few minutes." Update: "We have been informed by the State Democratic party they are calling this event 'childish.'" The judges made their decisions "based on lack of poise, loudness and originality. The highest possible score is 30. The first contestant Tim Cameron, Marietta GA, scored 26. Richard Hahn scored 30 points because of originality. The next contestant, Lanford Holloway, was a little scary so he scored 28." The Right Times updates at the end: "WE INTERRUPT THIS POST TO BRING YOU LATE BREAKING NEWS HOWARD DEAN IS NO LONGER COMING TO SC. THE 'WEATHER' FORCED THE CANCEL OF HIS TRIP."

Posted by at 12:17 PM

June 29, 2005

6/29: I Wanna Testify

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

This morning's hottest link is to a transcript of Pres. Bush's Ft. Bragg speech -- whether at Fox News, the Washington Post or the White House itself. Those that don't link are at least talking about it.

The speech is of course big news elsewhere in this Hotline, but in the world of blogs another potentially big story is unfolding, viz., the ongoing FEC hearings at which a few prominent activist bloggers, both GOP and Dem, have teamed up to oppose new regulations on their online activity. More on that below.

Today's "Trackbacks" is devoted to Bush speech reax:

TRACKBACKS: They Didn't All Like It, But They Did Pay Attention

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying.

  • Some conservative bloggers give Bush high marks for his speech, others judge it merely adequate.

    >> Power Line pronounces it: "Clear, confident, substantive." INDC Journal: "The speech was Bush's most cogent articulation of the strategy, difficulties and stakes in Iraq to date; the use of bin Laden's assessment of the importance of the conflict was particularly effective. The only thing that could have enhanced its political impact would have been a direct, personal appeal to the American people, above and beyond the declaration of resolve."

    >> At NRO's The Corner, Cliff May posts a televised comment by bipartisan ex-WH aide David Gergen, who said: "I was troubled and at times offended by the regularity of coming back to 9/11." May objects: "But they didn't even discuss the fact that the one and only place in the world where al Qaeda kills people virtually every day is in Iraq." The Indepundit: "He's conflating the War in Iraq with the War on Terror. 'Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.' Controversial, but true -- Zarqawi is carrying out Bin Laden's agenda."

    >> Garfield Ridge: "I wasn't the audience for the speech tonight -- my position is clear -- so I don't know if it was all that effective. There wasn't anything new there, since the strategy behind the war hasn't changed." Canadian Damian Penny: "I wish Bush had explained that the WMD issue was just one of several reasons for the invasion of Iraq, and I'm also a bit surprised he didn't address the allegations about Guantanamo Bay. Aside from that, I couldn't argue with any of it."

    >> Donald Sensing: "Bush's conclusion with a tribute to the troops was direct and obviously heartfelt. Well done. Overall, I don't rate this speech very high -- no better than a 'B' and maybe B-minus."



  • On the left we find some substantive criticism, and some anger:

    >> Washington Monthly's Political Animal: "That was sure a....ho hum speech. ... No wonder the networks were hesitant about televising it."

    >> Whiskey Bar: "[W]hile Bush was using the troops as a visual backdrop, politically speaking he was trying to hide behind them. And it showed." Hullabaloo: "I notice the props are having a hard time keeping their eyes open, though. Poor guys."

    >> Josh Marshall, at TPM Cafe: "The press folks seem to have gotten down to a fine descriptive science the president's now well-practiced tactic of not quite explicitly connecting Iraq and 9/11, but repeating both in succession so many times as to create the impression of a connection without any verbal fingerprints. We've at least become sophisticates of our own bamboozlement, I guess."

    >> The Left Coaster: "What do you think Bush should have said? I would have like to have heard an abject apology for starting a ill-begotten war and a resignation." UT-Austin law prof Brian Leiter, from headline-to-post: "The Criminal War Monger Bush ... told another series of bald-faced lies, spiced up with some fibs and half-truths, on national TV this evening."


  • Reax from the centrist and libertarian bloggers isn't so hot, either:

    >> Libertarian Jim Henley notices the part of Bush's speech where he said the U.S. is "working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave": "That, if sincere, would make the speech a bombshell, pretty conclusively forswearing any ambition at enduring bases."

    >> Ex-USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro, at the Huffington Post: "Bush's uncharacteristically flaccid rhetoric will soon be forgotten. And tonight's speech ultimately will be viewed as a lost opportunity in an Iraqi misadventure filled with them." DLC's Marshall Wittmann, at his Bull Moose Blog: "If only the President possessed the capacity to call on the rest of our country to give more. He does not. That is the nature of our current leadership." Left-leaning centrist Mickey Kaus: "The address was too presidential and rhetorical, a view from 40,000 feet, when what was needed was humility and gritty detail, a cold-eyed view from the ground."

    >> Generally right-leaning Brendan Loy is agitated: "HE JUST QUOTED OSAMA BIN LADEN!!! He actually said Osama's name!!! He hasn't forgotten about him!!! Where is Osama bin Laden, by the way?"

FEC: Blogging BCRA To Death?

Yesterday was the 1st of 2 days of testimony before the FEC re: a possible move to regulate online political activity, including blogs. Roll Call wrote up the hearing, setting the scene thusly: "[T]hose potentially affected by such regulations are expressing confusion about why" the fed'l gov't "wants to monitor what they say on their blogs. And those who wrote and supported [BCRA] are wondering whether the whole campaign finance structure they created could come crashing down in a loophole as big as the Internet itself." The article quotes Matt Stoller from The Blogging of the President (which it erroneously calls "Blogging the President"; the correct title alludes to Theodore White's "The Making of the President, 1960"). Stoller, "dumbfounded": "I feel like I am speaking a different language here."

The prepared testimony of Mike Krempasky is available at conservative RedState. Krempasky argues that bloggers should be allowed the same exemption as the MSM: "The boundaries defining who or what is a quote-unquote media entity have eroded to the point of irrelevance. No longer do we have limited number of easily-defined outlets or a restricted professional community. Government rules and regulations granting media bona fides (and all the associated privileges) to some while denying those credentials to others would be like building a new laptop computer with vacuum tubes. The old ways simply cannot keep up. Presumably, this media exemption is rooted in the notion of the intrinsic value of trusted, objective, and comprehensive information in the hands of the citizenry. Unfortunately, when we look at our traditional media today -- it is neither trusted, nor objective, nor comprehensive. In the explanation and justification for this rule, the Commission identifies Slate.com, the Drudge Report, and Salon.com as entities presumably deserving of the exemption. But if the Commission grants credentials to these three -- how can the Commission then deny the same privilege to AndrewSullivan.com, Joshua Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo.com, or Kevin Aylward's Wizbang blog? They all provide news coverage and opinion. They all generate revenue through advertising. Substantively, they are no different."

Elsewhere at RedState, Krempasky scoffs at a proposal to create a "Blogger Identity Seal," which would "provide an independent avenue for bloggers to show whether they operate independently or in partnership with specific political parties or candidates." He writes: "Talk about not getting it. First, the FEC is not going to force blogger disclosure. It's a serious departure from current regulation. Second, the idea of a commercial web vendor providing an "online directory" smacks of a smarmy marketing scheme. (in direct mail, we call this an 'involvement device.')"

Liberal Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas comments on his testimony: "All the commissioners seemed sensitive to protecting the medium. Of course, the GOP commissioners were the most friendly, given their general distaste for regulation. But even the Dems on the commission seemed legitimately trying to find ways to comply with the judicial order while protecting the medium. That was good to see. I see in the comments of my previous thread that some took exception to Commissioner [Brad] Smith attacking [Daily Kos blogger "Armando"] for inaccurately claiming it's the commission's Republicans who want to squash blogs. Smith asked whether such inaccurate reporting deserved the media exception? In reality, it was a softball question designed to allow me to talk about the already partisan media. Smith clearly supports the media exception for bloggers."

Eschaton's Duncan "Atrios" Black, who will testify today: "Apparently some FEC commissioners believe the media exception should only apply to those who are 'responsible.' Missed that part of the constitution."

Kristinn Taylor from conservative message board FreeRepublic.com will testify 6/29, as will Michael Bassik from the Online Coalition, Karl Sandstrom from OMB Watch and ex-FEC chair Trevor Potter.

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: AP Hoc Ergo Improper Hoc?

Last summer, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham drew flak -- mostly from the right, but not entirely -- for writing a piece commenting on the GOP convo before it actually happened. Starting last p.m., a dispatch by the AP's Jennifer Loven draws the snark first from conservative Michelle Malkin: "The clairvoyants at the Associated Press have already released their report on the Bush speech, written in the past tense -- a speech which isn't scheduled to happen until 8pm EST tonight. Amazing!" And then from others -- Little Green Footballs header: "AP Transcends Space, Time."

It's a regular practice for the WH to release a full transcript of a POTUS speech in order for early editions of newspapers to get the content in time. And Bush, unlike Clinton, has a reputation for sticking to his speech text. Now, calling for the WH to release early speech text to all, not just the MSM, is another story.

Meanwhile, liberal blogs including TAPPED and TalkLeft linked to the same story in posts re: the speech, but paid no special attention to the article's past tense. Lefty Uggabugga points out the story's "harsh" headline at Yahoo! News: "Bush: Bloodshed in Iraq is Worth It." Uggabugga's "Quiddity" adds: "Looks like it's going to be a contentless speech. Amazing."

Righty Tom Maguire quotes from the New York Times article on cong. Dems' visit to Gitmo, where the reaction was similar to that of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR): "'I feel very good' about the detainees treatment..." Noting its A15 placement, he slugs the post "Meanwhile, Back In The Want Ads..."

BUSH: Mission Accomplished? (His Opponents', That Is)

Liberal Steve Clemons makes 2 points about John Bolton's likely recess appointment to the U.N.: "1. Bolton will hold one of America's highest profile diplomatic portfolios without the validation of American citizens behind him. He will not have the Senate stamp of legitimacy on his Ambassadorship and thus will be perceived at home and abroad as without 'weight.' 2. During this era of preaching 'democracy' throughout the world -- which means not just 'electocracies' or 'ballot box democracies' but rather a system of checks and balances, respect for minority rights, and rule of law -- sending John Bolton to the U.N. is a lesson that legislatures can be ignored and minority rights in government trampled by the demands of the Executive Branch."

  • For the 1st time this a.m., we noticed that ConfirmBolton.org redirects to Clemons' Washington Note blog. ConfirmBolton.com is a blog organized by RedState to support Bolton; its last post was 6/21.

At TAPPED, The American Prospect's Garance Franke-Ruta looks at Survey USA's state-by-state breakout of Bush's approval ratings, noting that among states Bush won in '04, only in NV has he fallen before 40%. She concludes: "[T]hough Bush appears to be viewed with increasing public disfavor nationwide, that disfavor may be of questionable relevance in Bush's base states, and, hence, to Republican strategists looking to determine whether Bush ought to change course in response to shifts in public opinion."

Citing a left-leaning post at the Huffington Post, Instapundit writes: "Well, that Hitler thing was getting sooo passe: The first known comparison of Bush to the BTK Killer. Jeez, Rove's stooges are everywhere."

DEMOCRATS: Dean Puts His Stamp On The DNC Site, But Early Reviews Aren't Exactly Raves

This week, the DNC reorganized its web site -- introducing a new feature called "Democracy Bonds" and re-designed its blog. Once titled Kicking Ass, the blog now appears to be name Blog.

Dem blogger The Rogue Angel quotes an official DNC e-mail from Howard Dean, pointing out that on the "new site, you will be able to ask your friends and neighbors to join us. You'll also be able to track your progress as you build your own network of people committed to shaping the future of our party and our country." "Angel" comments: "Okay, Dean... let me get something straight. I have been a member of the DNC site for some time and have been quite active in raising money for the Democratic Party. I have an account where I used to be able to log in, edit my personal page, lead my team members, and take care of various actions. ... Now, maybe I am just dense... but, I have yet to figure out how to login and do that anymore. ... I mean, I understand we are going to do things a bit differently, but hiding my account is not what I thought you had in mind."

Ex-BC'04 web guru Patrick Ruffini reviews it: "Belying People Powered Howard's "50 State Strategy," the new DNC site doesn't even link to state party web sites, let alone have real state pages; the closest it comes are lame regional blogs. The DNC site features no real activism tools -- not even the basic letter-to-the-editor and contact-Congress tools that can be useful in off years. ... If you're wondering how this web site offers a window into Dean-land, and what broader inferences can be drawn from it, then look at how they built it: in Movable Type (the URLs and the search are a dead giveaway), whose license fees range from free to $324.95 for non-profit entities. The DNC's web team coded little if anything outside the basic functionality offered by MT, and as detailed above, they actually removed very important features that couldn't be built purely in MT. We knew the DNC was having money problems, but geez... is it this bad?"

WHITE HOUSE '08: Pod People

John Edwards' podcasts are now available free-of-charge through Apple's iTunes store (note: requires iTunes 4.9).

Conservative Eric Pfeiffer from NRO's The Buzz, on John McCain criticizing fellow GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel: "Not only is McCain saying all the right things on Iraq, anyone watching can sense he actually cares strongly about this subject and believes every word he is saying. That's more than you can say about most Iraq pundits. And I'm sure it doesn't hurt that he gets to zing a probably 2008 rival in the process."

IN THE STATES: Yippee-Ki-Yay

Left-leaning PinkDome has started selling products bearing the likeness of Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) with his new catch phrase, "Adios, Mofo."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Trading Places

Crooked Timber's Harry Farrell: "Something that I've been wondering about for a while. Google Ads don't necessarily match their advertisements to websites in quite the manner that you'd expect, presumably because of the way that its underlying algorithm works. Brad DeLong's site, for example, seems to have become the new in-spot for Republican and Conservative singles to hook up with each other ... But does this undermine the rationale behind using Google Ads for politically targeted advertising? Left-leaning blogs are likely to 'sound' Republican to Google's algorithm because of the frequency with which they mention Republican politicians (and Republican blogs will sound left-wing). Thus, they're likely to attract a disproportionate number of ads which are aimed at exactly the wrong population." Note: When we checked the site yesterday, Farrell was correct -- the Google Ads along the side were all related to "Republican Singles." This a.m., it looks different, probably because new posts will affect Google's algorithm.

LEST WE FORGET: A Souter-ble Ploy

SCOTUS justice David Souter's trend line skyrockets this a.m. as bloggers including Instapundit, Boing Boing and many others promote a press release by a libertarian-leaning activist org. Freestar Media: "Justice Souter's vote in the 'Kelo vs. City of New London' decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner. On Monday June 27 [FreeStar's CEO] faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home. ... The proposed development, called 'The Lost Liberty Hotel' will feature the 'Just Desserts Cafe' and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel 'Atlas Shrugged.'"

Posted by at 01:12 PM

June 28, 2005

6/28: I Ate The SCOTUS, Say Haven't You Noticed?

Yesterday's SCOTUS rulings all came down just around our deadline, so we're a bit late in catching up this a.m. Because the Blogometer focuses primarily on politics, we don't want to wade too deep into the actual decisions. Yet we were interested in seeing which decisions attracted the most blogosphere buzz. We did a Technorati search for relevant keywords such as "Kelo" or "Grokster," and picked up the relevant posts from the 1st 5 pages of search results -- but only blogs with 100 or more inbound links (a usually reliable way of measuring popularity).

But overall, how big were these stories? Using the Trend Tool at Ice Rocket -- which graphs the blog mentions for a given set of words or phrases -- here and here we found (expected) huge spikes for the subjects of most of the 6/27 rulings. Kelo, which came down last week, spiked then, but has remained topical. The 10 Commandments, Grokster and Kelo cases all rated mention on at least 1% of blogs -- not bad at all. Because the Brand X (telecom) and Castle Rock (restraining orer) cases received relatively little attention, we excluded them from further discussion.

Yet the case involving Time's Matt Cooper and the New York Times' Judith Miller rated quite low in the trend search, though this was one of the livelier discussions (as you'll see in the "Trackbacks" section below). For one thing, the case lacked unique search terms. But it's also possible the story was interesting only to the highly-trafficked elite, Beltway-oriented bloggers. In any case, we look at all these cases below.

What else is going on right now? Bloggers anticipate Pres. Bush's Iraq speech coming this p.m., talk about the lack of a SCOTUS vacancy, testify before the FEC today, and another blogger submits to our "Blogger Spotlight."

TRACKBACKS: When One Swarm Just Isn't Enough

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

BUSH: Speak Now Or Forever Lose Your Standing In The Polls

NC Dem chair Jerry Meek posts an open letter to Bush at MyDD. It concludes: "While we are unwavering in our support for our men in women in harm's way, their Commander-in-Chief's leadership is lacking. Yes, Mr. President. Welcome to North Carolina. North Carolinians are eager for honest answers."

At GOP-leaning PoliPundit, Lorie Byrd outlines a list of things Bush must accomplish in the speech. Among them: "Explain that war, by definition, is not pretty, or predictable, and that success is not always immediately recognized"; "Make it clear that there will be no freakin' timetable for withdrawal"; and "Explain how important a free and democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East is to the war on terror."

Lefty Eric Alterman quotes from a Pew Survey (PDF) finding bad poll numbers for Bush and the Iraq war, commenting: "The lesson here, of course, is that the mainstream media is well behind not only the rest of the world but also the US public in their relatively rosy assessments of the respective catastrophes that are the Bush administration and its horrific, counterproductive, and possibly illegal war."

Talking Points Memo: "I'd actually be curious to hear from pollsters out there what the lowest ratings for a president has ever been on any significant issue. I mean, how much lower than thirty percent does it go? With the possible exception of Nixon at the very end of Watergate, how often has a president been under, say, 25% on any issue of significance?"

Conservative Captain's Quarters, which has announced it will live-blog the speech: "[British P.M. Tony] Blair works best with the press corps, while Bush does better giving prepared speeches. Thankfully, it appears that both men now realize that they have to remain in front of the press corps and their political opposition in order to maintain political support for this long-term effort. Unfortunately, especially here in the US, people have shortened attention spans and a predilection for instant gratification that does not lend itself to long-term strategic thinking."

FEC HEARINGS: Mr. Atrios Goes To Washington

Duncan "Atrios" Black: "There are also those who continue to want to draw the distinction between "journalists" and "other people." As someone who's about to go testify to the FEC and argue that what I do doesn't differ in any important way from what other players in the "legitimate" media do I find this very troubling. Journalism is not what people are, it's what they do."

The AP interviews Black DailyKos' Markos Moulitsas about their testimony.

Via the FEC, the schedule for the 6/28 and 6/29 hearings.

SCOTUS: No Vacancies

Right-leaning Real Clear Politics: " For the last couple of weeks we've been conducting an informal survey of some of the top Supreme Court watchers and legal minds in the country to get their impressions on the impending nomination battle." 70% thought Bush would nominate someone new for the chief role. RCP lists the buzzworthy judges in order of likelihood:

1) J. Michael Luttig; 2) John C. Roberts; 3) Michael W. McConnell; 4) Alberto Gonzales; 5) Emilio Garza; 6) J. Harvie Wilkinson; 7) Samuel Alito, Jr.; 8) Janice Rogers Brown

RCP's T. Bevan notes, "most of the surveys were conducted prior to the buzz of a possible O'Connor retirement instead of Rehnquist. Obviously, the dynamics of a nomination would change dramatically if this were to occur."

Centrist Kausfiles: "[I]sn't a bitter confirmation battle what Bush needs right about now? It would a) buy him some time on Iraq by helping push the daily carnage out of the lead position and by giving ambitious Dems something else to attack him for; and b) allow everyone forget about the Social Security/private accounts fight long enough to let it be abandoned without too much embarrassment. It's the perfect palate-cleanser!"

The latest SCOTUS rumors from RedState's Erick Erickson: "My 'Deep-Throat' source appeared this evening. Here's what I'm hearing. The President is upset about it, but realizes the reality of a Gonzales nomination and he will not make that play. That is not to say he won't in the future, but contemplating either O'Connor or Rehnquist, Gonzales was asked to participate in compiling the list and he is not on it. The rumblings from the base were too great. I am also told that, for the same reason, McConnell is now out. He would have been a perfect fit, but several of the movers and shakers have gotten cold feet about him."

NRO's K.J. Lopez, at Bench Memos, this a.m.: "Rehnquist isn't going anywhere. Subtle signals: He wore a Nike hat to court yesterday. Message? He's in good shape and will keep running."

RedState's Mike Krempasky, on what he'll do if Bush does nominate Gonzales: "I'm taking up golf."

2006 MIDTERMS: What Do You Do?

Lefty Daily Kos: "The war will be the issue in 2006. I've already talked to several Democratic candidates who think they can get elected talking about social security and health care. Rubbish. That's what Democrats thought in 2002 and 2004, and the war intruded both cycles. Given the way things are going over there, 2006 promises to be no different." He offers 2 approaches to exiting Iraq. 1 calls for a direct withdrawal: "The future belongs to a free democratic Iraq, but it is a future they must fight for themselves." The 2nd avoids withdrawal: "We must have accountability in order to win this war. Those responsible for so many catastrophic mistakes must replaced by more competent, more effective, people."

Conservative PoliPundit's Alexander McClure: "It looks like Republicans will have a primary in Nebraska between [ex-AG] Don Stenberg and a state Republican official. I am not happy with either man as our nominee, feeling that either would fall short against Nelson. The White House needs to rectify its mistake in thinking that Ben Nelson would contemplate joining the GOP or supporting GOP issues. It's time for Governor Johanns to return home to run for the Senate."

Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall: "It's always nice to get a nod. But even without it, we're still happy to see the St. Petersburg Timespicked up the story we broke back on the 21st about Katherine Harris's special $32,000 one day haul from Mitchell Wade's MZM, Inc." Wade is the contractor implicated in potentially unethical dealings with Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA).

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Still Lounging Around In His Pajamas?

TVNewser highlights a quote from CNN pres. Jonathan Klein's interview with the Dallas Morning News. Says Klein, of FNC: "They sound a little nervous. And guess what, they should be. Because we haven't even started trying yet." TVNewser's Brian Stelter: "Which begs the question: When will they start trying?"

GITMO: Heard On The Hill

Right-trending Roger L. Simon notes a comment by Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) following her visit to Gitmo with a cong. delegation: "The Guantanamo we saw today is not the Guantanamo we heard about a few years ago." Simon writes, "the amazing thing in Ms. Tauscher's statement is that she admitted she had only 'heard' about the problems in Guantanamo. The use of that word would just be another of the many embarrassing howlers of our time if it weren't so tragic in all it implies about the reactionary behavior of our supposedly 'liberal' mainstream media and our supposedly 'liberal' Democratic Party over those same last 'few years.' Their unrelenting criticisms were all (or mostly) based on hearsay."

BASEBALL: A Soros Subject

In a Roll Call story yesterday, Reps. Tom Davis (R-VA) and John Sweeney (R-NY) appeared to threaten MLB with tougher scrutiny if billionaire Dem donor George Soros' bid for the Washington Nationals is accepted. Said Davis: "I don't think they want to get involved in a political fight." Davis and Sweeney find few defenders in the blogosphere.

  • Libertarian Radley Balko: "Let's not mince words, here. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior from a public official. Perhaps it's to be expected from a guy like Davis. But it's despicable. Davis is making a public threat to sanction a private industry for doing business with a political opponent."
  • Liberal MyDD: "I wonder how long it will be before we have to start swearing loyalty oaths to Dick Cheney before we are allowed to watch the World Series..."
  • Conservative Michelle Malkin: "Well, well, well. It took George Soros for hypocritical Republican politicians to finally oppose tax-subsidized sports stadiums and antitrust exemptions for baseball. Mark this down as a milestone moment when I side with the likes of Soros and Democrat Rep. George Miller."

The DCCC's Stakeholder blog had a big hand in pushing the story, picking up a not-insignificant 34 trackbacks for the post.

WHITE HOUSE '08: The Truth About Klein

John Hawkins of Right Wing News interviews Ed Klein, author of "The Truth About Hillary," the latest book on Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

  • Klein says the "entire mainstream media -- NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC -- have blanked me out. This is my 5th best seller in a row. I've been on all of those networks for all my books up 'til this one book. I've been a constant guest on the Today show, the Good Morning America show, you know, the Chris Matthews show, etc. Suddenly I'm anathema and the reason I am is because the Clintons, Hillary in particular, have threatened all these mainstream media outlets. That's a good reason in my view for the conservatives to get behind this book."
  • Hawkins: "Do you think that could be a security liability for the United States? Let's say a foreign intelligence agency gets Frank Gifford style pics of Bill Clinton having an affair and then asks Hillary to look the other way on something or face maybe a 6 month feeding frenzy in the press when it breaks? Do you think that could be a security liability for the US?" Klein: " I hadn't even thought of that. That's a great question. Yes, absolutely..."

A quick thought re: Sen. Evan Bayh's All America PAC campaign blog. Indeed, it has had one since April. The blogroll comprises a dozen or so links to well-known liberal blogs, but not to Blogging for Bayh or the just-launched Evan2008.com blog.

MISCELLANY: Did We Miss Live 7, Or What?

As promised, Power Line reveals the exciting news: 5 bloggers will get to fly on a Richard Branson plane to the G8 conf. with the Live 8 crew in early July. Ex-Dean manager Joe Trippi has more details. Technorati has a Live8 blog, and Live 8 has its own blog as well. Technorati has created a couple "badges" which bloggers can place in their sidebar. One counts the number of Live 8-related posts; as of this a.m., it was 9,199.

Right-leaning Pirate Ballerina catches up with Ward Churchill in Portland, OR, where he appears to be defending the fragging of U.S. soldiers by fellow soldiers. Said Churchill: "Conscientious objection removes a given piece of the cannon fodder from the fray; fragging an officer has a much more impactful effect."

Blog Soup interviews one of the USC grads behind the faux blog-magazine/real blog Blogebrity.

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Bill Of The Right

Today the Blogometer talks to righty Bill Ardolino, who writes INDC Journal.

What is your full name?

Bill Ardolino

What is your age?

29

Where did you grow up?

Florida

Where do you live now?

DC

What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?

Marketing Manager. [Re: campaign or MSM experience:] No (unless you count marketing analysis for a newspaper).

When did you start blogging and why?

Jan 04. I had something to say and was particularly frustrated by unsuccessfully challenged media bias.

What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?

INDC Presents: National World War II Memorial Dedication Weekend Parts One and Two. And of course, Are the CBS National Guard Documents Fake?

Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?

At this point, whenever I feel like it. Prior to the election, it was like a second full-time job.

Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

It would be both impolitic and impossible to name merely one.

Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?

Tie: James Pinkerton and Charles Krauthammer

What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?

"Special Report with Brit Hume"

What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?

The Washington Post

What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?

Too numerous to list.

How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?

No more than once per month.

How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?

I see the mediums competing and coalescing. Competing as blogs continue to serve as a natural foil to and check on paid, ivory tower reporting and analysis, yet coalescing as a few MSM outlets begin to recognize the profitability and efficiency of utilizing open-source journalism to augment their traditional model.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Chicken Soup For The Chickenhawk's Soul

Conservative Jay Tea from Wizbang: "The big theme running around the anti-war blogs nowadays is a revival of the classic 'chickenhawk' accusation. I've always believed that one should limit one's arguments to the issues, not the individuals. I always try to refrain from gratuitous personal attacks when discussing matters of grave import. ... That belief stands in stark contrast with the 'chickenhawk' argument, which tries to shift the discussion from the message to the messenger. It tries to move the topic from 'is this a good idea?' to 'who the hell are you to say anything?' It is an attempt to silence the opposition by assailing them personally, by punishing them for daring to have a dissenting opinion. But it is even more fundamentally dishonest than that. It is a wholesale attempt to shift not only the topic of the argument to one side's proponents, but the entire burden of the argument on to them as well. The anti-war advocate, by converting the argument from a philosophical one to a personal one, is freed from the onus of having to marshal facts and citations for their position."

LEST WE FORGET: Mmmm, We Sure Could Go For Some Tasty Scrapple Right About Now

Right-leaning Scrappleface -- which posts Onion-esque fake news dispatches on current events -- takes on the SCOTUS rulings: "In a pair of rulings on the constitutionality of the 10 Commandments on government property, the Supreme Court today said the commandments may be displayed on public land if that property has been seized from private owners for 'public purposes' under eminent domain. The 5-4 decision comes on the heels of last week's court declaration that so-called "private" property is actually government land temporarily under private management until its eventual seizure..."

NOTES AND ERRATA: Take Back The Statement

Yesterday's Blogometer asserted that the Take Back the Memorial blog was started by the 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America. That was incorrect. The blog was actually started by Lime Shurbet blogger Roger Shurbet, who was inspired by the 6/8 Wall Street Journal op-ed we mentioned yesterday. Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.

Posted by at 12:23 PM

June 27, 2005

6/27: Casual Ties Of War

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

The confluence of a few related stories helps push the situation in Iraq -- and the Bush admin.'s handling of it -- to the top of many blogs this a.m.:

  • VP Cheney's criticism of Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) on CNN late last week.
  • Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld's statement on "Fox News Sunday" that the U.S. may remain in Iraq for "12 years."
  • A report from the Times of London that the U.S. is negotiating with non-jihadist insurgents in Iraq.
  • Pres. Bush's upcoming Iraq-related address, set for 6/28.
  • The bombing deaths of 5 female Marines in Fallujah.

Meanwhile, The Huffington Post reports that a recent hospital visit for Cheney was no mere knee checkup and bloggers dig deeper on Karl Rove's 9/11 comments last week.

TRACKBACKS: Twelve Is The Scariest Number That You Ever Knew

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • This feature typically follows the blog swarm as they seize upon this or that news story or opinion column printed in an MSM newspaper. Today we don't see any one page drawing a noticeable amount of traffic, but we did notice that Rumsfeld's "12 years" comment attracted a lot of attention. So we went looking for posts related to this figure, with a little bit of help from Technorati. Here's what we found:

    >> As we expected, nearly all the commentary this a.m. comes from the left: Distance: "This is what a lot of us said from the beginning. You can not simply invade a country, destroy it and walk away. The infrastructure has to be rebuilt, and the schools need a full 15 years to have a permanent impact on the culture. They have to produce a generation of thinkers. This war has turned into a disaster, and it is now hung around the GOP and their Democratic allies who voted for the war. Informed Comment: "So now not only has there been no progress for six months, not only is there a lot of work to do, but we are not in December, 1944 of WW II at all. We are in 1963 of the Vietnam War, with 12 years to go, and we can't win." E Pluribus Unum: "Six months from now (or a year or two or five) Bush apologists will point to one of these statements to buttress their contention that Bush was right all along. Because, in the end, that's all that matters: that Bush is right and that everyone who spoke up against the war is wrong." Needlenose points out previous examples of the admin. predicting increased attacks on account of U.S. successes. And there's more: The Huffington Post; Rob's Blog; Happy Furry Puppy Story Time; The Heretik; News Hog; The War In Context; Political Animal.

    >> We found exactly 1 post coming from the right: All Things Conservative: "Ask yourself this question: If you were one of the Sunni hold-outs would you negotiate if you were winning?"

IRAQ I: Are Cheney And Hagel Off For Good This Time?

At Eschaton, Duncan "Atrios" Black points out Cheney's response to on Hagel's criticism of the Iraq situation: "Since 9/11, we've had people like Chuck Hagel and other politicians and we've had people in the press corps and commentators who've said we can't do Afghanistan." Writes Atrios (verbatim): "The new strategy is criticism of iraq=criticism of afghanistan=support for taliban=support for al qaeda = cheering on crashing twin towers." A diarist at Daily Kos calls it "outright slander."

Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch writes at Attytood writes, "a quick check of the Nexis data base shows, possibly no senator was more strident that Nebraska Republican Hagel in insisting that the response to the 9/11 attacks should be a military one."

Matthew Yglesias, on Hagel: "We're long past the point at which it's been made clear that this sort of rhetorical warning shot isn't going to cause the president to change course. So what's Hagel going to do about it? He's a United States Senator, not just some powerless pundit. What's his plan? These are the questions people need to be asking the moderate Republicans."

IRAQ II: Can We Talk?

Lefty Billmon: "It looks like the Cheney administration isn't going to get quite as free a ride from the corporate media on negotiating with terrorists as it did on the Downing Street memos. ... Since Bush has a rock-hard policy of never negotiating with such people, the only solution is a rhetorical one. The line must be changed again. New labels must be invented and applied to those insurgents who 'don't have blood on their hands.' ... It's definitely going to be an Orwellian challenge. Even if Rummy and the gang drop the 'terrorist' and 'assassin' lingo and go back to 'former regime elements,' or 'Baathist diehards,' they still will have to explain the morality of negotiating with butchers who gas their own people and then bury them in mass graves (that is, when they aren't relaxing in their rape rooms). Such is the problem with wartime atrocity propaganda: In a rapidly shifting situation, it may have too long a shelf life."

At NRO's The Corner, John Derbyshire describes the experience of viewing Rumsfeld on "Meet the Press" 6/26: "Getting flashbacks from my working days. A project is going pear shaped. You call in the project manager to explain himself. Shouldn't he have budgeted for more people? 'Well, you know, too many people can just get in each other's way...' When can we expect the next deliverable? 'It's really, really hard to put a time frame on this...' ... That's the meeting right before the one where you dump the project and fire the project manager."

RedState's Josh Trevino argues, not for the first time, in favor of reinstating the draft.

NRO's Media Blog: "The MSM's silence on the Foley controversy is annoying, but its presentation of a one-sided picture of Iraq is having potentially devastating consequences on public opinion."

Kevin Drum sizes up Rumsfeld's appearance, and comments: "These guys still can't face the reality of what's happened to their lovely little war."

SCOTUS: Interestingly, Bloggers Rely On Anonymous Sources Quite Frequently

At least as of press time, no retirement announcements had come from the SCOTUS. Over the weekend, Erick Erickson at RedState wrote: "Sources close to the White House are telling Red State that they do expect a Supreme Court vacancy in the next ten days -- as soon as tomorrow is possible, but within the next ten days seems most likely. One source (and only one) tells RedState that there is new talk of a vacancy to come soon and one to come closer to Labor Day, making two picks this year for the President. The source says the conventional wisdom is right that the two most likely candidates will be Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor and Chief Justice [William] Rehnquist. However, there may be a wild card due to health. Also, sources say the White House has nailed down a final list of candidates -- a short list -- but the President has yet to make his pick. Judge [Michael] McConnell is rumored to not be on it while [AG Alberto] Gonzales is rumored to be on it, but only if O'Connor resigns first. My source for that bit admits to not having seen the list, only to have heard about it."

ROVE: So What About Senator X?

Mystery Pollster's Mark Blumenthal assesses Karl Rove's claim about how liberals responded to 9/11: "[I]n the days after 9/11 overwhelming majorities of both Democrats and Republicans believed America was 'at war' and favored some sort of 'military action.' ... Yes, Democrats were a bit less supportive of waging war than Republicans, but compared to the partisan polarization we see today, the unity on these issues in the aftermath of 9/11 was far more striking than the differences." But party ID and ideology don't always match, so he puts out a call for more numbers. CBS's pollsters oblige, and Blumenthal puts down the "bottom line: Two weeks after the attacks, 84% of self-described liberals supported "military action" against the terrorists and 75% supported 'going to war with a nation that is harboring those responsible.'"

Liberal TAPPED's Asheesh Siddique called the offices of GOP sens., asking: "Does Karl Rove speak for Senator X in his recent comments on liberals and September 11?" Kay Bailey Hutchison's press officer "told us she agrees with Rove's remarks," while Rick Santorum's comm. dir. Robert Traynham said: "Karl Rove speaks for himself. He doesn't speak for the senator. On 9/11, there was no such thing as a Republican or a Democrat, and that's what the senator believes."

Daily Kos's "Plutonium Page" calls it an example of "GOP propaganda": "We were truly united as a nation back then, but the Republican rhetoric since then brainwashed the electorate to the point of believing that Democrats don't care about terrorism."

CHENEY: When No One Follows Your Scoop After Two Days ...

On 6/24 The Huffington Post reported, VP Cheney "went to the cardiac unit of the Vail Valley Medical Center on Friday afternoon. The Vail Daily reported that 'he dropped by to say hi to his favorite knee doctor Richard Steadman.' The Associated Press ran a similar story. The vice president did see Dr. Steadman, a renowned orthopedic surgeon at the Steadman Hawkins clinic. But he then proceeded to the cardiac unit of the center to see Dr. Jack Eck, sources close to the doctor told The Huffington Post. While there, Cheney had a prophylactic EKG. Neither the Associated Press or the Vail Daily have reported that the vice president visited the cardiac unit."

DEMOCRATS: Better Start Boning Up On Propane And Propane Accessories

Ed Kilgore assesses the demographics-will-save-the-party idea: "What Democrats cannot do ... is to comfort ourselves with the illusion that Latino voter growth will offset our ever-increasing weakness among white middle-class voters generally, or white married voters with kids specifically." He writes, "small percentage increases from large groups generate more votes than large percentage increases from small groups. That's why the little-recognized but central story of the 2004 presidential election was that a smaller percentage increase in ballots from non-Latino white voters more than exceeded the votes produced by near-record turnout among minority voters as a whole."

At the Washington Monthly's blog, Kevin Drum evaluates different reactions to the essay "The Stock Ticker and the Super Jumbo," which argues that Dems should pick a few big ideas and stick with them. (For more on Drum and the essay, see the 6/7 Blogometer.)

MOVEON: Nothing's Gonna Break Their Stride, Oh No, They've Got To Keep On Moving

TAPPED, on MoveOn's recent clarification of its position on the Afghanistan war: "MoveOn will have to do a much better -- and, frankly, less arrogant -- job of press management in the future. If MoveOn was going to clarify its position ... it should have done so cleanly and definitively last fall, when the issue first came up and it had an opportunity to respond in the pages of TNR, instead of waiting until the middle of a full-scale Republican attack to slowly dribble out a walk-back."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Poynt Taken

Left-leaning Fishbowl DC points out several media-related stories from the past week that went unmentioned at the "super-duper no-longer-as-comprehensive-as-it-once-was site" by "media news guru" Jim Romenesko. Right-leaning Mediacrity describes Romenesko as "arbitrary and politically skewed in its items, links and letters." Mediacrity also notes Fishbowl DC's observance that Romenesko has an "odd hatred of bloggers and loathes linking to blogs," and guesses at "why that is -- blogs very often beat the pants off of him, and bloggers are generally paid nothing." Centrist Andrew Sullivan, on Romenesko's reported $150K+ salary: "I don't begrudge anyone making a good salary from blogging. ... He's brought so much attention to Poynter that he deserves every cent. But he is a highly biased, left-wing blogger, who rarely links to blogs who provide media criticism from the right, and omits stories that the left doesn't like. ... His journalistic audience is skewed very left, so he's giving them what they want."

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: See You Leiter

UT-Austin law prof Brian Leiter updates his "Who is Juan Non-Volokh" post (see 6/23 Blogometer) to assert that Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds is behind the seemingly incoherent-on-purpose The Iraq War Was Wrong Blog. (The blog's primary subject seems to be itself.) Leiter removed the update, apologized for the error, explaining that the "site in question seemed to evince the same moral sensibility towards the Iraq War that Professor Reynolds typically displays."

WHITE HOUSE '08: If Websites Translated Into Votes, Bayh Would Have The Nod Wrapped Up

Americans for Bayh/Blogging for Bayh joins forces with a new pro-Bayh blog at Evan2008.com. Blogging for Bayh founder Bill Earl joins the Evan2008.com community and writes a few posts. A phrase he uses at both sites is: "Because THIS TIME we have a Democrat WHO CAN WIN."

MISCELLANY: Mother, Should I Run For President?

Power Line's John Hinderaker, one of a number of prominent blogs to join a conf. call with Live 8 organizer/Pink from "The Wall" Bob Geldof, posts a few thoughts on African political reform, and adds: "Within the next 48 hours, we will have exciting news for bloggers worldwide relating to the Live 8 concerts. Stay tuned."

9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America has launched a blog, Take Back the Memorial, dedicated to changing NY Gov. George Pataki's (R) mind about building the "International Freedom Center." For an explanation of their objections, a 6/8 op-ed at the WSJ's OpinionJournal.com. A number of blogs are helping promote it, chief among them BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Back To Iraq

Phil Carter announces at his blog, Intel Dump: "On Thursday, I received orders from the Army mobilizing me for Operation Iraqi Freedom. These orders followed an earlier set, cut on Tuesday, which transferred me from the Army's individual ready reserve into the 101st Airborne Division. It's an honor and privilege to deploy with such a storied unit -- a band of warriors who have nearly all deployed at least once since 9/11. I'm scheduled to report for active duty in a little under 3 weeks to Fort Campbell, Kentucky." Carter will keep blogging, but he is also transitioning the site into a group blog a la Volokh Conspiracy. The Left Coaster, on Carter: "He is a true patriot and his contributions on the web will be missed - quite a bit. Needless to say, the U.S. and the American armed forces are both lucky to have him."

LEST WE FORGET: I Go Crazy, Crazy, Baby, I Go Crazy

If you think the cost of gas in the U.S. is high, just be glad you don't live in Canada.

Posted by at 12:48 PM

June 24, 2005

6/24: Send Karl Rove Right Over

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Yesterday, in explaining the sudden shift away from stories about Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), we put it thus: "The blogosphere was overtaken by events..." Well, events have done it again. Just as yesterday's Blogometer went up, objections to Karl Rove's speech before the Conservative Party of NY started to make their way across the blogosphere and, by early evening, onto the cable news. As of this a.m., a simple apology does not seem enough, as many on the left call for Rove's resignation outright. Today's Blogometer deals mostly with the fallout from the Rove story.

The Blogometer would argue that Durbin and Rove are not 2 separate stories, but the 1 story where the reaction to the 2nd event is an indirect response to the 1st. Last week conservatives "got" Durbin, so now liberals will "get" Rove as best they can. But the issue is not just to Durbin -- it is also the long-running theme argued by conservatives that the GOP is better at protecting the country than the Dems. In response, liberals have opened up lines of argument to show that conservatives are actually less reliable (see the "Democrats" section in today's Blogometer for more on this).

You can see this by reading headlines at Eschaton yesterday. Says one: "Rove: Liberals Want Troops To Die." Says another: "Ken Mehlman Says Liberals Want Our Troops to Die." Another: "Rove vs. America." Meanwhile, conservatives term the left "crybabies." PoliPundit, Lorie Byrd heads a post: "The Crybaby Party Targets Karl Rove." And there's this header at Captain's Quarters: "The Crying Game Continues."

All in all, it's a busy Friday in the blogosphere:

LEFT ROVE REAX: Rove Himself Off A Cliff

Fairly soon after the story started to break -- thanks mostly to the write-up in the New York Times -- First Draft and other blogs post the following letter, encouraging others to send it to their GOP reps (if any):

Dear Rep./Sen. [Name],

According to the New York Times, presidential advisor Karl Rove recently said that liberals in this country want our troops to die.

As a liberal, I find this deeply offensive. I don't feel this is the sort of rhetoric our country needs during wartime, and I resent the idea that I want any of our troops to come to harm. In making such statements Mr. Rove is not only impugning my politics, he is degrading my basic humanity.

As a constituent of yours, I would like to know, [sir/madam], if you agree with Mr. Rove's statements. Does he speak for you?

Sincerely,
[your name]

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum identifies the 2 most offensive examples from the speech: 1) Rove's claim that after 9/11, Dems merely wanted to "offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." 2) Saying that Durbin's remarks put the troops in "greater danger," Rove adds: "No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals." Drum responds: "That's how the Republican party plays the game these days: accuse Democrats of being traitors and poltroons, and then, when they're called on it, turn up the volume even higher while simultaneously pretending that they're just talking about 'different philosophies.' This is McCarthy level thuggery, and one can only hope that Karl Rove meets the same bad end as the junior senator from Wisconsin."

Swing State Project states, in no uncertain terms: "Karl Rove Must Resign." Bob Brigham posts "action items," writing: "The Rove Must Resign blog swarm is gathering momentum quickly, because Rove needs to resign. There must be a zero tolerance policy."

The American Prospect's Garance Franke-Ruta doesn't go that far, but cuts him no more slack: "Give men a strong leader and a just cause, and they will join up in droves. Just look at what Pat Tillman was willing to sacrifice. American men today do not lack the courage of their forefathers. Far from it. But when men see their enemy allowed his freedom and their leaders more concerned with steering contracts to war profiteers than with a clear course of military action, they will adjudge their lives more precious and stay home. Instead of attacking liberal Americans, George W. Bush and Karl Rove should be focused on attacking the terrorists and getting bin Laden. That, and not Iraq or Social Security reform or Terri Schiavo, ought to be national job one." Josh Marshall makes a similar point.

U. MI prof Juan Cole writes, Rove "implies that Conservatives knew what to do [in response to 9/11]. Why, they got out their shotguns and went hunting for the varmints. Rove must not have heard that the Senate just apologized for not objecting to the practice of lynching in the old days..." But AG John Ashcroft had to make terror indictments "in absentia because the Conservatives hadn't got them in custody, despite all that rooting around with their shotguns."

RIGHT ROVE REAX: The Kind Of Jerk They're Glad To Have On Their Side

In general, it's safe to say that the right agrees with Rove's statements. They are also amused at how the left is reacting:

  • Karol Sheinen: "Liberals are mad and urging people to write to their elected officials. I'm not entirely clear on the point of that since Karl Rove isn't elected nor is he a party spokesperson. I feel like it's more venting, useless venting, than anything else. If liberals really wanted to do something, they'd prove Rove wrong. ... They'd cheer our successes in Iraq and hope for more. Rove's implication was that liberals want us to lose in Iraq. I can't say that I think he is wrong." Ankle Biting Pundits: "Why Democrats want to make a big issue of this is beyond me. During my time in the political trenches, I've learned a thing or two about fights you want to pick and those you want to avoid. This is one the Democrats should seek to avoid. Instead, their worst instincts have gotten the best of them and they are digging it."

Rove takes some flak from the right, although it would not be fair to characterize this as a prevailing sentiment:

  • GOP contrarian John Cole points out that Dems voted for the Afghanistan war as well. That resolution "passed the House 420-1 and passed the Senate 98-0, with nary a mention of indictments, therapy, or calls for understanding." He adds: My party no longer is merely content selling our bullshit. We are now starting to believe it. I'd say Mr. Rove has an apology to issue." Right-leaning Decision '08 agrees that Rove should apologize.

Patrick Ruffini: "As is usually the case when liberals are under attack, the hysterical defensiveness of the response tells you volumes more than the original critique."

Hugh Hewitt quotes extensively from an RNC-prepared list of quotes from Dems in order to buttress the argument that Howard Dean, George Soros, MoveOn.org and others have been less-than-serious about the war on terrorism.

Michelle Malkin has an updated round-up of news and reactions from throughout 6/23.

ROVE FALLOUT: D'aouh!

Ex-KE'04 blog maven/Salon blogwatcher Peter Daou gets caught up in the controversy, coming under fire from some conservatives for telling the Chicago Tribune that the outcry over Durbin's remarks was "a political tool, and it's manufactured outrage, it's feigned outrage, and it's extremely effective." Conservative Blackfive: "Of course, Daou does know feigned outrage. After all, Kerry was certainly 'outraged' that anyone would question his patriotism..." Baldilocks: "Okay, Peter, you caught me. My anger at Senator Durbin's remarks was fake. I actually think it's great when a US Senator gets up on the senate floor and impugns the honor of the US military."

In a post headlining the Daou Report, he responds to his critics and criticizes Rove for arguing "that liberals can't or won't defend America": "Despite the sheer imbecility of it, many on the right really believe it to be true. And so I'll repeat, to those who question my strength, my convictions, my willingness to defend my family -- as I have done my whole life in circumstances far more difficult than what a good number of Rove's cheerleaders will ever face -- I thoroughly reject Rove's words. And I'd expect any of my critics to do the same if their patriotism was questioned in so loathsome a manner."

DEMOCRATS: Two-Front War?

Daily Kos lists foreign policy differences between Dems -- "Believe we should have stayed the course in Afghanistan, not allowing the Taliban to resurge, the warlords to take power, and the opium trade to skyrocket." -- and GOPers -- "Ignore Afghanistan as the situation worsens."

Liberal AmericaBlog is upset that the Dems seem to have fallen for the GOP spin re: Durbin: "That any Democratic politician or pundit in 2005 does not understand how the right wing media machine operates is beyond me, but it happens over and over. ... The right-wingers love it when someone in the Democratic party establishment criticizes one of their own. They use those words against us all -- very, very effectively. Joe Biden and John Edwards attacking Howard Dean is a classic example."

David Sirota headlines a post "A Note to the Chickenhawks: Enlist, or Shut Up." The liberal blogosphere has argued for weeks that conservatives should be fighting the war they support, and now Sirota wants the party at large to say so: "That means it is time for Democrats to finally go for the throat and make clear that if you are going to vehemently advocate sending more and more innocent Americans to die in Iraq, you better be prepared to back up that rhetoric with some sacrifice of your own."

Oliver Willis implores Dem leaders, including Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Biden and Edwards: "It is time, at long last, to cease with the smiles and the well-wishes and to make clear that the time to declare open political warfare on these people is long past due."

FOLEY GATE: Foleyed Us Once, Foleyed Us Twice...

In recent months, the Blogometer has reported on the controversy between Newspaper Guild pres. Linda Foley (see here and here), who delivered a speech saying that journalists are being "targeted" by the U.S. in Iraq. Similar comments had recently led to the ouster of CNN's Eason Jordan.

On the Newspaper Guild website, Guild pres. Linda Foley: "In case you missed it, for about a month I have been subjected to what I would characterize as a right-wing screed over some comments I made..." She also clarifies her earlier remarks: "I used strong words and said it rather clumsily, but the St. Louis crowd got the point."

Instapundit credits Boston Globe columnist Hiawatha Bray with getting results; Bray had run against her for pres. of the guild, although he lost badly. Instapundit adds: "But there are a lot of ifs in her apology. And she seems clueless as to why her comments made people angry."

Foley Gate: "This woman obviously has some problems. She thinks that anyone with a brain and is disgusting with her original comments is some neocon. Wrong. It isn't a Republican or Democrat thing, it isn't a conservative or liberal thing, it is a 'respect our troops' and 'don't say asinine statements that you can't back up' thing."

WHITE HOUSE '08: Overestimating McCain

Ex-Spinsanity co-editor Brendan Nyhan points out that AP's Ron Fournier is incorrect in writing that John McCain is "favored by a majority of Democrats and independents" (see 6/22 Blogometer). Nyhan points out a recent Quinnipiac poll showing not only would Dems vote for HRC over McCain 73%-15%, but McCain's indie support is "short of a majority" as well. Nyhan: He's more or less the only partisan politician who Democrats and Republicans generally praise. As a result, the public likes him across the board ... But this will inevitably change if McCain runs in 2008. The reason is that he's never received significant Democratic criticism. He was defeated in 2000 before the Democrats felt the need to open up on him, and since then they all praise him because they want to look bipartisan and co-sponsor bills with him in Congress. ... This is how partisan politics works. Why Ron Fournier ... can't figure it out is beyond me."

MISCELLANY: All The Rage

Politburo Ditkat's "Commissar" asks: "Are you looking for secular conservative, or moderate blogs? RINO's, if you will. Are RINO's an endangered species? How can Conservative bloggers who might not want to drink the Party Kool-Aid on every single issue ... find each other?" "Commissar" creates a set of buttons featuring the profile of a rhino's head, so bloggers can place it in their sidebar. The name of the affinity group/community/list is: "Raging RINOs" - Republicans / Independents Not Overdosed (on the Party Kool Aid)." In the week since its creation, 50+ blogs have signed up.

Daily Pundit's Bill Quick signs on: "If you run a blog and aren't interested in buying into the Bush/Republican big-spending, big-government, religious-right influenced, politically bumbling, leaderless brand of politics, (yes, I could go on), check this one out."

SCOTUS: Kelo Interactive

There was another major story yesterday that is getting a lot of talk on the blogs, although we won't deal with it much here: the SCOTUS ruling in Kelo v. City of New London upholding/expanding cities' right to eminent domain. From liberal group blog Crooked Timber to conservative group blogRedState, there is much anger. As we noted re: flag-burning yesterday, the blogosphere's left and right halves both lean libertarian. Meanwhile, SCOTUSblog offers links to different reactions, and Captain's Quarters criticizes the New York Times for editorializing in favor of the ruling when their own office space was acquired via eminent domain. George Will's latest column is linked by conservatives at Power Line and Off-Wing Opinion and elsewhere. See Technorati for more on the Kelo ruling.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Mr. Yglesias And The Vicious Sphere

Matt Yglesias isn't entirely sure, but he thinks he can tell "different kinds of viciousness from the left and the right" bloggers. He points to Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds and Eschaton's Duncan "Atrios" Black as key examples: "Your rightwingers are much more likely to say something substantively scummy about someone else -- flinging around casual accusations of treason and so forth. Your leftwingers, by contrast, are much more likely to engage in workaday meanness -- name-calling and so forth. This stems, I think, from the stylistic dichotomy between Atrios and Instapundit. Glenn's a really master of the artfully worded slander -- 'they're not anti-war, they're on the other side' and so forth -- while Duncan has a much blunter approach -- 'InstaHack,' etc."

LEST WE FORGET: Just Eat It

A bit belatedly, we bring you The Sneeze's latest installment in the ongoing series: "Steve, Don't Eat It!" In this edition, Steve (who is by the way married with children) makes and then drinks "prison wine." After sampling his distillation, he writes: "Now that I think about it, prison inmates frequently turn to religion. I'm not very religious, but maybe I should be. Sure, Jesus made wine from water, but I did it with a dirty sock and fruit snacks! You tell me what the bigger miracle is." If you've missed previous "Steve, Don't Eat It!" installments, see the archive.

NOTES AND ERRATA: The Corrections

In Tuesday's edition of the Blogometer, we ran our "Blogger Spotlight" interview with Jeralyn Merritt from TalkLeft. Unfortunately, we scrambled her answers a bit, mixing up 2 of them up with a previous spotlight, and that version made it into Lexis-Nexis. We've since corrected it on the website, but for the record: Ms. Merritt does not read Mickey Kaus regularly, and she reads the Denver Post every day.

Posted by admin at 12:00 PM

June 23, 2005

6/23: Courting Disapproval

Good news for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) today: For the first time in weeks, the heat is mostly off. This isn't to say his troubles are over -- lefty Daily Kos eventually weighed in, saying that he "f---ed up." Most of the right is still disgusted with him, but more than a few -- such as conservative stalwart Patterico's Pontifications, deem his apology "good enough."

What happened? The blogosphere was overtaken by events, not least the House passage of the flag-burning amendment -- this met with almost unanimous disapproval. Elsewhere, there is also increased speculation about who will step down from the SCOTUS next, who will replace them, and when. Meanwhile, TVNewser finally gets to the bottom of rumors of an OSHA investigation at FNC, a UT-Austin prof threatens to expose an academic "anonyblogger", and bloggers react to the new stirrings on changes to SocSec.

TRACKBACKS: Flags Of Our Forefathers

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • AP report on the flag-burning amendment. To call blogosphere opposition to the amendment "overwhelming" would be an understatement. A strain of libertarianism runs throughout almost the entire blogosphere, and that kicks in for everybody this a.m. Interestingly, conservatives are more vocal in their protest, or at least more attuned to the subject.

    >> We really looked high and low for anyone in support of the amendment. The closest we came was National Review's Jonah Goldberg, who wrote at The Corner: "I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with a flag-burning amendment, but I really don't see the point at this time." A bit later, Ramesh Ponnuru weighs in similarly: "I'd prefer a federal statute stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction over state governments' bans on flag burning."

    >> At least a few think along the same lines as Troy prof Steven Taylor: "[A]mendments to the Constitution that limit the government are fine, and indeed, my favorite kind. Amendments designed to limit the actions of citizens that are otherwise unharmful to other citizens, strikes me as a bad idea." Andrew Sullivan is one of a few who object strenuously to the following quote by Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA): "Ask the men and women who stood on top of the [World] Trade Center. Ask them and they will tell you: pass this amendment."

    >> All those opposed: Little Green Footballs; The Moderate Voice; Michael Totten; Daly Thoughts; MyDD; Balloon Juice; Outside The Beltway; Politburo Diktat; Hit and Run; Demagogue; Indepundit; Volokh Conspiracy; Instapundit; The Anchoress.

  • At the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol suggests a) the next SCOTUS justice to step down might be Sandra Day O'Connor, and b) AG Alberto Gonzales might be Pres. Bush's choice to replace her. But he cautions: "Warning: THIS IS SPECULATION." Plenty of bloggers just quote the juicy bits and let it stand alone, but few on the right are pleased to hear Gonzales mentioned.

    >> Right Wing News: "[W]hether Bush likes him or not, it would be a huge mistake to nominate someone like Alberto Gonzales who's so moderate that a Gonzales for O'Connor swap would be considered by the base to be a wash." Spoons Experience: "Fortunately, Kristol is notoriously bad at predicting... well... anything. Unfortunately, I think he could be right about this one."

    >> Hugh Hewitt; The Corner; Just A Bump In The Beltway; SoCal Law Blog; Suburban Guerrilla; Bench Memos; Confirm Them.

  • In AEI's bi-monthly magazine, editor-in-chief Karl Zinsmeister argues: "What the establishment media covering Iraq have utterly failed to make clear today is this central reality: With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over. Egregious acts of terror will continue -- in Iraq as in many other parts of the world. But there is now no chance whatever of the U.S. losing this critical guerilla war."

    >> From the right: INDC Journal: "It's certainly contradictory to the current narrative; I hope that he's correct. The ability of terrorists to seriously destroy a country despite a hostile local populace is the real litmus test. As many have pointed out, this is probably a strategically unsustainable situation for the jihadists, but not yet a mark of early, sure victory." Pejman Yousefzadeh agrees with part of Zinsmeister's piece, but adds: "In our media age, winning the war on the battlefield will never be considered enough. It must be won on the television sets as well. One of the reasons I have the utmost admiration for modern American military commanders is that their job is so much harder than their predecessors' jobs. After all, their predecessors did not have to worry as much about winning media wars and could concentrate more on what happened on the battlefield.""

    >> From the Left: Oliver Willis: "Or something." Progressive Democrats of America: "Is this humor? No. It is an example of the total denial of reality." Kevin Drum at Political Animal: "I can't tell you how much I'd like to believe this. Unfortunately, the 'last throes' crowd usually retails their stories with a little bit of local color (cell phones are everywhere!) but few actual facts." Drum and a few others, in the same post where they deal with Zinsmeister's piece, also link to a New York Times story titled "Iraqi Rebels Refine Bomb Skills, Pushing Toll of G.I.'s Higher."

    >> Andrew Sullivan; Amygdala; Power Line; Lorie Byrd; Instapundit; Ed Driscoll; Blogs for Bush; Ace of Spades HQ; Eschaton.

WHITE HOUSE '08: Everyone's A Pollster

Liberal hawk Michael Totten ran his own acknowledgedly unscientific poll for WH '08. Totten draws readers from across party lines, so asks readers to select their top picks for each party. For the Dems: 1) Evan Bayh 2) Barack Obama 3) Hillary Clinton. For the GOP: 1) Condoleezza Rice 2) Rudy Giuliani 3) John McCain. Rice gets 49% of the GOP vote.

Bill Ardolino at INDC Journal: "Unlike much of the right-leaning pundit class, I haven't exactly developed a seething dislike for John McCain. ... Between the growing negative implications for the First Amendment resulting from McCain-Feingold and the jaw-dropping nanny-statism of trying to regulate and misrepresent the dangers of [steroids], I'm pretty damn fed up with the guy myself. So, from various right-leaning libertarian angles (medical, business, regulating speech), I believe that he's losing vital support as well."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Just Making Schur

Fishbowl DC, yesterday: "TVNewser has a transcript of Roger Ailes' remarks to the Fox News Channel staff in New York yesterday -- complete with his multiple shots at [TVNewser writer] Brian [Stelter]." The aforementioned transcript. Stelter has been following the story since his first post on 6/17. On 6/22 he recapped the situation, concluding: "So here are the facts, as we know them: An employee was hospitalized in March following the spraying of an insecticide; the insecticide contained diazinon, which was banned by the EPA; OSHA received a complaint and is conducting an inquiry; some employees are concerned that the spraying was more widespread; Roger Ailes refuted some of the worries; and told employees to speak up if they have any future concerns." For all the posts related to this, see TVNewser's FNC page. TVNewser removed one FNC-related post from the main page, although the post is still live on the site, and can be found here. Late 6/22, TVNewser posted another update, after speaking to FNC VP Dianne Brandi. He relays: "The mistake was a simple one: An employee conducted the spraying, instead of a licensed exterminator. In every other case, a licensed exterminator was used, according to Brandi. She also stressed that OSHA is not investigating the network"

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: Name That Blogger!

UT-Austin law prof Brian Leiter trades a few contentious posts with pseudonymous Volokh Conspiracy blogger "Juan Non-Volokh." Leiter, frustrated with what he deems intentional misinterpretation of his arguments, Leiter announces: "So who is Juan Non-Volokh? I intend to find out and to post that information here in due course. I welcome your help... and I promise to keep my sources secret!"

  • Chief Conspirator Eugene Volokh replies: "I will let you folks be the judges of whether this is good behavior on Prof. Leiter's part. In my view, the nicer thing to do is to respect people's preference for anonymity, at least unless there are some unusual circumstances (more than just disagreement with their views) that are absent here."
  • Liberal GWU prof Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber weighs in on an academic dispute between Leiter and Non-Volokh debate, coming down on the Leiter side. He later updates: "I should make it quite clear that this post is not a broad statement of support for Brian Leiter in his ongoing dispute with Juan non-Volokh."
  • Left-leaning "Ogged" at Unfogged: "There are many things I won't say here because I'm not as anonymous as I'd like to be, and I think that the blogworld is, all-in, a better and more interesting place when people are free to speak their minds without extrablogic reprisal. I hope Leiter reconsiders."
  • In a comment to the Unfogged post, Leiter writes: "I think folks should own their words, but Ogged and a few others sent me arguments that persuaded me that, even if I can find out who he is, I should keep the information to myself."
  • At JustOneMinute, righty Tom Maguire writes: "Leiter has yet to post a definitive statement of non-pursuit on his own blog. Tricky -- doing so would amount to an admission of error."

DEMOCRATS: Not Gonna Take It Anymore

Liberal Interesting Times proposes a "We've Got Your Back! A Democratic Support Campaign": "Any Democrat who takes a courageous step into the minefield of the Republican Noise Machine has to keep one thing in mind: they will get very little support from their fellow Democrats. It's a sad statement but one that is born out by recent history. ... I think we need to establish a permanent "We've Got Your Back!" campaign that will stand behind Democrats, any Democrats, who step into the Right Wing Noise Machine's fire. This campaign that will track signs of Democratic courage in the face of Republican attacks."

Matt Yglesias objects to a WSJ op-ed by 2 editors from The Economist, which claims the left has no ideas: "The author of this article clearly knows where one might go looking for left-of-center ideas, yet he seems not to have actually looked. The PPI website is here."

SOCIAL SECURITY: Dead Again?

Ace of Spades HQ quotes from a news story: "With the acquiescence of their leaders, key House Republicans are drafting Social Security legislation stripped of President Bush's proposed personal accounts financed with payroll taxes and lacking provisions aimed at assuring long-term solvency." "Ace" comments: "Not really sure what the new 'reform' actually does, then. Ah, well -- it's the job of government to do nothing and then call it 'reform.' It's what they do best. When they attempt to do more, they get into trouble." Barking Moonbat Early Warning System isn't impressed, either.

Matt Margolis of Blogs for Bush sees it differently: "Even I was concerned when I read the story yesterday headlined 'Bush Backs Soc. Sec. Bill Without Accounts'. Fortunately for myself, reading the article all the way through made it clear Bush was by no means backing down on including personal retirement accounts in Social Security reform ... I don't see the Democrats making any proposals in the near future. Then it will be clear that their unwillingness to come to the table has nothing to do with personal accounts..."

Liberal economist Mark Thoma: "As the shells begin to move around quicker and quicker in coming weeks, do your best to keep you eye on the ball..."

THE NEW MEDIA: From Bowling Alone To Blogging Alone

Jeff Jarvis: "Dan Gillmor asks contributors to his Bayosphere to take a pledge. I respect Dan more than anyone I know in journalism. I know what he's aiming for, to establish a paragon of citizen journalism, and I respect that as well. But I don't know about taking his pledge. ... Pledges are not the measure of honesty. Codes are not the measure of ethics. Actions are. I'm just not a pledge kind of guy. I'm not a joiner. Guess that's why I am a blogger."

The AO/Technorati Open Media 100 lists the most influential "Pioneers," "Trendsetters" and "Practitioners" of the new media, plus 50 "Honorable Mentions," of whom Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown is one.

MISCELLANY: Milblogger Injuries, Sleeping Dogs And More Pledges

  • On 6/22 word began to spread that Army Cpt. Charles Ziegenfuss, author of the milblog (i.e. military-themed blog) From My Position... On The Way! from Iraq, was injured by shrapnel from an IED. The announcement came in a post to his blog, written by his wife: "This is Carren writing to tell Chuck's faithful readers that he has been injured, but is in stable condition. I won't give details for fear of misinformation (and the fact that this can be accessed by millions of people). Later she did provide details.
  • On 4/22 the Blogometer noted the blogger practice of "cat-blogging," where we also noted that no comparable "dog-blogging" trend exists. Now Andrew Sullivan, noted beagle admirer, starts dog-blogging -- here and here.
  • Wired picks up on the Daily Kos-centered project organized by Susan Hu, which is "using collaborative wiki software to expedite the process of perusing thousands of pages of complex documents related to detainees held by the U.S. government at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba." A recent project update can be found here.
  • How are blogs like PBS? Pledge drives. Left-leaning Washington Monthly writer Kevin Drum and right-leaning UCLA law prof Stephen Bainbridge.

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Balking At The Nanny State

Today the Blogometer talks to libertarian Radley Balko, who writes The Agitator.

What is your full name?

Radley Prescott Balko

What is your age?

30

Where did you grow up?

Greenfield, Indiana

Where do you live now?

Alexandria, Virginia

What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?

I'm a policy analyst for the Cato Institute (though my blog expresses my own opinions, not Cato's). I've never worked on a political campaign. I do write a bi-weekly column for FoxNews.com, and have been published in several mainstream media outlets (Forbes, Time, L.A. Times, Washington Post, among others).

When did you start blogging and why?

I started in February of 2002. I originally started blogging to force myself to write every day, and to attempt to build a regular readership.

What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?

Hmmm. I wrote an article for Fox on a chain of abusive drug rehab centers that operated in the 1980s. They were run by a couple very powerful in Republican circles (the husband just recently resigned as ambassador to Italy). As I was researching the story, dozens and dozens of people who had been subjected to these places 15 and 20 years ago began emailing me with accounts of what they went through. I posted all of them on my blog. It was rewarding to be able to give them an outlet.

I've also posted a few humorous, first-person journalism accounts of Washington-ish activities. I wrote up my experience at a conservative ladies' luncheon for Ann Coulter. That was fun. I also wrote a firsthand account of one of the more raucous anti-globalization rallies.

Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?

I usually post a couple of times when I first wake up in the morning, a couple of times at lunch, and a couple of times in the evening -- either just after work, or before I go to bed. I compose longer posts on the weekends.

Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

For politics I like Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings, and Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek. I also visit Reason's Hit & Run a few times per day. TheNewspaper.com is a great single-issue blog that focuses on the rights of motorists. And Rogier van Bakel is a good source for exposing Nanny Statism.

Non-political? I like Metafilter, Grant McCracken, and Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. Marginal Revolution is sometimes political, but mostly about markets and economics. Fafblog and Neal Pollack (when he's blogging) make me laugh.

Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?

John Tierney, Anne Applebaum, Thomas Sowell, Jacob Sullum, Nat Hentoff.

What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?

I watch less and less TV news lately. If forced, I'd say "Capital Gang," or one of the media watch shows -- Howie Kurtz's show, or "Fox News Watch." The "Daily Show" is brilliant, of course.

What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?

Slate, the NY Times op-ed page, the Christian Science Monitor, Wired, and The Economist.

What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?

I guess I could just tick off the list on my RSS aggregator: Arts and Letters Daily, Hit & Run, Instapundit, Fark, Boing Boing, Catallarchy, Unqualified Offerings, The Corner, Drug War Rant, Eschaton, Eternal Recurrence, Gene Healy, Liberty & Power, Marginal Revolution, Matthew Yglesias, Metafilter, Snopes, Nobody's Business, Ramble On, Slashdot, TalkLeft, Tech Central Station, TechDirt, The Newspaper.com, Tom G. Palmer, Totalitarianism Today, Vice Squad, Will Wilkinson. Those are my dailies. I hit others about once a week.

How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?

I try to read the Washington Post every day.

How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?

I guess I'm not much of a blogosphere triumphalist. I really don't think there is (or will be) much difference between the two. Blogs are more an extension of traditional media than a competitor or alternative to it. They're simply a cheap, accessible, populist way of publishing. I think of them as an extension of the newsstand, rather than something that's going to make it obsolete.

I think much of the "blogs vs. MSM" stuff is forced. There's simply too much overlap between the two for there to be this clear line of demarcation. And blogs are often guilty of the same transgressions for which they so often rail against "old media." Many times, they're worse.

Don't get me wrong -- I think blogs are a wonderful development. And to the extent that they're keeping the established media on its toes, I think that's a good thing. I just think we may have very quickly gone from underestimating the power and importance of blogs to overestimating them.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Lithuanian Angle

U. Madison-WI law prof Ann Althouse posts a reader letter:

"Durbin is of Lithuanian descent. I don't know whether he's first generation ... or whether his grandparents arrived during the World War I wave. Durbin spent great energy courting the Lithuanian community in Chicago. Many Lithuanians fell under his spell and, for the first time, voted Democratic (those who emigrated in the late 1940s and early 1950s often voted Republican because they perceived that party as more anti-Communist). I suspect Durbin's comparison of Gitmo to the Gulag and Concentration Camps tastes particularly sour to this community, which was pinched on one side by the Russians and on the other by the Germans."

LEST WE FORGET: Real American Heroes

Children of the 1980s remember the "G.I. Joe" cartoon as well as the PSAs at the end, which advised: "Knowing is half the battle." 2 decades later, those PSAs have fallen into the hands of irreverent Internet pranksters with too much time and ready access to editing equipment. The re-edited PSAs, hosted at eBaum's World, are at least a few years old. Whether it's for the first time or the first in a long while, they're worth a look: Here, here, here and here. Note: Children of the 1970s or earlier may prefer to spend their time otherwise.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 22, 2005

6/22: Red-On-Red Dawn

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Sen. Dick Durbin's (D-IL) apology -- or to his critics, "apology" -- on the Senate floor last p.m. is the biggest story in the blogosphere this a.m. After about a week of coverage, the controversy surrounding his criticisms of U.S. detention policies may be nearing an end. Or maybe not: Neither the left nor the right seems very happy. Some pro-war conservatives say the damage is done; that foreign audiences already heard Durbin compare U.S. policies to Soviet gulags, etc. Others among them contend the apology did not go far enough. Many conservatives suspect pressure from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley figured into the apology. On the left, many are angry at Durbin for bowing to the GOP "noise machine." Many had stood by him not just because they agreed with his remarks, but also because he appeared to be standing his ground. Those who are not angry are at least disappointed.

Meanwhile, there's no shortage of interesting stories going around the blogs: New rumors are surfacing that AG Alberto Gonzales is now most likely to be Pres. Bush's pick for the next SCOTUS vacancy; Iraq, Gitmo and U.S. withdrawal are especially popular topics as of late; bloggers coordinate in advance of testimony before the FEC next week, and more.

TRACKBACKS: Durbination

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • Owing in part to prominent placement on the Drudge Report, the AP version of the story re: Durbin's apology is by far the most-read.

    >> Conservative Captain's Quarters: "Color me unimpressed. His fellow party members will now ask us all to move along. I'll consider doing that if they now will admit that Durbin's original statement slandered the military and debased the memories of those millions of victims that truly experienced what genocidal maniacs do with their innocent captives. If not, then they are just playing word games until they discover the right combination to climb out of the box in which Durbin has put them." JustOneMinute notes that the New York Times -- which had avoided much reporting on the Durbin kerfuffle -- did not mention Daley's criticism of Durbin, only "a steady drumbeat of criticism from Republicans." Conservative Vodkapundit writes: "I can guarantee you that Dickie's energetic defenders in the MSM and leftie blogosphere are awfully unhappy right now. He just cut them off at the knees."

    >> Vodkapundit is right. Here's lefty Greg Saunders at This Modern World: "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was a United States Senator responding to critics who justify the use of torture, you would most certainly believe this must have been said by a coward, a wimp, or a chicken who has proven himself incapable of defending the truth against an onslaught of right-wing badgering. Sadly, that is the case. The quote above is from Sen. Dick Durbin, who won't stand behind his own words... even when they're right." The satirical Fafblog!'s "Medium Lobster": "On behalf of all the torturers working hard today in the United States military, the Medium Lobster would like to say: apology accepted, Senator Durbin."

    >> Right-leaning Indepundit: "Apology accepted. Show's over, folks. Move along... It doesn't surprise me at all that I represent the minority opinion. I'll grant that it wasn't the world's greatest apology, but it's probably the best we'll get out of Durbin, and I don't see any point in rubbing his face in it any more." QandO feels the same way, as does Alexander McClure.

    >> Left-trending Bull Moose Blog hits on a point made by many Dems and liberals, that "the conservative mob surely knows that Durbin was not suggesting that the U.S. military was either the SS or Beria's secret police. They are merely pouncing on Durbin in order to distract us from all the bad news that envelops the GOP."

    >> Other disappointed lefties: People's Republic of Seabrook; Rising Hegemon; Corrente; Avedon Carol. Unsatisfied righties (and others): Michelle Malkin; Southern Appeal; Ed Driscoll; Spoons Experience; Power Line; Professor Bainbridge; Dean Esmay; The Jawa Report. The Political Teen and Jackson's Junction both post video of Durbin's apology.

WHITE HOUSE '08: Clark, Bush, Kerry ... What Is This, WH '04?

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas posts the final results of, and recaps, his WH '08 straw poll. Final results put Wesley Clark in front with 26%, followed by "No Freakin' Clue" (17%), then Sens. Hillary Clinton and Russ Feingold (10%) each. Writes Moulitsas: "While there's no way we can pretend that the Daily Kos community is representative of the Democratic Party electorate at large, this poll is a good indicator of where the Daily Kos community is at. The results didn't change more than a percentage point here and there from when there were 1,500 votes. ... Here's my bold prediction: the first candidate (or potential candidate) to come out for a full withdrawal from Iraq will get a huge groundswell of support. It may be one of these guys, or it may be someone out from left field. But it's clear that even among the Daily Kos community, those who voted for the Bush's Iraq War aren't being penalized. The two candidates against the war from day one -- Feingold and Clark, are only splitting 39 percent of the vote." He announces that from here on out, there will be another poll "every month (or so)."

  • At MyDD, Chris Bowers comments: "With [DNC chair Howard] Dean out of the picture, [IL Sen. Barack] Obama not running, Feingold weakened by recent events, and a generally centrist field, Clark with probably maintain his edge for some time. The benefits of this position are not limited to having the largest support among the netroots, as one has to imagine that much of Clark's support comes from the "old guard" among Internet activists. This could also provide him with experience and talent unavailable to other candidates." On HRC: "I have watched over the months as she has steadily risen in these sorts of polls here at MyDD. ... If Clinton runs for President, and is the second favorite candidate online, it is really, really hard to imagine how she will not win the nomination."

A reader of National Review Online's The Buzz writes that Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) once "lived a couple of minutes from me, and to the locals in the know, they know Columba hates all the trappings of power, and that running for Senate in '06 (let alone Prez in '08) was out of the question. I've even heard that re-election in '02 was iffy for a little while. That's why I found the 'Bush-Clinton rivalry continues in '08 with Jeb & Hillary' story foolish. It was reported by lazy MSM reporters that don't want to dig too hard for what the actual story is. Even the slightest of footwork would have quickly shown that Columba would veto any run for office."

Noting a 6/21 story by the New York Sun re: John Kerry's SF-180, Power Line's Scott Johnson writes: "When the Globe's Michael Kranish reported on Kerry's records earlier this month, I noted that Kerry was either the world's worst politician or that something was missing from his records. I believe that observation still applies."

Michelle Malkin notices Ron Fournier's "Clinton, McCain 'Gorillas' of 2008 Race" story, and points out: "TradeSports says McCain has only about a 1 in 6 chance of winning the GOP nomination in '08. Virginia Sen. George Allen is rated a slight favorite. Who do you trust more: Fournier or gamblers who are putting their own money on the line?" More: "I'd like to see the look on Fournier's face when the South Carolina GOP primary results come in."

SCOTUS: Chief Justice Gonzales?

National Review's Rich Lowry, at The Corner suggests a reason why the WH is not releasing the John Bolton documents: "[T]he White House might be trying to set a precedent in advance of a fight over a Supreme Court nominee who has executive branch experience."

At TAPPED, Jeffrey Dubner comments on Lowry: "If so, it would indicate that the administration is leaning toward a Supreme Court candidate with executive-branch experience: Alberto Gonzales, possibly, but also dark-horse candidates Ted Olson and Miguel Estrada. ... For any of these nominees, a failure to set a total-secrecy precedent on Bolton would make it much tougher to keep pertinent information from the Senate."

RedState co-founder Mike Krempasky: "I hate to write this. I've heard from several sources today that Al Gonzalez has been moved onto the WH short list for the Supreme Court. Look for a couple stories in the next few days. ... Want to make sure you tank the 2006 midterms, Mr. President? Just go ahead and send that name to the Senate. I know that I've always wanted to take up golf."

Election Law prof Rick Hasen imagines what might happen if Michael McConnell were to replace William Rehnquist as Chief Justice.

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Fox Hunting

TV Newser reports: "Multiple Fox News employees have told TVNewser that their bosses are not being forthcoming with information about recent insecticide sprayings that allegedly led to the hospitalization of an employee."

DC Media Girl fisks a column by Susan Estrich defending FNC: "So you're buddies with Roger Ailes. Excuse me, but isn't he the same Roger Ailes who played a part in sinking the campaign of your candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988, by resorting to crude race-baiting and demagoguery?"

Charles Bird at RedState wants to know why the Philadelphia Daily News and Los Angeles Times are taking at face value a report that "harsh statements" by Bush re: Iran's election resulted in "public affirmation" for the regime. Bird: "Says who? The interior minister? Considering that the legitimacy of the current Iranian regime hinged solely on election turnout, why were [the minister's] statements accepted unchallenged?"

In his online column, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz picks up on the debate re: the organization and efficacy of the left vs. right blogospheres, including the original post by MyDD's Bowers and ex-BC'04 webmaster Patrick Ruffini.

On 6/20, The Nation's David Corn posted to Romenesko's letter's page asking, "when should one media outlet grant credit to another for first reporting news?" Corn and reporter Jeffrey Goldberg had first reported on the fact that ex-FBI official Mark Felt had been in charge of finding out Deep Throat's identity; the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs had reported the same thing days later, without mentioning Corn's scoop. Later in the day, Dobbs replied: "I didn't credit his article in the Nation for a very simple reason: it did not help me in any way with either the reporting or the writing of my own piece." More comments are added above; these posts are still available on the main page. At his personal blog, Corn follows up: "In yonder days, bigfoot media could readily ignore the work of less 'significant' outlets." Not anymore, he notes. Now, "the Post seemed to place its hands over its eyes and say, 'we can't see you, we can't see you.' Adopting that stance did not give the Post's Felt piece more punch. It made the paper seem out of touch..."

IRAQ: Americans Are Anti-Bush And Pro-Gitmo?

A USA Today poll is a bit of a Rorschach test. The Huffington Post slugs it "New Polls Dismal For Bush..." Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin, Ankle Biting Pundits and Power Line point out that it shows most Americans want Gitmo to stay open. Daly Thoughts leads with both.

The New York Times reports that terrorists in Iraq "have been fighting each other" recently -- the operative phrase is "Red-on-Red." Winds of Change has a lengthy and reasoned post on the matter. WSJ's James Taranto: "If this is right, it would seem to vindicate both Vice President Cheney's much-maligned view that the indigenous insurgency is in its 'final throes' and the "flypaper" theory that liberating Iraq is drawing in terrorists and forcing them to face the U.S. military."

First Heather Hurlburt at Democracy Arsenal, and then Matt Yglesias at TAPPED, both attempt to delineate a set of propositions re: Iraq that Dems can agree on. Yglesias decides they will have to "agree to disagree." Libertarian Jim Henley argues a withdrawal deadline is necessary to stabilize Iraq: "To the extent we have a chance of achieving a good outcome in Iraq it depends on setting a date certain for withdrawal. There are two reasons for this. First, it concentrates the mind of our more-or-less allied actors in Iraq. It removes a major moral hazard in stabilizing self-government in Iraq. As it is now, factions can maximalize their demands on the assumption that Uncle Sugar will make it all work out somehow, some way. Second, if we set a date in the future and stick to it, then we keep the initiative. A preannounced withdrawal would be harder to represent as 'cutting and running' than an extemporaneous withdrawal under the pressure of events."

Lefty Steve Gilliard posts a joke letter to Power Line's John "Hindrocket" Hinderaker, writing: "It has come to our attention that your son has just graduated high school. Has he considered a career in the United States Marine Corps? Since you are such a shining patriot and supporter of our men in uniform, we would expect that your son would be an eager enlistee for armed forces..."

REPUBLICANS: At The Movies, With Lindsey Graham

GA GOP consultant Erick Erickson: "The RNC called last night. They wanted my money. Ken Mehlman just sent me an email wanting a donation in honor of the President's birthday. Let's just say I'm not a fan of the overall communications strategy being implemented by the GOP -- and in particular the White House. Most of my Republican friends are, likewise, a bit frustrated by a failure to move the ball on the communications front."

At TPM Cafe, lefty policy wonk Steve Clemons writes about attending a dinner party at MPAA HQ where Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) chose the evening's entertainment. Graham selected "Seven Days in May." Clemons comments: "What was bizarre and important that night was Lindsey Graham's preamble to the movie, which he admitted was among his favorites. Graham said that there were similarities between the political gamesmanship at play today and in what the film depicted some 40 years ago. He said that one of the reasons he worked to undermine those who wanted to trigger the so-called 'nuclear option' over judicial nominations in the Senate is that he believed that one branch of government was trying to subordinate other branches." There's more.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE: FECund Or FECkless?

Daily Kos announces that founder Moulitsas will be in D.C. next week to appear before the FEC's hearings on regulating political activity on the Internet, and asks for assistance: "So here's a research topic if you've got some Google time: here are the six FEC commissioners, half from each party. Care to look -- on their websites, or through Google -- and post here anything you can find that they've said (or subscribed to) concerning the role of the Internet in politics or the 'media exemption'? Each commissioner has on his website a list of prior testimony and speeches given ... Look there and elsewhere, if you can, and help me compile the materials that will let us know best how to prepare for next week."

Others present will include Duncan "Atrios" Black from Eschaton, Krempasky from RedState, and Matt Stoller, who blogs for BOPNews and Sen. Jon Corzine's official NJ GOV blog, Corzine Connection.

SOCIAL SECURITY: So Much For Personal Account-ability?

RedState header: "Bush Sells Out Free-Market Conservatives on Social Security?" Comments Tim Saler: "I think I'm getting a better idea of how Bill Frist feels right about now, being yanked one direction and then another by the President."

Kerry Kerstetter, at the Club for Growth's Social Security Choice blog: "What's risky for the Dems is the chance that Bush might receive any credit for being farsighted enough to tackle this long overdue problem. They would rather we all suffer than have Bush look good.

DOWNING STREET MEMO: Granted A Temporary Stay

Righty Mark Noonan of Blogs for Bush and lefty Loaded Mouth debate the DSM. Noonan: "I fully expect that ten years from now some lefty will comment on a rightwing blog that the DSM proved that Bush should have been impeached...this is set in stone for the left." Loaded Mouth: "How is it that Republicans always find a way to not only miss the point, but then interject a few wrongheaded points of their own that have nothing to do with the discussion?"

NYU's Jay Rosen writes, there is now a "Court of Appeal in the State of Supreme News Judgment, and everyone knows the initial verdict can be reversed. Reversal on appeal came last week for the Downing Street Memo ... about 45 days after the first story broke."

MISCELLANY: Davids Washingtonprotest

Davids Medienkritik, a right-of-center blog focusing on Germany and German-language media, announces a protest outside the WH to coincide with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's visit on 6/27: "We are fed up with the hate-America mentality in German media and politics. So we have acquired an official permit to demonstrate..." More: "Did you know that recently: Americans have been portrayed as bloodsucking parasites and locusts by Germany's largest trade union and members of the Schroeder administration respectively?"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Truth About Hilleary

Conservative Blogging for Bryant: "Is [ex-GOP GOV nominee/'06 SEN candidate] Van Hilleary creeping towards becoming the John Jay Hooker of the Republican Party of Tennessee? ... Hilleary, in an effort to spin his historic loss to Phil Bredesen in 2002, is trying to convince voters that losing campaigns is a strength. Unfortunately, his efforts are beginning to draw snickers from many Republicans. Most recently at the TN Republican Party Statesmen's Dinner his campaign circulated a letter stating: 'Republican Statesmen Howard Baker, Lamar Alexander, Zach Wamp and Marsha Blackburn all had to run for their offices twice before winning -- each becoming stronger because of their first race. ... Instead of facing Bredesen a second time when his party has no candidate, Hilleary has chosen to run for U.S. Senate instead. When he likely loses the Republican primary, what will he run for next?"

LEST WE FORGET: That's What Friendster Is For

Fishbowl L.A.: "At least once a week, the NYT Styles section prints an article that raises the same question within the inquisitive minds of readers coast to coast. "Is [quirky social habit identified in the article] a genuine trend, or did the writer just get the idea from some guy/girl he/she knows from [fancy liberal arts college that wait-listed me]?" Fishbowl L.A. looks into a recent article by Zoe Wolff and, using Google and Friendster as research tools, determines that one person in the story, "Scarlet," is actually Alexandra Kerry.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 21, 2005

6/21: Poll-Tested, Kossack-Approved

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

What's news today: John Kerry's SF-180 form finally becomes public record, Daily Kos holds a straw poll for WH '08, Sen. Dick Durbin can't catch a break, liberal profs debate impeachment, and the ghost of Terri Schiavo haunts the blogosphere. Plus, our latest Blogger Spotlight.

TRACKBACKS: DIY Army

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • A column in the Arizona Republic from 6/18 is only just starting to garner attention this a.m. Columnist Art Thompson reports under the header: "Dad picks up $600 tab to get Marine battle ready" that a son on his way to Iraq informed his father that "his superiors were urging him and fellow Marines to buy special military equipment, including flak jackets with armor plating, to enhance the prospects of their survival." Some believe it immediately, others are skeptical, while at least a few flat-out refuse to believe it.

    >> Democratic Veteran: "It's not new news that families have been sending body armor over to Iraq to keep their loved ones alive, but this is the first time I have heard of an official directive from someone's chain of command to buy their own body armor. To the tune of $600. Newsflash for all the overpaid pundits out there, $600 is probably pretty close to a paycheck for some junior enlisteds."

    >> Jason Van Steenwyck calls the dad a "sucker": "There are sufficient flak jackets in theater, with kevlar plates, to equip everyone in theater now. But they are not sitting in warehouses at Cherry Point and Camp Pendleton, dumbass! A departing unit gives them up in Kuwait and the incoming unit picks them up. Basic Class II stuff. I don't expect a pfc to know that. And I certainly wouldn't expect a pfc's dad to understand it when he's operating with second or third or fourth hand information. So why would a reporter believe him? Answer: Because this dad's story fits the template."

    >> For more, see: The Huffington Post; Balloon Juice; Ranting Profs; Rising Hegemon; Daily Kos; Light of Reason.

KERRY: Record Time

Power Line has Kerry's SF-180: "Via the Freedom of Information Act, a reader obtained copies of the Form 180s that were recently signed by John Kerry to permit, at long last, the release of his military records. I believe there may be a story about this in the New York Sun tomorrow, and no doubt more commentary will be forthcoming over the next few days. Here are the three documents that Kerry signed; on their face, I don't see anything wrong with them, but then, I'm no expert in military personnel records."

There are 3 pages, and they can be seen here, here and here.

Little Green Footballs, PoliPundit and Power Pundit and other conservative blogs quickly post the news. Slublog: "Come on, guys. Can we all just agree to ignore John Kerry? Kerry's Form 180 was fun during the campaign, but the guy is just one of 100 senators now. Just leave him alone and maybe he'll go away."

WHITE HOUSE '08: Who Needs Polk County?

Daily Kos unscientific straw poll since posted in the late p.m. on 6/19 there have been 11,581 respondents. Wesley Clark leads with 3105 votes (26%), "No Frickin' Clue" comes 2nd with 1969 votes (17%) followed by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) with 1268 (10%) and Sen. Hillary Clinton with 1248 (10%). Looking at KE'04, ex-Sen. John Edwards has 901 votes (7%) to Kerry's 300 (2%).

Matt Singer at Left in the West writes: "Kerry should gracefully bow out of the 2008 race, because he is going to get stomped. ... And it is safe to say that's not a name recognition problem he's facing."

Conservative Patrick Ruffini comments: "The dKos 2008 straw poll kind of bolsters my point about the wasted energy of lefty online activism. ... Take the most recent Fox poll: Hillary 44%, Kerry 17%, Edwards 13% -- Clark scores a measly 2%. The Kossacks are deeply out of touch with the rest of their party. But does that mean they'll be irrelevant? Hardly. Online buzz could be critical in positioning Clark, but most likely Feingold, as the main challenger to Hillary. The blogosphere might even be responsible for a shock upset in New Hampshire. But that'll be it. Online support might propel an out-of-nowhere Feingold to initial stardom, as with Dean, but it is unlikely to unravel Hillary's sixteen years of chits with the Democratic base, not to mention the $40 million she'll be transferring from her Senate account in late 2006."

BOLTON: Rebolt In The Senate

Liberal Steve Clemons: "The Senate spoke loud and clear today. John Bolton is NOT getting the approval of the United States Senate unless the White House fully concedes on the document requests that Senators have requested since April that might help better inform them as to controversial and important parts of John Bolton's record." Clemons blogged the Senate proceedings, which currently are still on his main page.

On the right, Michelle Malkin follows the Bolton developments just as closely.

Liberal Grey Matter: "I will be absolutely shocked if this arrogant, never-admit-mistakes small man in the White House withdraws Bolton's nomination. Instead, he'll most certainly act like a dictator and override the Senate, appointing his choice." Stygius: "Even if Bolton is unilaterally appointed, the great damage he could have done has been mitigated. Not bad for when sinking the nomination faced insurmountable odds. Surmounted, baby."

DURBIN: He's Certainly Made A Name For Himself

On 6/17, conservative ThirdWaveDave, based in Northern CA, called the Cap Hill press offices of several top Sens. for a response to Durbin's comment. Only SD GOPer John Thune's spokesperson was prepared: "Equating American Marines to Nazis is irresponsible and wrong. Senator Durbin owes our men and women in uniform an apology."

John Hinderaker from Power Line relays a call he placed to Durbin's office: "His staffer told me that as of this morning, he is standing by his statement comparing American soldiers to the Nazis, the Communists and the Khmer Rouge. There was one caveat, however: the staffer told me that Durbin never actually said "American soldiers," and that there are also contract interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. I asked whether Durbin was trying to claim that everything bad about Gitmo was the fault of civilians, and the army has nothing to do with it. She backtracked quickly and denied that this was Durbin's theory -- it would, of course, be an absurd claim since the military runs Guantanamo Bay and sets the policies there. Her evasion shows, though, how deeply dishonest Durbin's position is."

Power Line, Ace of Spades HQ and a few others link to an I [Heart] Gitmo line of products via the website Cafepress. At Daily Kos, "Armando" decides that the subtext is: "Powerline Loves the Abuses of Guantanamo." Meanwhile, A guest blogger at Ezra Klein's blog writes: "The first time I saw the "What Happens in Gitmo Stays in Gitmo" T-shirts, I thought some liberal group was selling them to call attention to prisoner abuse and to the government's ability to control the news flow out of Guantanamo. Furthermore, anything that makes people more aware of the existence of Guantanamo hurts Bush more than it helps him. As it turns out, the shirts are being sold by Rush Limbaugh. Don't buy them, I guess, because Rush will get your money and he'll just blow it on drugs. But be happy that Republicans will advertise our position by wearing them."

Iowa Hawk imagines Durbin writing aggrieved letters in his normal daily life, including this one to "Guiterrez Bros. Landscaping" of Arlington, VA: "Nothing could have prepared me for the shock that awaited as I exited the front door of my home early Wednesday morning, where I discovered that your lawn crew had cut a swath of environmental destruction across my yard so horrifying that it only can be compared to the Rape of Nanking."

BUSH: Do We Dare To Say Impeach?

U. TX law prof Brian Leiter wrestles with commentaries by left-leaning law profs Cass Sunstein and Mark Tushnet about whether there is sufficient legal ground to impeach Pres. Bush. Sunstein and Tushnet generally demur, to Leiter's irritation: "Shame on Professor Sunstein! Perhaps too many years of cozying up to the right has damaged his moral and intellectual sense." In the updates, he tangles with Volokh Conspiracy's anonymous writer "Juan Non-Volokh" re: comparing the U.S. to "Germany in the 1930s."

U. MD prof Mark Graber writes at Balkinization: "The greater challenge is convincing Americans that we have an amoral administration that unless it is replaced as soon as possible will do irreparable damage to America's reputation abroad, the only lasting weapon the United States can wield in the war against terrorism."

A post by left-leaning MoxieGrrrl gathers a number of comments: "I love America, and the reason I criticize this administration is because I will be damned if I will watch the country I love destroyed from within by spoiled rich bastards with overdeveloped senses of entitlement."

REPUBLICANS: Won't The WH '08 Primaries Fix This?

Conservative Enlighten-New Jersey: "Day in, day out the right-leaning New Jersey blogs provide an aggregation of news, analysis and opinion sorely lacking in the major media that serves New Jersey. The Republican Party, a natural ally of our point of view, one would assume, ignores us. No links on the NJ GOP website to right-leaning New Jersey blogs -- so content rich is the New Jersey Republican site, the party apparently is in no need of grass roots support."

CUNNINGHAM: The Fall Of The House Of Cunningham

At his blog, Josh Marshall has been closely following the developments in the case of Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), who received financial benefit from a defense contractor who has business before his cmte (see 6/13 Blogometer). This a.m. he highlights a report that Cunningham's contractor "forced his employees to make political contributions that benefited the San Diego Republican and other members of Congress." Among the other GOPers: Katherine Harris (FL), Randy Forbes and Virgil Goode (VA), Duncan Hunter (CA) and Rick Renzi (AZ). Harris received $10K, Hunter got $1K and most got something in between.

BYRD: Better Get All That Klan Talk Over With Now

Wizbang is one of several blogs in the past couple days to identify a corrrelation between the portrayal of the KKK in the "Mississippi Burning" case and in Sen. Robert Byrd's (D-WV) memoir. From the AP, a small-town mayor said that "the Klan 'did a lot of good up here' and said he was not personally aware of the organization's bloody past." In the Post, Byrd is described as calling the Klan "essentially as a fraternal group of elites -- doctors, lawyers, clergy, judges and other "upstanding people" who at no time engaged in or preached violence against blacks, Jews or Catholics, who historically were targets of the Klan."

Swing State Project appraises the Post story: "It's a pretty enlightening article. I think it also instructive for West Virginians, and Americans, to read it in the context of a Republican Party that still has Senators who refuse to co-sponsor legislation apologizing for the lynchings that took place during the biggest stain in our country's past. Senator Byrd was a co-sponsor of the bill."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: On A Wing And A Nut

Regarding Dana Milbank's story on Rep. John Conyers' "mock impeachment hearing," Daily Howler notes that Milbank used the work "wing nut" to describe people at the hearing, and asks asks: "When ha[s] any Post reporter ever used this term, we wondered -- in a news report, a news analysis, or even an op-ed column? Sp we conducted a Nexis search, and the answer was unsurprising; it's almost impossible to find a Post scribe using this term of high ridicule. ... Citizens will never get derided as 'wing nuts' -- unless they're concerned when a document suggests that their president lied their country into war."

Corante's Edward Miller, on the seemingly abandoned Los Angeles Times "wikitorial" experiment: "Reporting that the wiki has been shut down is the easy part. Letting people know whether the experiment was otherwise successful is the hard part, and no one in the traditional press seems eager to confront it."

FishbowlDC takes a 2nd look at CNN's "Inside the Blogs" segment under the title, "Don't Look Now: 'Inside The Blogs' Doesn't Suck"

SENATE '06: Stuck In The Midterms With You

Rittenhouse Review invites anyone in Philly to the local Drinking Liberally happy hour: "I understand Chuck Pennacchio, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, is planning to attend, providing a great opportunity to meet and speak with a future senator in an unusually relaxing environment."

A number of liberal websites take note of the numbers showing Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) with a comfortable lead over likely GOP challenger Rep. Katherine Harris. Jerome Armstrong, at MyDD: "Harris looks toxic. At least she'll suck up a lot of wingnuttery money."

SCHIAVO: Gone, But Not Forgotten

The Political Teen: "Senators Barack Obama and Dick Durbin are sponsoring a bill to stop the deportation of a war widow that is a native of Kosovo. ... This is all just fine and dandy, now. ... However where was Senator Durbin and Senator Obama during the Terri Schiavo death watch? They backed their fellow Democrats, who did not want to decide on laws for individual people. But what are they doing now? That's right, the hypocrites are trying to pass a law on an individual person."

On 6/20, conservative Damnum Absque Injuria wrote re: Michael Schiavo: "This bastard, whom liberals and 'moderates' alike have all but sainted for fighting tirelessly to starve his estranged wife, can't even bury her and put up a basic, respectful headstone. Instead, he added insult to injury" by having inscribed at the bottom: "I Kept My Promise." The author, "Xrlq," writes: "This story first ran at 10:47 PM EDT, a full two hours ago. Why the silence on the part of so many Michael Schiavo apologists?" In asking that question, he links to several right-leaning who disagreed on Schiavo, including Balloon Juice and Outside The Beltway. [Update, 9/6: Although we missed it, the final sentence quoted above was intended as sarcasm.]

SOCIAL SECURITY: Time To Remove The Tube?

Alexander McClure at PoliPundit: "It would be nice if Republicans call Democrats back to Washington early for a special session on Social Security reform, but that might be asking too much of GOP leaders who seem to shrink from confrontation these days."

At Gadflyer's Fly Trap, Joshua Holland quotes from a John Fund piece on SocSec that uses the phrase "lockbox": "Okay, so we didn't buy 'private accounts' or 'personal accounts,' but maybe -- just maybe -- we'll fall for calling them 'personal lockboxes.' This new spin answers a long-pondered question: just how stupid do they think we are? For three GOP senators and John Fund the answer is, apparently, 'very, very stupid.'"

MISCELLANY: You Know, Just A Bunch Of Stuff

BOPNews unveils what appears to be weekly feature, providing a weekend wrap-up of what a number of popular lefty blogs are saying.

WILLisms spent a day at a Houston hotel to monitor the Iranian voting set up for expats there, and reports with text and photos. He records a conversation with 2 Iranian women, one of whom was denied the chance to vote because she wore Western-style clothing. Both are critical of the Iranian gov't, and the poll workers use police officers to keep the women at bay. Eventually the hotel manager and an officer ask him to leave. The women advise against him posting the photos he has to the Internet, but of course he did so anyway.

Meanwhile, Publius Pundit has photographic evidence of manipulation in the Iranian vote in Iran.

Inspired by the new book from ex-CBS corr. Bernie Goldberg, "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America," John Hawkins at Right Wing News emailed more than 200 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to send us a list of who they considered to be their "favorite columnists". Representatives from the following 47 blogs responded ... All bloggers were asked to select an unranked list of 1-20 people are "screwing up" America and making this country a worse place to live." The top 5, with ties in all but the middlemost slot: DNC chair Howard Dean, filmmaker Michael Moore, MA Dem Sen. Ted Kennedy, Senate Min. Leader Harry Reid and Dem donor George Soros. HRC comes in at #6, with ex-Pres. Clinton further down the list. John McCain and Byrd tied for #13. Liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas from Daily Kos tied with others for #17; SCOTUS justice Sandra Day O'Connor tied for #23. Hawkins likes making lists -- last week he ran a list of the 100 Greatest Americans.

Within the last few weeks, left-wing humor blog Patriot Boy has started a button/label called "Operation Yellow Elephant," which is starting to appear across many liberal blogs. The logo features an elephant urinating, plus the slogan: "Because Ranting is Easier Than Enlisting." It began last week with a letter to Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), imploring him to promote enlistment at an upcoming speech before a College GOPers conf. This then expanded into the larger idea of showing up at multiple GOP-related confs. to "challenge the College Republicans to volunteer to fight in the war they demanded." Now he puts together a single post with an explanation, links and resources. This a.m. he reports back that the RNC has rejected their full-page ad in the conf. program, encouraging GOPers to enlist.

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Reward On The Merritt

Today the Blogometer talks to liberal legal blogger Jeralyn Merritt, founder and chief contributor to the widely-read blog TalkLeft.

What is your full name?

Jeralyn Merritt

What is your age?

It's not polite to ask adult women their age.

Where did you grow up?

New York

Where do you live now?

Denver

What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?

Criminal defense attorney. I've never worked on a political campaign. I blog daily for Denver's 5280 Magazine on local political issues. I write a weekly legal advice column for Lawyers.com. From 1995 to 2000, I regularly wrote the legislative affairs column for The Champion, the magazine of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. I was an MSNBC Legal Analyst from 1997 to 1999, and since then, appear frequently on Fox News and MSNBC programs.

When did you start blogging and why?

I converted TalkLeft from a news site to a blog in June, 2002, so that I could more easily address the injustices of the criminal justice system and the Bush Administration.

What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?

It's a tie between the detainees and Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse and the death penalty.

Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?

I don't have a set schedule. I write 10 to 15 posts a day.

Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

Markos of Daily Kos. I only read political and legal blogs.

Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?

I don't have one, I prefer op-eds and editorials.

What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?

They're all pretty much the same.

What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?

New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall St. Journal, Houston Chronicle, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News.

What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?

Atrios, Daily Kos, Instapundit, How Appealing, Altercation, Crooks and Liars. Atrios is always my first stop.

How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?

I read the Denver Post every day.

How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?

They will blend. Old media will have to embrace the citizen's media to maintain profitibility. It will incorporate what reliable bloggers on both sides are saying into their political and news coverage. I think within a year or two bloggers will help shape or determine to some extent the topics covered by the MSM.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: They Are Siamese, If You Please

Austin, TX resident Amanda Marcotte, at Pandagon: "The red state/blue state divide has ingrained itself so quickly into our national consciousness that people forget that Kerry took nearly 40% of the vote in Texas. [An article from Alternet] is about the loneliness Texas progressives feel surrounded by knee-jerk Bush voters, but I think that the way other progressives that hail from blue states can sometimes treat us like red state progressives are as rare as Siamese twins makes it worse."

LEST WE FORGET: And That's A Memo

Right-trending WuzzaDem imagines Bill O'Reilly grilling the waitress at his local IHOP: "You know, in the past Talking Points has been critical of certain decisions made by the IHOP franchise with regard to menu choices, however we've praised many of their successes, particularly the Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity Breakfast and the Country Griddle Cakes Combo. So we believe we've been fair and balanced in our coverage - would you agree?" The Photoshopped image of O'Reilly at IHOP sells the post all by itself.

NOTES AND ERRATA: U.C. Berkeley, I.C. L.A. ...

Yesterday's Blogometer described blogger Brad DeLong as a UCLA prof, when in we know perfectly well that he teaches at Berkeley.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 20, 2005

6/20: Bark At The Moon

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

In the blogosphere, memos have become a subject where one treads lightly. In 9/04, a few right-of-center bloggers exposed documents regarding Pres. Bush's Nat'l Guard record as forgeries -- a case that brought no small amount of attention to the blogosphere. Then in 3/05, the same bloggers (Power Line figures prominently in both cases) questioned the authenticity of a GOP memo re: the Terri Schiavo case -- that memo ended up being real, if not all it seemed, and it was those same bloggers that goaded the MSM into following the story.

This weekend we have a similar case: new reports about the handling of minutes from British PM Tony Blair's pre-war talks with intel officials, known colloquially as the Downing Street Memo (DSM), or Memos, considering that more have surfaced.

In a story on the DSM's "confirmation," the leftish indie news site Raw Story notes the documents' origin: "The documents are transcribed photocopies in PDF format and were acquired from a British source and corroborated by Michael Smith, the journalist who first received the original leaked memos. This site validated them through an independent source and with Smith." Raw Story makes no hint of a conspiratorial interpretation, nor did the month-old liberal advocacy Downing Street Memo blog. Meanwhile, liberal Tom Engelhart notes the MSM's "complete lack of interest" in the Downing Street documents.

But a 9/18 report from the AP also mentions that Smith "destroy[ed] the originals" -- which sent up the red flags. One of the first to challenge these documents is Ed Morrissey from Captain's Quarters: "This, in fact, could very well be another case of 'fake but accurate,' where documents get created after the fact to support preconceived notions about what happened in the past. One fact certainly stands out -- Michael Smith cannot authenticate the copies. And absent that authentication, they lose their value as evidence of anything." The post brings many traffic, and Morrissey adds 5 updates between noon Sunday and this a.m.

Another blogger pushing the story early was Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs; a typical LGF post will rate several dozen to several hundred comments; the last we checked, this one has 697.

Liberal Kevin Drum seems to roll his eyes, writing, "unlike the Killian memos that were at the center of Rathergate, there are quite a few principals in this case who either wrote or received these memos and therefore have absolute knowledge of whether or not they're genuine. ... So far, not a single one of these people has claimed they're fake." Oliver Willis thinks along the same lines: "Denizens of Planet Wingnuttia are now claiming that the Downing Street Memo isn't real. They were so right last time about those made up talking points, how could you not trust them?"

For its part, Power Line is more wary: "Given what we now know about journalistic standards in many quarters, and the lack of any meaningful authentication of the Downing Street memos, it is not surprising that some critics are questioning them. But, as I said, I will be very surprised if their content turns out not to be genuine."

TRACKBACKS: Hagel-Force Winds

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • No one story brought about the swarm this weekend, as bloggers were busy following Internet-grown stories. But more than a few paid attention to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), who criticized the WH and said: "The reality is that we're losing in Iraq." Many link to an AFP via Yahoo! report; some go with the U.S. News version.

    >> Neo-libertarian QandO, one of the few conservatives to offer commentary yet, is displeased: "Hagel voted for the war in Iraq, and now, when the going is a bit tough, hasn't the sand to tough it out."

    >> Liberal MyDD writes, "while it is good to see some cracks showing in the Republican façade over Iraq, how often over the past month has a comment by a major political figure or other been the big political news story of the day? ... As much as I participate in these spin wars myself and as much as I will continue to do so, it is not hard to see how this sort of inane "Gotcha!" politics can turn off tens of millions of Americans to the point where they don't even bother becoming involved in the process."

    >> More: Happy Furry Puppy Story Time; Corrente; Ranting Profs; Daily Kos; Oliver Willis; Eschaton; The Light of Reason; Raising Kaine.


DURBIN: No Escape

Nearly a week after his controversial Senate floor remarks (see 6/16 Blogometer), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) remains a lightning rod for controversy. Right-leaning Little Green Footballs and left-leaning TAPPED both take a look at his ongoing troubles.

A blogger on RedState: "Okay, I've read Durbin's non-apology, and it's nowhere near enough. In the first place, the Distinguished Senator does not apologize for what he said, but only apologized if others misunderstood what he said. This, essentially, says that given the chance, Durbin would say it again, if only the rest of us were smart enough to understand what he truly meant."

Liberal Seattle journalist Dave Neiwert: "It's quite clear, especially in full context, what Durbin was saying: That torturers who violate basic human rights and standards of decency are the antithesis of everything this country, at its best, is supposed to stand for; it is the domain of history's most horrid monsters. But that's not how the right is describing it. According to them, Durbin was claiming that all our soldiers are Nazis."

And lefty "Jeanne D'Arc" of Body and Soul writes in a post: "Can you tell, without peeking at the linked articles, which group of torturers is on our side?"

CONYERS: Does Anyone Even Remember Conyers Recently Hanging Out With LaRouche?

Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs: "At his blog, Congressman John Conyers, Jr., the Democrat from Michigan who sponsored Thursday's disgraceful, antisemitic mock impeachment hearing, is thanking the 'activists' at Democratic Underground -- the most openly anti-American far left site on the web, notorious for its sheer insanity." Johnson demonstrates: "Here's a typical thread at DU, in which the inmates work themselves up into a frenzy over a hare-brained idea that C-SPAN is trying to install CIA viruses on their computers: 'If You Watched C-SPAN'S DSM LIVE THUR - TROJAN ALERT.'"

DC-based conservative Bill Ardolino has a round-up of right-blogosphere reactions, accusing the Conyers crowd of "lunacy" and including "credit where it's due" comments re: DNC chair Howard Dean's measured response. Righty Pejman Yousefzadeh : "It's nice and noteworthy to see that Howard Dean is denouncing the dip into anti-Semitism taken in connection with yesterday's faux hearings on Capitol Hill."

NRO's Media Blog notes the divergent reports on Conyers' unofficial hearing on the DSM. The Washington Post reported that ex-CIA agent Ray McGovern "declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration 'neocons'" and said "Israel should not be considered an ally..." But the New York Times wrote only: "'Thanks to the Downing Street minutes, we now know the truth,' said Ray McGovern, a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years who helped organize a group of other retired intelligence officers to oppose the war." Spruiell is at least a little surprised to be praising the Post's Dana Milbank, whose reports many conservative bloggers regard as biased against them. Spruiell: "For their consistent unwillingness to report on the wave of insanity that has afflicted the Democrats, the New York Times is the subject of this week's Underreported News."

Righty Tom Maguire: "The new Public editor of the Times is Byron Calame ... I am sure he would welcome an opportunity to explain why the DNC chairman is disavowing anti-Semitic pamphlets and remarks from within his own party and the Times is ignoring it." Maguire runs Calame's e-mail address.

From the left, The Nation's Marc Cooper has a different take on the Milbank column: "Milbank might have ventured a bridge too far in his acerbic assault on Congressman John Conyers hearing on the Downing Street Memos. But the column is funny."

Lefty prof Juan Cole attempts to salvage the criticism of U.S./Israeli foreign policy: "American Jews were less likely to support the Iraq war than the general US population. So no one should blame 'the Jews' for the Iraq War. Mainly they should blame Bush and Cheney and Delay and Frist. But the case for an Iraq War was significantly bolstered by American supporters of Ariel Sharon (by no means all of them Jewish) high in the Bush administration."

Hawkish centrist Roger L. Simon wonders if the Dem Party is "breeding a new generation of Father Coughlins."

WHITE HOUSE '08: Running The Gauntlet -- One Long, Slow, Drawn-Out Gauntlet

Daily Kos has roasted Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) over his support for the recent bankruptcy bill, terming him "D-MNBA," as he is again mocked today: "He's got the inside track to president of MBNA. But of the United States? Well, there must a couple dozen credit card executives that would vote for him."

Re: Gov. Jeb Bush's plan to make further inquiry in the Schiavo case, JustOneMinute is incredulous: "Who is the audience for this?"

The New York Times reported last Friday: "Republican and conservative activists are behind a vigorous campaign to promote a controversial new biography about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, with some even suggesting that the book will help dash any presidential aspirations she might have."

  • Center-left Kausfiles responds: "The real story -- too subtle for a paper that has to dispatch a correspondent to cover conservatives the way they'd send a foreign correspondent to India -- is that the right-wing reception of the new Hillary book has been wary and remarkably hostile."
  • Conservative satirist Ace of Spaces HQ: "So, conservative bloggers are revolted by the idiotic slander, the conservative tabloid New York Post dismisses it as an amateurish smear, and even Smokin' Joe Conason acknowledges this. But not the New York Times. Oh, no. As far as their liberal-coccooned Upper West Side audience is concerned, we're "promoting" the Dickens out of it."

In multiple posts this weekend, Hugh Hewitt keeps the pressure on Durbin with links and analysis. He is not happy with John McCain's response to Durbin's remark, but neither is he surprised: "Senator McCain's mild handling of a gross slander on the American military is another step backward in his campaign for the GOP nomination -- even though post 'judges-deal,' his support among GOP primary voters is already low. It is tough to fall off a floor."

BOLTON: Just Plame Silly?

"Hunter" at Daily Kos: "It is middlingly possible that members of the Bush Administration knew Mrs. Valerie Wilson as wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. It is less possible that more than a tight handful of persons -- if that -- would have known Valerie Plame, covert CIA operative. The highest crime in the Wilson/Plame case likely does not revolve principally around who, precisely, shopped the information about Plame's covert status to Novak and other D.C. journalists: instead, it rests with who told that political operative -- the one with a full rolodex and the skill to select presumed-friendly leak points -- that Plame was a CIA operative in the first place, and worthy of attack. Among the White House political staff, there was precisely zero need to know this information -- and if classified intelligence procedures were being followed, no opportunities to find out." More: "It is undisputed among all parties that Plame's covert work involved principally the gathering of intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction, which put her at an important nexus of operations in the runup to the Iraq War. At another nexus point across town, during the same period, was John Bolton."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM I: South Knox Busted

Over the weekend, blog readers learned the identify of liberal TN blogger South Knox Bubba, who had previously written his blog anonymously. He turns out to be a "bank software designer" named Randy Neal, and he reveals this himself in a post occasioned by an e-mailed threat of outing by Knoxville alt-weekly publisher Brian Conley. Neal runs Conley's e-mail, as well.

Knoxville News blogger Michael Silence links to statewide reactions and comments: "I know people who know him. I never asked who he is. I saw no compelling reason to out him. The question was even posed from time to time at the KNS whether we should try and out him, and the answer always came back to, 'why?'"

Linking to S.K. Bubba, Atrios writes: "[T]his situation isn't about the right or expectations of anonymity, it's about a power imbalance between the owner of a local newspaper and some guy with a blog, and that newspaper owner using anonymity as means of intimidation. What a f---ing wanker."

Early this a.m., Neal posted in full an e-mailed apology from Conley: "As a public figure I have to accept criticism of my actions and of the content of my publications."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM II: Everyone's A Voyeur As They're Watching Me Watch You Watch Me Right Now

At the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington has been running a "Russert Watch," where readers are invited to critique "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert's lines of questioning and "formula." This weekend, Atrios gives it a push.

The New York Times' David Cay Johnston trades e-mails with the bloggers at QandO, who post excerpts and add commentary. QandO had been critical of a recent series by Johnston on class in America.

CASUALTY HOAX: Watching The Blogosphere Self-Correct

Sometime last week, a website the Blogometer was not previously aware of called TBRNews.org posted a report by a person named Brian Harring. He writes: "There is excellent reason to believe that the Department of Defense is deliberately not reporting a significant number of the dead in Iraq." Harring purports to report, "The DoD lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate almost 9,000 dead" U.S. soldiers.

Not long after, ESPN personality Jim Lampley wrote about Harring's claim in a post titled "The Ultimate Deception?" at the Huffington Post.

Word spread throughout the blogosphere from there, with Echidne of the Snakes, the Liberal Avenger and The American Street and others posting it credulously.

Before long, diarists at Daily Kos (see here and here) started warning others to stay away from the story, and bloggers such as Steve Soto and Seeing the Forest spread the word.

Pat Kneisler from casualty-counting iCasualties.org helps settle the point, writing: "[T]he Bush administration isn't GOOD ENOUGH to hide that many deaths. They haven't managed to hide Halliburton's over-runs. They haven't managed to hide the troop equipment shortages. And they haven't managed to hide their own ineptness in the whole occupation. Somehow the truth has a way of seeping out between the cracks."

Without linking to offenders, Daily Kos adds: "So please, just stop it. You do yourself and the anti-war effort no good by running with unsupported conspiracy theories that contradict the very hard reality-based work cataloging the effects of the war by our very own side."

THE NEW MEDIA: What Took So Long?

The Los Angeles Times announces that it has already suspended its "wikitorial" experiment: "Unfortunately, we have had to remove this feature, at least temporarily, because a few readers were flooding the site with inappropriate material. Thanks and apologies to the thousands of people who logged on in the right spirit."

  • Jeff Jarvis comments: "Wikis are about collaboration; you may disagree with your fellows but the mutual goal is clear. A wikitorial is bound to turn into a tug-of-war. So I suggested in a listserv discussion of it that there should be two wiki versions of the editorial: one for proponents of the editorial's stand, one for opponents; let them put their best stuff forward and may the best side win. It seemed to be that this would be like an Oxford debate, brought to software."
  • Dan Gillmor, on the wikitorials: "The trolls of this world are happiest doing damage. I wish the newspaper had gone ahead with its experiment, however, because in the end there are more good people than bad -- and eventually the good folks would have made the vandalism a pointless exercise."

Mark Glaser at USC-Annenberg's OJR has a column on the Contagious Media web traffic contest, including the fake pre-launch blog magazine Blogebrity, which came in 3rd. The Blogometer looked into Blogebrity and Contagious Media on 5/20 and 5/25.

  • Jarvis again, on Contagious Media: "Sometimes, once you find out that these things are hoaxes, don't you feel duped and used? ... The poor fools in the press who reported on it as if it were real -- and the readers who believed them -- surely felt used and abused."

Fresno Bee's Matt Thompson writes at Snark Market: "All right. I'm throwing down my official entry in the Name-the-Unofficial-Journalist sweepstakes. For those of you who have lives beyond journalism, interactive media enthusiasts like Dan Gillmor and JD Lasica have been in a bit of a muddle to find a term for the many, many folks who are now producing works of journalism, but are not employed by any media organizations." Among those being propagated now are "citizen journalism," "personal media," "stand-alone journalism" and others. Thompson suggests "street reporter."

MISCELLANY: News Or Something Like It

Weekend updates:

  • Liberal Al Rodgers' Sunday TV talk round-up.
  • Conservative Mark Kilmer's look at the Sunday shows, here and here.
  • Lefty Matt Yglesias' look at the op-ed pages.

Oliver Willis received hate mail from a reader using the N-word. The reader sent it from an identifiable AOL account. Willis, who is black, posts the address to his blog. Jesus' General sends a twisted, irony-laden e-mail to the AOLer: "Sure, we might be inbred, toothless, backward mule molesters, but, by God, we're white."

Balloon Juice starts a new "book meme."

In a follow-up to Dem Chris Bowers' thoughts on liberal and conservative blogs last week (see the Blogometer on 6/16 and 6/17) GOPer Patrick Ruffini asserts that Bowers has it exactly backward: "Bowers trashes the conservative blogosphere as 'aristocratic'" and 'anti-meritocratic.' But if anything, the tables are now turned. Ironically, it is the liberal blogosphere that has adopted the more corporate, top-down approach to blogging: to be heard, you must go to Kos, Atrios, and Josh Marshall. This has the effect of aggrandizing a few superstar bloggers at the top, but leaving smaller liberal blogs scrounging for the all-too-rare link from the top dogs. If you wish to strike out on your own, starting a blog with a flavor all its own, your support structure and your chances of getting noticed will be greater on the right."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: From Kropotkin To Hobbes

UCLA prof Brad DeLong, on the death of e-mail: "There has been a big change on the Internet in the past decade. A decade ago, the Internet seemed to be a place that exemplified the left-anarchist utopian doctrines of Prince Kropotkin -- friendly and helpful people coming together to create things for the common good, expecting that their contributions would be more than matched by those of others and that all would benefit. Today? Today the Internet seems dominated by people like -- well, like the proprietors of the Motley Fool, who don't care how much ... time their clients' emails waste as long as they can make a few [$$$] by selling her registration info. It is, to me, surprising how *many* people there are out on the Internet who do not care how large a burden their actions impose on others as long as they hold some promise of gaining them a trivial advantage. It's the State of Nature out there."

LEST WE FORGET: Fricking Lasers

The Blogometer wants a Solar Death Ray, although we're not sure they'd be legal in DC. The FAQ explains how the builders manage to harness the destructive power of sunlight. See the gallery, where the solar death ray destroys a shoe, a cell phone, Marshmallow Peeps, a computer mouse, a bag of Doritos, and other common household items.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 17, 2005

6/17: Byrd On A Sidebar

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Today we wrap up a relatively uneventful week in the blogosphere with another day of acrimony over what exactly Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said about Guantanamo, more discussion of a recent analysis of the blogosphere by a prominent liberal blogger, and another poll with bad news for Pres. Bush.

Meanwhile, today we unveil our latest new feature -- a semi-regular report on what's happening in the world of political blog ads, particularly those through the nearly-ubiquitous BlogAds company. Today we report that Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) has started running fundraising appeals on a handful of top liberal weblogs. The new feature is currently titled "Moneyblog," with all apologies to Michael Lewis; this is subject to change just as soon as we get a better title. Feel free to send us a suggestion.

TRACKBACKS: Digging In On Durbin

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • AP's Nedra Pickler reports on the latest in the flap over Sen. Dick Durbin's comparison of prisoner treatment in a "repressive regime." Now the WH has weighed in, with spokesperson Scott McClellan saying: "I think the senator's remarks are reprehensible. It's a real disservice to our men and women in uniform who adhere to high standards and uphold our values and our laws."

    >> Democratic Veteran: "The 1600 Crew, which is wholly morally, legally and in every other way responsible for any torture that occurs is both going for the 'you don't support the troops' card and blaming the military at the same time." Lean Left puts it: "The White House has joined the right wing chorus attempting to minimize torture."

    >> Conservative Michelle Malkin: "What America needs is for President Bush himself to directly challenge Durbin on his treachery. What President Bush should do is to call on Durbin to retract his remarks (not just apologize) and ask forgiveness from our troops and the American people." Captain's Quarters compares it to John Kerry's "razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan" testimony to the Fulbright cmte.

    >> More: Eschaton; PoliPundit; Daily Kos; The Mahablog; TalkLeft; Hoystory.

BUSH: Could Be Worse

The New York Times and CBS News report on their new poll showing Bush's disapproval rating rising to 51%.

  • Conservative James Joyner: "Things are unlikely to get better any time soon. With the likes of Howard Dean and Dick Durbin in the leadership of the Democrats, there is going to be no ratcheting down of the rhetoric. Nor is President Bush likely to back down on his agenda..."
  • Centrist Joe Gandelman: "There are two ways this can be argued: (1) This is a problem for Bush because he's not in tune with the American people. (2) This is a minor problem that needs to be worked on because leadership means bringing around the public to your way of thinking. Can you guess which perception is likely to the dominant one in the White House?"
  • Liberal Rising Hegemon writes, "the smell is getting bad and harder to miss. No matter how much you hold your nose. ... Wow, maybe we will start holding leaders accountable? All I can say, is go John Conyers... go go go!"

DLC's Marshall Wittmann: "Every day there is more and more evidence that the American people detect that President Bush suffers from Johnsonitis -- a chronic inability to level with the American people. The latest New York Times poll finds that W. is that 42 percent approval. However, there is danger that the Democrats will go off the deep end in their opposition. There was evidence of that yesterday in the [Rep. John] Conyers hearings on the Downing Street Memo."

Liberal Ron Gunzberger highlights a quote from a commenter on the Politics1 blog: "This Administration has an exit strategy from Social Security -- but not from Iraq."

From Editor and Publisher, a transcript of ABC News corr. Terry Moran grilling McClellan on whether the Iraqi terrorist insurgency is "in its last throes" gets linked by a few popular liberal blogs, including Crooks and Liars, The Political Forecast, CathiefromCanada and Daily Kos.

  • Liberal journalist Chris Mooney fisks a McClellan-led WH presser; the press corps. asks about ex-admin. aide Philip Cooney, who handled energy issues to the dissatisfaction of environmentalists and now works for ExxonMobil. Mooney quotes the transcript, then adds brief comments, such as: "Here, again, is that magical incantation of McClellan's: 'interagency review process.' It's as if his simple utterance of these three words is supposed to immediately stop all questioning and critical thinking." Another: "Nice job, Scott. You win again. These reporters don't seem to have mastered the issue yet."

GITMO: What's Not To Git?

Daily Kos reports: "The story from right-wing rag Washington Times earlier tonight sported this headline: 'Durbin Calls Gitmo a Death Camp.' Except he didn't call it a death camp. So they changed it to: 'Gitmo called death camp.' Which is interesting, because no one has called it a 'death camp.' Hacks."

Rising Hegemon follows a online dust-up between Andrew Sullivan and Markos "Kos" Moulitsas. Wrote Moulitsas: "The torture that was so bad under Saddam, is equally bad under U.S. command." Sullivan responded, "this kind of morally cretinous hyperbole only discredits the serious case against the administration." Based on e-mails received, Sullivan later allowed that Moulitsas didn't mean what Sullivan thought, writing: "The sentence, when re-read, is indeed unclear and could be read either way, I think. Well: Kos can clear it up. All he need say is that the torture that has occurred under the U.S., while nothing like as extreme or as widespread as under Saddam, is still reprehensible."

  • Right-leaning Vodkapundit makes note of the same, and links to My Pet Jawa, who has photos of Saddam-era abuses at Abu Ghraib (Warning: Very, very, very graphic).

Righty radio talker Hugh Hewitt: "Help me find a spokesman for the soldiers at Gitmo. I am looking for the spouse, father, mother, or adult sibling or child of any service man or woman serving at Gitmo. I would like to interview them on today's show about their reaction to Senator Dick Durbin's slander of their husband/son/daughter/parent. I will also be glad to interview any service member who has served alongside of a member of the military presently stationed at Gitmo."

Ace of Spades HQ has a mildly crude (and actually somewhat confusing) message for you to give Durbin.

MONEYBLOG: A Byrd On The Blog Is Worth Quite A Few Bucks To Someone

Friends of Robert C. Byrd Committee has ads through BlogAds -- which handles the majority of advertising on blogs -- running on a number of websites, including DailyKos, Talking Points Memo and Raw Story (not a blog per se, but the distinction is academic). The NRSC has been running an Internet campaign against Byrd (see 5/23 Hotline). Also notable: It's the first Flash blogad; previous ads ran only in JPG or GIF format.

Meanwhile, BlogAds' Advertise Liberally network -- assembled in mid-May so that advertisers can "reach virtually the entire liberal and progressive political blogosphere at once" -- this week recorded its first full buy. I.e., one org. bought spots across the full network of 59 blogs: Friends of the Earth, which sought the spot to run an anti-nuke campaign titled Nuke Retro aimed at the Senate Energy Bill. Partial buys have been the norm. BlogAds founder Henry Copeland tells the Blogometer: "Another piece of trivia: the trigger puller was Dick Bell, former blogmeister for the Kerry campaign." It's also worth noting that there is currently no equivalent conservative blog network organized through BlogAds.

THE NEW MEDIA: Speak And Be Hearinged

RedState's Mike Krempasky: "The Powers That Be at the Federal Election Commission have seen fit to honor my request to testify at the public hearings regarding the proposed rules governing political activity on the InterWeb." The hearings are 6/28-29, and others testifying include Markos Moulitsas from Daily Kos, CDT's John Morris and CP exec dir. Larry Noble."

Reporters Without Borders hands out awards to recognize the "best blogs defending freedom of expression." NYU prof Jay Rosen's media crit blog Press Think is the winner for the "Americas."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Refinery Tuning The News

WILLisms reported on 6/10 that ExxonMobil had sent a letter to the New York Times claiming the paper had deliberately misreported facts about the security at an oil refinery. The Times wrote in a 5/22 editorial, "a Times editorial writer had no trouble standing in the nearby park for 15 minutes with a large knapsack..." ExxonMobil responds: "It certainly appears that the Times wanted a report on lax security at the Chalmette refinery to support your editorial, so your paper simply suppressed key facts. The action taken by our security personnel was appropriate and professional." WILLisms adds: "The real motive for the Times is not safety; rather, the true force behind its misleading editorialization is its unhealthy engrossment with all things Europe, Kyoto, and global warming..."

  • National Review Online's new media blogger, Stephen Spruiell, asks: "Don't facts count in an editorial?" Spruiell corresponds with the Times' Adam Cohen (the writer with the "knapsack") and Times dep. ed. page editor Andrew Rosenthal, but not to his satisfaction. Spruiell posts the photos of Cohen at Chalmette, commenting: "He wasn't exactly off security's radar."

The rescue of Australian hostage Douglas Wood, mostly unremarked upon in the U.S. media, has gotten some attention for the way it was reported. Conservative American Barbarian: "NPR reported on the 'release' or 'freeing' of an Australian hostage today. Their language is purposefully vague because this man was rescued by Iraqi and American forces. Let's repeat that he was rescued by Iraqi and American forces. Certainly saying that in a report doesn't fit NPR's editorial point of view so they use the word 'released' or 'freed' so they can remain ambiguous. The capper was the statement, 'sources say that no ransom was paid.' Implication being that those sources can't be trusted. So NPR reports what representatives from terrorist or NGOs say without caveat but if you are an American or Australian you can't be trusted." Questions about NPR's coverage was first raised by a commenter at hawkish warblog Belmont Club.

BLOGOSPHERICS: The Way Blogs (Might Possibly) Work

Conservative bloggers continue to discuss MyDD blogger Chris Bowers' ruminations on the right- and left-blogospheres. See 6/14 Blogometer for 1st mention, then 6/16 Blogometer for the early reaction.

  • Right-leaning Llama Butchers argues that in the blogosphere, the "conservative/libertarian side has brought about NYTimes-Gate, Memo-Gate, the Swifties and other stories" with impact, while the left's biggest hit "so far is to bring about the rise of Howard Dean. That's a trade I'd take any day, even if it means I have to wear shackles."
  • Wizbang responds to Bowers' endorsement of Scoop by calling it a "shitty blogging tool" that "has become, in effect, a bought and paid for tool of the elite liberal bloggers. Scoop development is occurring, funded by Kos and others, and the byproduct of that work isn't available to you, the lowly blogger." Wizbang also criticizes Bowers' methodology for determining blog popularity.
  • Arguing With Signposts: "The left and right dichotomy is really growing tiresome for me. I realize that it's exciting for people heavily involved in politics, because you get to put people into 'our camp' and 'the hated enemies of freedom' camp. But the truth of the matter is, the left-right dichotomy is bogus. Breaking the blogosphere down into conservative or liberal is going to become increasingly difficult as issues become more complex and people are focused away from hot-button issues like the war in Iraq."

INTRODUCING: The Line On Corzine

Sen. Jon Corzine's (D) NJ GOV website includes the Corzine Connection Blog, which is primarily written by Blogging of the President co-founder Matt Stoller and allows for comments.

The Los Angeles Times' new Wikitorial feature went online early this a.m., with 1 editorial available for editing. With less than 50 edits gone by, the article has become more extreme and less moderate, contrary to typical assumptions about wikis. The original verstion began: "As the war in Iraq grinds on..." It now leads: "As U.S. aggression and occupation in Iraq continues..." One can see wiki editing in progress here.

The Truth Laid Bear, one of the best-known blog ranking systems, unveiled a re-design late 6/15. Proprietor "N.Z. Bear" writes: "As I hope will be apparent, a great deal of thought and effort has gone into this new release, which essentially amounts to a top-to-bottom redesign of the site, including oodles of new features." What's new: summaries of the "most-linked posts," pages organized by "specific topics," pages for weblog "communities," and a directory of blog "carnivals" (for more on carnivals, see 5/19 Blogometer). What's still there: the TTLB Ecosystem, arranged by inbound links and by daily traffic.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Losing China's Internet, Again

In what is mostly a bipartisan issue, Microsoft's business dealings in China have been widely remarked-upon throughout the blogosphere this week. Here's Mark Leon Goldberg at TAPPED, speaking for many: "I see that Microsoft has agreed to a Chinese government request to ban insidious terms such as 'democracy,' 'human rights,' and 'freedom' from the Chinese versions of its new blogging software, MSN Spaces. I don't quite know what to say about this, except that any transnational corporation is obviously required to adhere to the domestic laws of each country in which it operates. But Microsoft is more than just any old company, and Bill Gates missed an opportunity to take a principled stand here. It didn't take too much pressure to get Microsoft to flip its position on an anti-discrimination bill in Washington state. The same may well happen here if both sides of the American political blogosphere start denouncing its new blogging software, I would think."

LEST WE FORGET: What We Forgot

Cleaning out the Friday folder:

  • An amateur video of Norwegian soldiers singing "Kosovo" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Kokomo."
  • At INDC Journal, Bill Ardolino tries his hand at "abstract punditry."
  • The Six Figure Challenge: "Is it possible to make $100,000 in 12 months on the Net? Join me as I find out."
  • An iPod owner dresses head-to-toe in black like the silhouettes in the iPod commercials and dances around an Apple store during business hours.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 16, 2005

6/16: In The Future, Everyone Will Be Hitler For Fifteen Minutes

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

One of the big questions since the fight earlier this year over Terri Schiavo's life has been: Will this matter in elections since? We can't see ahead to '06 yet, but reactions to the autopsy report released yesterday prove the topic is still highly volatile, and somewhat hotter on the right. Lefty bloggers do chime in to applaud the report, but not as frequently as the right-blogosphere debates itself about the meaning of these findings. The conservative split over Schiavo has changed little in the months since her passing.

A popular link among many conservative bloggers is to a Washington Post column by Robert Samuelson titled "The End of Europe." The Blogometer avoids most issues of pure foreign policy; one can find multiple blogger reactions at Memeorandum.

Otherwise, it's still a bit slow on the blogs today: Guantanamo Bay continues to be highly controversial, accusations of racism and Hitler-ness abound, the left- and right-blogospheres discuss what each half looks like, does, and what it means. Plus, our latest blogger spotlight.

TRACKBACKS: Schiavo-ing The Moment

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • The AP reports on the Schiavo autopsy; the blogosphere converges. One worth noting is Blogs for Terri, which started in 2/05 and has continued on as an advocate keeping alive those in Schiavo's position.

    >> Conservative Wizbang: "Along with some seriously sloppy reporting on the autopsy (such as stating that the autopsy confirmed she was in a persistive vegetative state), one of the major memes played out this afternoon is that anyone who argued for Terri's life to be spared owes Michael Schiavo an apology. The other meme is that anyone supporting Terri is a wingnut/moron/fundie/theocon (pick you slur) for their beliefs." PoliPundit: "One repeated theme I heard was that the Republicans should not have taken action in the Schiavo case. ... Here is what some responsible journalist should have asked -- what about all the Democrats in the House and Senate that joined Republicans in trying to prevent the starvation death of Terri Schiavo? Is Tom Harkin a Republican? He was one of the strongest supporters of the action on the Schiavo case."

    >> John Derbyshire, himself a religious conservative, knocks down several "pro-tube" Schiavo arguments The Corner: "'1. No human life should be contingent as to whether or not another person gives it credibility or not.' So if anyone, in any condition, has a metabolism that can be kept functioning somehow, that ought to be done, regardless (!) of what any person -- spouse, parent, eminent neurosurgeon, judge -- thinks? Start building some real big warehouses -- you're going to need them." The Moderate Voice: "It's now official and documented: by the time Terri Schiavo's died her brain had shrunk and there were no signs of abuse -- nothing to back up the claims that she had been abused. In other words: nothing to CONFIRM the allegations -- asserted with absolute certainty by audience-seeking talk show hosts and vote-seeking politicians -- that her husband had abused her."

    >> Liberal Think Progress quote Bill Frist, on Schiavo recently: "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli." And the doctors yesterday: "The vision centers of her brain were dead."

    >> More reactions: Balloon Juice; Majikthise; Democratic Veteran; RedState; Secular Blasphemy; PoliBlog; Political Animal; TAPPED; Hit and Run; INDC Journal; Road to Surfdom; Kesher Talk; American Digest; Andrew Sullivan; LaShawn Barber.


  • Once again, the AP has it: the most-widely linked discussion of the House vote to strip library/bookstore record access from the Patriot Act's renewal.

    >> Left-libertarian The Talking Dog writes, "it looks like we may have finally exhausted the statute of limitations on the President's ability to repeat the word 'terrorist' like a mantra and get whatever the hell he wants..."

    >> Conservative Power Line defends the provisions of the act, adding: "Given these facts, and given that there has never yet been a case where section 215 has been used to obtain library or bookstore records, today's vote was symbolic, at best. What it symbolized was certain House members' commitment to "civil liberties," which, however, were never threatened."

    >> More: NewsHog; Outside The Beltway; Daly Thoughts; Happy Furry Puppy Story Time.

GITMO I: The Durbin Of Proof

Jeralyn Merritt reports, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) "is being attacked by right-wing talk radio and the White House for" a floor statement on Gitmo on 6/15. After repeating witness testimony of an interrogation room, Durbin added: "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners." Merritt approves: "Kudos to Durbin for calling it like it is."

But Wall Street Journal's James Taranto writes: "We are fighting an enemy that murdered 3,000 innocent people on American soil 3 1/2 years ago and would murder millions more if given the chance -- and according to Dick Durbin, our soldiers are the Nazis."

Daily Kos: "To the pea brains on the Right, incapable of reading the English language in its most basic, unuanced form, they claim Durbin is calling our troops Nazis. The Wingnutosphere is making that claim. Rush is making that claim. Hannity is making that claim. Drudge is making that claim. Look to Fox News to jump on the bandwagon tomorrow."

Separately from the Durbin issue, Power Line writes: "Is there evidence that anyone ever became a terrorist because we treat prisoners too harshly? Does it make any sense to suppose that someone prepared to take up arms against the U.S. will abandon that quest if only we provide prisoners with access to federal district court? We know from al Qaeda's own training materials and the ridicule it has heaped on the U.S. that it views our obsession with legal process as the laughable equivalent of selling the rope with which to be hanged. What reason is there to believe that those predisposed to join al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations view things differently?"

Gitmo II: Why Do We Think This Debate Would Be Less Hysterical If Held In December?

Conservative blog Dummocrats website will soon start selling "The Gitmo Cookbook": "If you're tired of all the torture allegations, of hearing the media imply that handling a Quran without gloves on is the moral equivalent of beheading someone, and of all the hysteria about enemy combatants, you'll enjoy the Gitmo Cookbook. It contains the actual recipes and menus for the food served to the Gitmo detainees, along with interesting facts about how American soldiers are working every day to treat prisoners humanely while still getting the information we need to protect ourselves. Baked Tandouri Chicken Breast, Mustard-Dill Baked Fish, Lyonnaise Rice, and Fish Amandine are just a few of the recipes you'll find in the Gitmo Cookbook."

  • Media Slander: "I can't imagine what our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are subjected to at the dinner table. And as for the torture allegations I've been reading about (staying awake, standing up, being poked), I suffered worse in boot camp."

RedState offers a modest proposal re: Gitmo: "We have three options it seems: (A) release them, (B) keep them, and (C) kill them. Given the three choices, (B) is most preferable for most of the terrorists. But, since the Senators will not stand for it, nor will the media or the left or most anyone else for that matter, we will not keep them. Let's kill them before they kill us is the logical conclusion, but it is not really the right answer. Know it all and holier than thou types in the Senate would suggest we let these murderous terrorists out, which is even more the wrong answer. Perhaps we should let them out. Then Joe Biden can explain to people why that was more brilliant than having these terrorists listen to Christina Aguilera while eating well in Gitmo in perpetuity when next they bring down more of our buildings and take away more of our mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. There is a war on."

DEMOCRATS: Number Theory

Righty John Hawkins presents a chart (courtesy DANEgerous Weblog) showing the "long, slow, steady slide" of Senate Dem membership since the 1960's. And "although there are peaks and valleys, the height of the peaks is getting progressively lower. Furthermore, now that the Dems have almost completely lost the South, the may not even have the capacity to get more than a seat or two above 50 for the foreseeable future." More: "[T]his is not a 'band-aid' problem for the Dems, it's serious business."

REPUBLICANS: Which Branch Of Government Is Tis?

Lefty Matthew Yglesias, on the lack of cong. investigations into the Bush admin.: "It isn't written into the fabric of the universe that congressional Republicans need to operate as White House stooges and block all oversight of the executive branch. There's such a thing as doing the right thing, and the fact that zero members of the GOP on the Hill are doing it is worthy of notice. In the Senate, especially, it would only take a handful of the people who pride themselves on their reputation for high-minded statesmanship and independence to actually demonstrate high-minded statesmanship and independence to make a world of difference."

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS I: Now It's Everybody's DD

On 6/12 MyDD's Chris Bowers wrote a lengthy post arguing that community-based liberal blogs were proving more popular than "top-down" conservative blogs (see 6/13 Blogometer). One blogger he singled out, PoliPundit, responds: "If a conservative blog allows comments, it is immediately overrun by juvenile, illiterate, liberal hecklers who ruin the comments section. We here at polipundit.com have been fighting this ever since I turned on comments, and only ceaseless vigilance has allowed us to keep the comments section open. If a larger conservative/libertarian blog, like Instapundit, were to start a Comments section, then the blogger would have to spend every waking moment policing liberal trolls. So the net takeaway is this: If you believe Bowers' reasons and PoliPundit.com's experience, liberal bloggers have more traffic because liberals have succeeded in heckling conservative blog readers into silence."

  • Not long after, Bowers replied: "I don't even know why I am bothering with this. I can't imagine that I would accomplish anything except encouraging more conservatives to use [the blogging software] Scoop, which would very quickly allow them to become more competitive with liberal bloggers. I'd rather not have that. Still, so far in the thread, I have found nothing but resistance to the idea of letting people post diaries and form a real community. I guess the simple fact that liberals use Scoop will make conservatives resist it into infinity."
  • Now others are weighing in. Centrist Andrew Sullivan responds to Bowers, writing "it's inevitable and healthy that with national power now exclusively held by Republicans, the left will experience a revival in the popularity of its journalism. I'd also say that it may be helpful to think of community, activist blogs as a different species than querulous, individual blogs like this one. ... Writers-who-blog are going to be different than online forums designed to forge new political alignments. There's space for all of us."
  • Conservative Galley Slaves: "It could well be that the liberal temperament is more predisposed to blog-reading than the conservative temperament is in the same way that, for instance, modern American liberalism is more predisposed to protest marches than modern American conservatism is. The size and number of protest movements, of course, means very little. In the 1990s, there were relatively few mass protest movements, but Bill Clinton was winning elections. Since 2000, there have been many big, impressive protest demonstrations by liberals -- yet they've been shellacked at the polls."

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS II: Double Dog VDARE

Liberal Avenger notes that righty Michelle Malkin "links to and applauds" Steve Sailer of VDARE, whom he terms a "White Supremacist." Malkin, for those unfamiliar, has Filipino ancestry. Liberal Avenger: "The Malkinites have no place for inferior races in the conservative-controlled future Utopia they are seeking to build in the ruins of progressive United States. These are people who we must watch closely. It is well worth taking a few minutes to see what is being published as 'truth' on VDARE.COM and consider the mutual respect between VDARE and Malkin."

  • VDARE Blog's Peter Brimelow responds to the general allegation of racism, albeit not the above-mentioned charge.
  • Oliver Wills heads his related post "Grand Wizard Malkin?"
  • Malkin doesn't respond, but does have a post about the proliferation of racism accusations titled "HITLER, HITLER, EVERYWHERE."
  • Conservative humor blog Beautiful Atrocities has been updating a post titled "IN THE FUTURE, EVERYONE WILL BE HITLER FOR 15 MINUTES."

MOVEON: George Bush Vs. Big Bird

A recent MoveOn campaign warns: "The House is threatening to eliminate all public funding for NPR and PBS, starting with 'Sesame Street,' 'Reading Rainbow' and other commercial-free children's shows.'" The Volokh Conspiracy acknowledges, "Congress is considering whether to reduce the federal appropriation for public broadcasting from $400 million to $300 million, as a step toward phasing out federal funding altogether," but adding: "Why is this misleading? Because such shows are not the sort of programming which need federal support to survive. These PBS shows are immensely popular -- and hence immensely profitable."

NEW MEDIA: Coming Soon: "Bernie Goldberg Is A Big Fat Idiot"

The new book "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken Is #37)" -- by ex-CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg is receiving pre-publication publicity, from INDC Journal, Captain's Quarters and others.

MISCELLANY: Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut, Sometimes You Don't

  • Little Green Footballs quotes the TAMU pres. disowning ex-Bush official/TAMU prof emeritus Morgan Reynolds, the 9/11 revisionist (see 6/15 Blogometer). LGF: "That's how you do it, academia. Kudos to President Gates. Time to expel the nuts."
  • Kos: "Why are dozens of people emailing me that Rep. [Jim] Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has introduced an Amendment to the Constitution that would repeal the 22nd Amendment? Who cares? That kind of amendment is introduced all the time. Amendments take years to get through the states. People act as if it's the precursor to the apocalypse. Really weird. I actually think it's a good idea. Term limits for our presidents is undemocratic."
  • Gay conservative blogger Gay Patriot, whose last post was on 3/25, has started posting again. For background on the controversy, see the Washington Blade's blog.
  • Kausfiles: "How could a McCain third party candidacy overcome the obstacle posed by the Constitution, which says that if no candidate achieves an electoral majority the race is decided by the House of Representatives, currently dominated by the two major parties?" Several offbeat scenarios are considered. Note: No permalinks, so ctrl-F "Sticky Wikiness".

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Along Came Poli

Today the blogometer talks to conservative blogger "Polipundit," the anonymous founder (despite what he/she says below) of the very popular GOP-leaning blog PoliPundit.

What is your full name?

Barry Goldwater

What is your age?

30

Where did you grow up?

Somewhere on the Asian continent.

Where do you live now?

Bellevue, WA

What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?

Software geek. And no.

When did you start blogging and why?

Just before election 2002. Got tired of e-mailing friends and family. My first big post was a stunningly accurate analysis of how the election would turn out.

What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?

John Kerry's SF-180.

Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?

Blog a few posts every morning.

Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

Mickey Kaus. And what is this "non-political blogger" you speak of?

Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?

Michael Barone

What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?

"Special Report with Brit Hume"

What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?

Slate, OpinionJournal.com

What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?

Free Republic, National Review.

How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?

What's a "newspaper"?

How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?

Dinosaurs and asteroids. Nuff said.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: One Approach To Blogging ...

Jeff Jarvis, at BuzzMachine: "Our new world of weblogs and citizens' media is all about possibilities -- many of them unrealized, I grant -- while the world of the big, old media is increasingly about worry: fretting over declining revenue, resources, audience, quality, trust. That is one good reason for big media to embrace the small, rather than trying to recapture the old: It's optimistic, energetic, new, open, growing, and fun; it's the medium in the better mood and that's catching. In short: Bloggers make better barmates."

LEST WE FORGET: ... And Then Another

Last week the Blogometer missed a particularly insightful post at the once-active but lately less-so right-leaning humor blog Mother, May I Sleep With Treacher?, which is worth reproducing here:

June 03, 2005

Blogging
What's in it for me?

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 15, 2005

6/15: There Are Slow Days, Even In The Blogosphere

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

How slow of a news day is it? Forget the fact that an ex-Bush admin. economist is making waves as a 9/11 revisionist ... Social Security is a top story. That's either good news for Pres. Bush, or simply evidence that not much is happening in the blogs today:

TRACKBACKS:

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • This New York Times header explains why the story beneath it is getting some attention from the left: "Ex-Bush Aide Who Edited Climate Reports to Join ExxonMobil."

    >> Happy Furry Puppy Story Time: "Everybody loves the 'spend more time with the family' excuse, last used in this Administration by George Tenet. Of course, in this context, it means 'threatened with bodily harm if they narced on anyone and then released into the wild to get a six-figure lobbyist job.'"

    >> More: MoJoBlog; Think Progress; NewsHog; The Moderate Voice; Amygdala; Sisyphus Shrugged.


  • The AP reports that Senate GOPers are again talking about raising the retirement age to 69.

    >> Conservatives tend to support this plan, but one at Outside The Beltway is nonplussed: "I'm looking for a little help/perspective on this one: when I started working at age 16, I was told that the federal government was going to take a portion of my earnings for my own good, but that there was nothing to worry about because I'd get it back -- plus interest -- when I turned 65. Now they want to back out on what at the time seemed like a contractual agreement. If they extend the retirement age, aren't they essentially reneging on a contract because they can't stop spending money on superfluous things?"

    >> TalkLeft: "Do we have to work ourselves into the grave to collect our money? Maybe if we didn't have a President who lied to us and led us into an unnecessary war at a cost of untold billions, the U.S. would be able to honor its obligation to its own citizens."

    >> Others: Burnt Orange Report; Spoons Experience; Fladen Experience; Skippy the Bush Kangaroo; Northwest Noise; A Green Conservatism.


  • A UPI report about ex-Labor economist Morgan Reynolds suggesting that the U.S. gov't conspired to bring down the Twin Towers raises a few eyebrows.

    >> Little Green Footballs speaks for many, writing that Reynolds is "now a full-time member of the Tin-Foil Hat Brigade." But Vox Popoli takes it more seriously: "It is always important to remember two things. First, the unthinkable is a lot more thinkable to those who are forced to spend their days thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong around the world. Second, there are thousands of conspiracies that are established in the historical record." At The Corner, K.J. Lopez points out that Reynolds has written on "9/11 Skepticism" for the paleo-libertarian site Lew Rockwell.

    >> More reactions: Say Anything; Infinite Monkeys; Wizbang; Ace of Spades HQ; Esoterically; Hit and Run; Best of the Blogs.

BUSH: Into The Fray

Matt Margolis at Blogs for Bush: "Bush ripped the Democrats tonight during a GOP gala in Washington," and he quotes from a news dispatch quoting Bush as saying, among other things: "Members of the other party have worked with us to achieve important reforms on some issues, yet, too often, their leadership prefers to block the ideas of others." Margolis adds at the end: "Thank you, Mr. President, for telling it like it is." John Miller, at The Corner: "Bush's speech last night was okay ... but one line condemning Democratic obstructionism really grated: 'It is the philosophy of the stop sign, the agenda of the roadblock, and our country and our children deserve better.' Umm, 'the philosophy of the stop sign' sounds like a pretty good definition of conservatism, whose adherents are supposed to stand athwart history and all that."

2008: Third Party's A Charm?

In a column for Real Clear Politics, New York Sun's John Avlon makes the case for a successful 3rd party bid in '08. Mark Noonan at GOP Bloggers doesn't buy it, arguing that indies "are Republicans and Democrats who, for a variety of reasons, don't want the Party label. They are registered as independents, but they are pretty much just like all other Americans -- people who are registered as independents run from left to right in the political spectrum; for anyone to say that a third or more of the electorate is independent and thus will vote as a bloc for one independent candidate is absurd."

DEMOCRATS: Go West, Young Dems

Daily Kos, on NM Gov. Bill Richardson's (D) Western primary idea: "[T]here's no doubt (in my mind, at least) that the Western states are critical to the future of the Democratic Party. And giving them a say on our nominee can only improve our chances in the fall of 2008."

Having read the Weekly Standard profile of "Bubba"-oriented Dem strategist Mudcat Saunders, Political Animal's Kevin Drum asks: "Seriously now, try to answer this question in a concrete way: if you were an average joe in a rural part of the South or the Midwest, how would it help you to vote for a Democrat? What would you get out of it?"

Mark Schmitt, at TPMCafe: "I've never been a Dean enthusiast, but my doubts about him have very little to do with the content of his "controversial" comments or the criticism of them. It's an ongoing worry about whether this is the right job for him and whether he understands the job, which is solely to build a long-term organization for others. ... The best DNC chairs have been people you've never heard of, or, like Ron Brown, you didn't hear about them until later. The job of building an organization is mundane, and the rewards are not immediate. The relevant measure of Dean's success is whether in a few years, Dems have vibrant party structures that can effectively recruit candidates and engage voters, and that are deeply rooted in most states and communities."

REPUBLICANS: Lynch-Pinned

America Blog has a list of the GOP sens. who "refused to sign the anti-lynching resolution." Chris Geidner at Law Dork works on a list of his own. Eschaton: "The evil little troll Jeff Sessions is listed as a co-sponsor even though his press secretary is claiming he wasn't because he was too busy in... France." Then, later: "CORRECTION: It's [AL Sen. Richard] Shelby who's getting Frenchified, not Sessions. So, some confusion here."

SOCIAL SECURITY: Doth Josh Marshall's Eyes Deceive Him?

Liberal Talking Points Memo is incredulous that the following lines made it into a New York Times story on SocSec. The 1st from the Times: "Actually, beginning around 2041 the system would be able to pay about three-fourths of the benefits due retirees, assuming there are no changes in the formula before then." And the 2nd: "[Bush] did not point out those i.o.u.'s are Treasury securities backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, and that the government has never defaulted on its obligations." TPM: "Credit where credit is due: David Stout in today's paper. Lucky for him [ex-public editor Dan] Okrent's not around anymore."

IN THE STATES: Primary Color

RedState, on the VA GOP primary: "[GOV nominee Jerry] Kilgore will be a very good candidate for the GOP as we enter the fall campaign. He is energetic, is presenting his ideas in a coherent format to Virginia voters, and he appeals to the inherent conservatism of Virginia voters. He will also do very well in rural Virginia, thereby preventing [Dem GOV] nominee Tim Kaine from repeating Warner's 2001 victory."

Daily Kos, on results of the (OH-2) special election: "[I]t is funny seeing Pat DeWine, son of the unpopular senator from Ohio, come in a distant fourth. Ouch. What a repudiation of the family name. Can this be a sign that Mike DeWine will face an even tougher race come next year? Not only is DeWine personally unpopular, but Coingate threatens Ohio Republicans with some serious damage. I mean, what kind of people lose over $200 million of the public's money in risky investments run by campaign donors? Ohio Republicans, apparently. Given how things are shaping up, how the hell can [Dem Rep.] Sherrod Brown stay out of the Senate race?

REED: Between Ralph Reed And Harry Reid, Are There Any Decent Headline Puns Left?

RedState's Eric Erickson shares more info on Ralph Reed's troubles in the GA LG primary: "Party sources predict that a prominent Republican figure will publicly call for Ralph Reed to withdraw from his GOP primary race against state Sen. Casey Cagle. The stated rationale will be that Reed, like [LG] candidate Mitch Skandalakis in 1998, could have a disruptive effect on the party's entire general election ticket if he wins the Republican primary next July." Erickson speculates this could be GA Insurance Commish John Oxendine "might just be a fit for that."

This a.m., Erickson reports at PeachPundit that ex-state Rep./'02 SEN candidate Bob Irvin "has done just that," but adds: "I don't know that 'prominent' is an apt description of Bob Irvin. ... It's somewhat humorous then that Bob Irvin should expect Ralph Reed to listen to him when Irvin did not listen to Ralph Reed [and clear the way for now-Sen. Saxby Chambliss in '02]. Reed, along with the rest of the party, was rumored to have put lots of pressure on Irvin to get out of the Senate race in 2002. There is a history there that makes Irvin's call today less credible."

CALIFORNIA CABLE: Leaderhosen

Right-leaning Boi from Troy: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) is "being criticized for spending $80 million on a special election, while he claims that if the system is broken, we should fix it immediately. But the real culprit is California's campaign finance reform! Since the passage of Prop 34, politicians are not allowed to campaign for ballot measures when their name is on the same ballot unless their personal campaign funds (with limited contributions) are used to pay for the advertizing. Were these measures on the ballot in June 2006, then, Arnold could not support his own reform agenda!"

Left-leaning Marc Cooper previews his next L.A. Weekly column at his personal blog. He writes about seeing Schwarzenegger announce the special election: "I started to wonder if Arnold, and his political handlers, have completely lost touch with reality. I emphasize the word 'watched' instead of listened because the jeering, and hissing and booing and chanting was so overwhelming that neither I nor the couple of thousand graduating students and their families could actually hear much of what he said."

BLOGS VS. WORLD: How To Blog With Impunity

The non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation has created an online Legal Guide for Bloggers. Key sections are devoted to legal liability, defamation and election law.

Jackson's Junction has the transcript and video of an interview blogger Trey Jackson did with ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich.

INTRODUCING: Actually, It's Green

Mark Nickolas, ex-manager to Rep. Ben Chandler (D-KY), has started a new blog: BluegrassReport.org, covering KY state politics and Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) in particular.

PeachPundit, referenced above, is a new right-of-center blog covering state politics in GA. It will be a multiple-person blog; already contributing are Erick Erickson and Clayton Wagar from RedState.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Vanden Heuvel Is On The Council On Foreign Relations, Right?

Liberal Stygius, on establishing a "progressive foreign policy": "Saying vaguely that, "we do favor the use of force to advance U.S. security and priority matters of national interest," isn't compelling, especially when followed by qualifiers and caveats. It's overly abstract. Those qualifiers and caveats are genuine, and typically correct; we need infinite subtlety to fight a global political war that is also a very violent one. But subtlety is for the foreign policy journals and strategists. America, F--- Yeah! is for the campaign trail; so let's get it on." More: "So instead of rooting around finding ways to reconcile progressive values with national security-speak, first embrace a couple of core premises: 1. There are a group of fanatic killers who want to kill as many Americans as they can; and, 2. Dead terrorists can't kill Americans. Internalize these premises. Believe in them. I have little doubt that progressivism can coexist with them; it's just a question of getting over bad universalizations about human goodness and political cause-and-effect that make one uncomfortable with the notion of killing bad guys."

LEST WE FORGET: See It Again, For The First Time

Left-leaning The Poor Man puts together a parody of conservative Power Line inside of 1 post. Based on a few headlines, you'll know if you'll get a kick out of it or not: "THE DEMOCRAT HATE MACHINE ROLLS ON"; "JAMES SENSENBRENNER: HERO OF DEMOCRACY"; "THE EVOLUTION HOAX"; and "BUSH -- THREE TERMS?" Parodic imitations of political opponents' blogs is a limited, but spirited, activity in the blogosphere. On 4/1, the Blogometer noted Rox Populi's high-quality April Fool's edition, wherein the site was made to appear as Michelle Malkin's.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 14, 2005

6/14: When The MSM Met The DSM

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

For the 1st time in months, a large number of bloggers address the Michael Jackson trial. Memeorandum provides a round-up here. The Blogometer avoids this subject matter, but we can't help noting Max Sawicky's attempt to write a headline in Varietyspeak: "JACKO CUT SLACKO GOES BACKO TO SHACKO WITH FLACKOS FOR SNACKO; HACKOS LACKO BLACKO ON WHOM TO CRACKO LEFT TO QUACKO."

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, the Downing Street Memo -- "DSM" in blogosphere parlance -- blows up, ex-Rep. Vin Weber (R) is rumored for MN SEN, and we bring you our latest blogger interview.

TRACKBACKS: It's As Easy As TCS, FEC Baby, You And Me

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • There's no middle ground on a report from David Sanger in the New York Times, which states that Pres. Bush and British P.M. Tony Blair had not yet agreed to invade Iraq the time the DSM indicated they had. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times' Mike Kinsley earlier knocked down the DSM in a column. As the Blogometer noted recently, the DSM has found some audience in the blogosphere, albeit not as large as some liberal bloggers would like. Conservatives had addressed it briefly or not at all. Today, thanks to the still-powerful MSM, everybody has something to add.

    >> Liberal Think Progress titles their post "New York Times Tries To Kill Downing Street Story." Speaking for many in the left blogosphere, Pacific Views challenges the "allegedly liberal Times": "Now, look me in the eye and tell me that this memo isn't referring to a done deal. Look me in the eye and tell me that by "no political decision," this memo didn't actually mean 'no public announcement.' There isn't any question of whether or not the US will actually go to war, just when. The only uncommitted party at the juncture of this memo sounds to the UK, and only for political reasons. ... Tony 'Chamberlain' Blair might have been undecided at this point, but a full reading of this document gives the impression that the only decision the Bush administration had yet to make was when to give the go ahead."

    >> But fellow anti-war liberal Marc Cooper disagrees: "The memo is the hottest topic on the anti-war left since Newt Gingrich was discovered cheating on his wife. There's even a boomlet of voices now arguing that the memo paves the way for impeaching George W. Bush. I call this a prime example of 'If Only' politics. If Only the masses knew eveything I knew... If Only the media would stop covering this or that up... then for sure there would be some outburst of righteous anger and opposition." More: "[I]f you wanted to believe or understand that two-and-a-half years ago Bush and his cronies were cooking things to make war inevitable there was ample evidence to do so at the time. I certainly thought so back then. ... Indeed, isn't this how Democrats spent the last two years of the Clinton era -- repeating ad nauseum that all politicians lie?"

    >> Center-right journalist Andrew Sullivan, a hawk with criticisms of Bush's post-invasion effectiveness, agrees with Sanger and Kinsley: "All the memo shows is one individual's take on what was going on in Washington. ... It proves nothing but that senior figures in Downing Street believed that the war was inevitable, unsellable to the British public and that there was almost no post-war planning. I guess it is slightly amazing that any senior government official can get three things right. But I'm underwhelmed." Captain's Quarters calls it "The Emily Litella Memo," writing that the new report "completely undermines the central argument of the Downing Street Memo," and that "taken together, it becomes apparent that British intelligence could not make up its mind what Bush had in mind for Iraq; it prepared two different memos with mutually-exclusive analyses."

    >> More opinionations: Corrente; QandO; Informed Comment; Daly Thoughts; Newshog; Balloon Juice; The Corner; JustOneMinute; ScreedBlog; Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal; Power Pundit; Pandagon.


  • At Tech Central Station, editor Nick Schulz interviews FEC commish Brad Smith on the subject of potential FEC regulation of blogs and other online outlets. Smith is sympathetic to bloggers' interests, but provides analysis that makes them uncomfortable.

    >> Right-leaning QandO: "QandO is, of course, a group blog. We criticize politicians directly. And we have a particular political point of view? So, does that make the three of us a "political committee"? Would we be banned from saying anything about a candidate, because our time is a "political contribution" to a campaign, even if there's not any coordination between us and any campaign? It was a great country we had here once. But every day, in so many ways, we're losing every one of the liberties the founders bequeathed to us. We are in the process of building the same system the Europeans have: A system where the limits to acceptable political debate are severely circumscribed, and political elites make every possible decision they can, while granting us an increasingly meaningless fiction of democracy."

    >> The sole prominent liberal blog to weigh in is heavyweight Daily Kos: "[I]t truly is ironic that we have Republican commissioners on the FEC talking about equity between the corporate media and citizen media on the Internet, while so-called 'Democrats' like [GWU prof Carol] Darr argue on behalf of corporate supremacy in the media sphere." Note: see 6/3 Blogometer for more on Darr.

    >> More (dispirited) reactions: Professor Bainbridge; Protein Wisdom; Brothers Judd; Instapundit; Dean's World; Winds of Change.

IN THE STATES: World Wide Weber

MN-based The First Ring hints that ex-Rep. Vin Weber (R-MN) may join the MN SEN fray: "You've heard it here first ladies and gents. That's what I've been hearing from longtime Republican Party activists since the defeat of Chairman Ron Eibensteiner this past weekend." As evidence, he notes that ex-Weber CoS Jack Meeks is available, having resigned recently from an RNC position representing MN," and that a Whois search for "weberforsenate" shows the URL reserved. The First Ring Notes: "Note that the registration was updated June 11, the same day as the Republican State Central meeting," where Eibensteiner was removed.

At Power Line, Scott Johnson reports on seeing a speech by comedian/possible future MN Dem SEN candidate Al Franken: "Franken struck some discordant notes. He leveled unpleasant personal attacks on Sen. Coleman, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. (... I think these attacks betrayed a satirist's nastiness without a satirist's humor. ... Can Franken shed the excesses to which he's grown accustomed as a talk radio host and political activist? Can he impose on himself the self-discipline required of a candidate for high office? I think his evident intelligence would allow him to make the necessary adjustments and play to his strengths. "

VA resident Patrick Ruffini shares his choices for the VA GOP primary, including a vote for AG Jerry Kilgore for GOV. He writes: "My vote ultimately comes down to one thing, and one thing alone (okay, actually two): Who can complete a statewide sweep in 2005, and who can win the governorship in 2009?" Commonwealth Conservative celebrates the arrival of primary day and promises to be active "all day and night with the latest news." Also keeping track is "Not Larry Sabato."

In a post we should have noted yesterday, at RedState, GA consultant Erick Erickson considers GA LG candidate/GOP consultant Ralph Reed's prospects, given his Jack Abramoff-related ethical problems: "No diehard Republican in Georgia is cold on Ralph Reed. Some feel betrayed, some feel like Reed was never really an "Evangelical Conservative" and some feel like Reed led the party to bigger and better things and we should stick by him now. The question I have is what do people outside the party really feel about Reed. ... Reed has an advantage in that he already has name identification and has (at least if you buy the rumors) a large bucket of cash. Reed's biggest disadvantage right now is also his name identification, but that could be offset by cash."

WHITE HOUSE '08: It's Not McCain He Do It, But McWill He Try?

At Slate, Mickey Kaus and Duke law prof Walter Dellinger debate the likely success of a 3rd party candidacy and the fortunes of John McCain in such a scenario. Dellinger: "I agree with you that in a three way race it is quite possible that John McCain could finish first in both the popular vote and the electoral vote. But that isn't enough. McCain would need 270 electoral votes -- an absolute majority. Otherwise, given the shape of the House in 2008, all the Republican candidate needs in a three way race is to finish third." Kaus solicits reader suggestions

BUSH: You Make The Call!

A bold post at The Left Coaster, presented as a matter of fact: "Here's an easy prediction: As Bush's popularity wanes and nearly two-thirds of the public disapproves of the Republican-dominated Congress, in the last two years of the Bush Administration bonfires will start blazing in the offices of all the Neocons who face possible arrest and prosecution as war criminals. Nervous about trusting that the electorate will send to the White House another cover-up artist like Bush I, who pardoned Caspar Weinberger for his Iran-Contra perjury (and thereby let Colin Powell off the hook as well) they will do all they can to destroy -- not 'seal' but destroy -- evidence that could send them to prison. Although there is much in the public domain, already, that would justify indictment of many of the neocon warmongers, it's probably just the tip of the iceberg. How much more evidence remains to be uncovered may never be known -- not with most of our pusillanimous press asleep in the White House shrine."

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: The Kossack Divide

Chris Bowers argues at MyDD argues that the greater interactivity of liberal blogs has resulted in their dramatic growth, whereas the "top-down" style of conservative blogs is depressing readership: "While it would appear that there are hordes of Glenn Reynolds wannabes among conservatives in the netroots, Redstate.org sticks out as the only success story for a community oriented blog within the conservative blogosphere. In fact, of the five most trafficked conservative blogs (over 200,000 page views per week), only one, Little Green Footballs, even allows comments, much less the ability to actually write a diary or a new article..."

Steve Gilliard, in his foul-mouthed way, defends Moulitsas from recent feminist criticism (see 6/10 Blogometer). Writes Gilliard: "Daily Kos is a business, and it needs money to operate the way it does. It's easy for other people to debate your actions when they don't have your bills." His comments are directed at a 6/6 post by Shakespeare's Sister, related to the "pie fight ad" mentioned in a now-infamous post at Daily Kos. Loaded Mouth observes: "Hm. That's funny. If profits are the main concern here for Kos, how come he's rejected an advertisment on principles alone before?"

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Y Marks The Spot

Today the blogometer talks tolefty Matthew Yglesias, who recently started writing a blog for TPM Cafe, contributes to The American Prospect's TAPPED, and maintains a popular personal blog.

What is your full name?

Matthew Yglesias

What is your age?

Turned 24 on May 18, 2005

Where did you grow up?

New York City

Where do you live now?

Washington, DC

What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?

I'm a staff writer at The American Prospect. Hard to say if that counts as the "mainstream media."

When did you start blogging and why?

Back in January 2002 when I was in college my then-girlfriend went on a semester abroad so I was bored and looking for a new hobby.

What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?

No favorite post, but I've been loving the Social Security debate in general.

Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?

I don't have a particular schedule, my job just requires me to read a lot of stuff and talk to a lot of people -- I write up my thoughts as they come to me in the course of doing that.

Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

Obviously, I'm the best political blogger on the planet, but I also like Brad Plumer. Unfogged, a non-political site, is probably the best blog out there.

Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?

Paul Krugman

What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?

TV news is pretty intolerable. Does the "Daily Show" count? Tim Russert's non-"Meet The Press" show on CNBC is okay, too.

What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?

Oh boy, quite a lot: New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, and a bunch of political magazines -- National Review, Weekly Standard, The Nation, The New Republic, Slate, Mother Jones.

What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?

Josh Marshall, Brad DeLong, Brad Plumer, Ezra Klein, Mark Schmitt, Julie Saltman, Democracy Arsenal, Crooked Timber, Unfogged, Marginal Revolution, Kevin Drum, Justin Logan, Jim Henley, Max Sawicky, Steve Clemons, Ed Kilgore are all more-or-less daily reads. Plus a bunch more on a slightly more irregular basis.

How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?

Now and again if the weather's good I'll sit outside and read a paper on the weekend, or when I'm traveling maybe.

How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?

I think the emergence of blogs is calling into question the utility of one specific form of mainstream journalism -- short-form commentary as you see on an op-ed page, a one-page column in a magazine, or a certain amount of front-of-the-book content in magazines. As far as news reporting goes, I think the current dynamic will continue. Bloggers will depend on working reporters to have anything to blog about. At the same time, reporters will be torn between annoyance at all the mean things bloggers say about them, and a certain sense of flattery to know that there really are people out there reading their stuff and caring -- passionately -- about what they say.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Happy Blogiversary To You

The blogiversary is your blog's birthday. Karol Sheinen's Alarming News turned 3 years old on 6/13; Michelle Malkin's blog turned 1 year old. The blogiversary is a time that turns typically hard-nosed bloggers a bit mushy as they recall their humble origins, and credit the blogger who inspired them. Malkin shares: "Two figures have had an undeniable impact on this blog, as they have had on the blogosphere as a whole: Matt Drudge and Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds. Though he disdains the term "blog," Drudge was and is the O.B.: the original blogger. ... Reynolds' blog was one of the first I started reading, and remains one of the first I read every morning. Whether you agree with his politics or not, he sets blogospheric gold standards for ethics, etiquette, quality, and output."

LEST WE FORGET: He'll Even Throw In A "Star Jones Is Thin" T-Shirt

Triumph the Comic Insult Dog mingles with Jacko fans outside the courthouse.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 13, 2005

6/13: Where's George Carlin When You Need Him?

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Among the problems with the blogosphere listed by critics are the supposed tendency toward gossip and a lack of sourcing standards. This a.m., the original gossip site, Drudge Report, has another wild story to peddle (about which more later). We'll leave the details to others, but suffice to say it's a hit on the Clintons. Yet the reaction from conservative bloggers ranges from mildly suspicious to extremely hostile; Matt Drudge and book author Ed Klein come in for more criticism than the Clintons. More than one points out that the story seems more likely to help than hurt Sen. Hillary Clinton's political goals. The only established blogger to defend any of the parties involved, it so happens, is a self-described moderate. (So far the left-blogosphere has ignored it entirely.)

Elsewhere, a report from a TN-based journalist who posts evidence of wrongdoing by TN Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) in the TennCare scandal seems like it may have the potential to get picked up by the MSM. Meanwhile, the blogs react to an MSM-reported scandal involving Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA). And much, much more!

Let's go:

TRACKBACKS: Wild About Wikis

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • Re: the latest sensational, unsubstantiated Drudge Report story about the Clintons.

    >> The approaching-definitive post on the subject comes from Captain's Quarters: "I'm no fan of the Clintons, but the Right has had its problem reining in its vitriol regarding Bill and Hillary since 1992. The last five years have seen that mostly disappear (and reappear as Bush hysteria on the Left), but with Hillary running [for re-election and possibly WH '08] everyone expected it to return sometime. However, no one could have predicted that former Newsweek editor Ed Klein, of all people, would fan the flames... If this is the level of professionalism we can expect from former Newsweek editors, small wonder we end up with Qu'ran-flushing frauds from the magazine now." Similar thoughts from Sebastian Holsclaw at Obsidian Wings: "This isn't about national security, it shouldn't have been anonymously sourced. And if Drudge is just blowing smoke (if the quote isn't really in the book) he deserves to be smacked hard for it, preferably with a libel suit either from the Clintons or Ed Klein." And then there's Dean Esmay: "I'm sorry, maybe this is giving too much information, but am I the only one who's ever had so much fun with his wife that we made a complete mess of a hotel room we were staying in?"

    >> An interesting dissenter is moderate U. Madison-WI prof Ann Althouse: "Is everyone aghast -- either at Bill or Hillary or Matt or Ed? Sorry, I'm not. I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that Bill Clinton really did say that. I hate to tell you, but there was a time when Boomer generation folks would use the word 'rape' lightly. ... I'll bet Bill once said 'I'm going to kill him' about somebody. Haven't you? And I'll bet he's said 'F**k you' and not meant it literally!"

    >> More reactions: PoliPundit; QandO; USS Neverdock; Ankle Biting Pundits; Ace of Spades HQ; The Conservative Cat; The Daily Spork.


  • The 6/12 Los Angeles Times includes a bullet-pointed note "To Our Readers" by ed. page editor Andres Martinez. One bulletin: "Watch next week for the introduction of 'wikitorials' -- an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials." This a.m., the New York Times has a story on the plan. It quotes ed. board editor Mike Kinsley: "It may be a complete mess but it's going to be interesting to try. Wikitorials may be one of those things that within six months will be standard. It's the ultimate in reader participation."

    >> If the announcement is meant to placate bloggers, the attempt is meeting some skepticism. BuzzMachine: "Sounds like a cool idea... but I think it goes up against the essential nature of wikis and probably won't work. Wikipedia brags about its NPOV (neutral point of view) enforced by the wisdom of the crowd and the desire to get the facts right and maintain a valuable resource. An editorial is, of course, not neutral. And so what you'll likely find is a never-ending wikiwar: yes he did, no he didn't..." Kevin Drum: "This is completely incomprehensible to me. That doesn't mean it won't work, I suppose, but I have no idea what the point is supposed to be. It seems like interactivity just for the sake of interactivity."

    >> Linking to one or both: L.A. Observed; Romenesko; PoliBlog; Snarkmarket; Blogging.LA.


  • On 6/12, the San Diego Union Tribune reported, a defense contractor with ties to Rep. Cunningham took a $700K loss on Cunningham's home "while" Cunningham was "supporting the contractor's efforts to get tens of millions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon."

    >> The lefty bloggers pile on quickly. Daily Kos: "Poor Cunningham. He can hang with DeLay and they can commiserate about how the mean liberal media won't let them be corrupt in peace and quiet." Headline at Patridiot Watch: "Military Industrial Complex Buys Congressman?"

    >> Of the few right-leaning bloggers to note the case, Cunningham doesn't get much help. John Hawkins at Right Wings News: "I can't say that I know" much about Cunningham, "other than the fact that he looks to be about as crooked as dog's hindleg. ... If Cunningham is honest (which I sincerely doubt), then he's too dumb to be in Congress because even a nitwit should have been able to see the huge ethical morass lying dead ahead. However, if Cunningham is not honest, then he's a crook who deserves to be tarred and feathered and then run out of Washington on a rail." Headline from BrothersJudd Blog: "HOUSING BUBBLE BURSTS."

    >> More: Talking Points Memo; Obsidian Wings; "Roger Ailes"; The Right Coast; The Sideshow.

IN THE STATES: Anyone Want To Start An Office Pool On How Long Bredesen Goes Before Blaming The "Submedia"?

Headline at the blog of left-leaning TN journalist Sharon Cobb: "BREAKING NEWS ON TENNCARE: Bredesen Lied. For The Good Of Tennessee and The Democratic Party, He Should Step Aside." Cobb writes: "A six month investigation into TennCare reform has unearthed some startling documents and disturbing revelations about Governor Bredesen and his administration's plans to blame the Tennessee Justice Center for the TennCare cuts, then as part of their political strategy, reenroll some of those cut from TennCare in 2006 -- before the election."

In posts here, here, here and here, Cobb posts portions of documents to buttress her report.

Earlier, Cobb had announced she would have big news on Bredesen and TennCare, attracting interest from right-leaning TN bloggers Bill Hobbs and Blogging for Bryant. This a.m., they follow-up. Cobb is impressed with her evidence, while Blogging for Bryant is a bit more circumspect. The Knoxville News' blog No Silence Here provides a round-up of bloggers mentioning the Bredesen story.

DEAN: Is Mad How Taking Up Space That Might Have Gone To DeLay Otherwise?

DNC chair Howard Dean remains a hot topic on the left and right alike. In defense of Dean, TAPPED's Garance Franke-Ruta posts a link to the "GOP: God's Own [sic] Party" bumper sticker photo at MyDD (see 6/10 Blogometer). Ruta later updates: "Just to clarify, it's obviously a very different thing for a rank-and-file activist to mouth off in this fashion than for a chair of a party to do so. Still, the obvious hysteria and extremism of certain elements in the Republican rank-and-file strikes me as highly under-reported, especially as compared to Dean's every casual utterance."

At National Review Online, TKS blogger Jim Geraghty quotes Senate Min. Leader Harry Reid defending Dean: "I think that all of you know that there isn't a single person, whether it's any of us in this room, or Governor Dean, or [RNC chair Ken] Mehlman, that hasn't misspoken." Geraghty replies: "Okay... where did Dean 'misspeak'? Did he mean to say that Republicans are the party of 'right Christians,' not 'white Christians'? Did he really mean to say, 'I ate Republicans and everything they stand for?' 'I date Republicans'?"

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "I don't want Dean to go over a cliff with this kind of stuff, but his reputation as a straight shooter allows him to say things that other people are only thinking, and his role as party chairman forces the press to pay attention. ... Initially, of course, it doesn't look that way, but guess what happens after the initial firestorm has died out? With news hook in hand, reporters will get to work. DoesJames Dobson control the agenda of the Republican party? Are Republicans overwhelmingly white? Do party leaders work against the interests of the working class? This is exactly where we'd like the focus to be: on our issues, not theirs."

  • At conservative RedState, Pejman Yousefzadeh scoffs: "The focus hasn't even remotely been on whether James Dobson controls the agenda of the Republican Party. It has been on why Howard Dean can't keep his trap shut when it might benefit his cause to do so. The Fineman article is but one example of that." Yousefzadeh terms Drum's argument the "If Only We Can Manage To Get A Little Angrier, We Can Win Elections" plan.

BUSH: Don't Let The Bastards Get You Downing Street Memo

Liberal David Corn wonders if there is "too much emphasis on the 'fixed' sentence": "I suppose one could read it to mean that ... [MI6] was telling Blair that the Bushies were 'gearing' intelligence and facts toward their desire for war. Or perhaps he was indicating that they were building a case for war with whatever facts and intelligence they could find. All of these possibilities come across as somewhat dodgy. But maybe [this] did not mean 'fixed' as in 'rigged.' There might be some wiggle room here for the Bushies. But the true impact of the [memo] ... is that it shows that Bush was not being straight with the American public..."

Righty Michelle Malkin: "A Republican anti-Gitmo brigade has been born." She lists GOP Sens. Mel Martinez (FL) and Chuck Hagel (NE), plus Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol. She writes, their "position amounts to a cut-and-run strategy -- panicking in the face of ill-informed, hysterical attacks from our military's enemies at home and abroad. Even if, as Kristol claims, unnamed [U.S. gov't] officials have problems with how Gitmo has been run, there is no question from the mountains of documents the Pentagon has released to the ACLU and others that the military tracks and investigates alleged abuses, and has taken corrective action when they are warranted."

Lefty "Billmon" looks into the Lincoln Group (nee Iraqex), the little-known, well-funded company providing PR. for the Pentagon in Iraq: "If I had to speculate, I would guess that having scored the big Pentagon contract -- despite just a one-year track record and no apparent PR experience -- front man [Christian] Bailey and his unknown partners sold out to a bigger firm (Lincoln Alliance) with the resources and bench strength to actually perform the work. This is as customary among Beltway Bandits as it is among Silicon Valley venture capitalists. ... It's a theory, anyway." "Billon" digs further and adds more speculation before concluding, "I'll just leave it where I began -- with the strong suspicion that political opposition in this country no longer just means fighting the Republican Party and its corporate and religious allies, but also the Pentagon and its multi-million dollar propaganda budget."

WHITE HOUSE '08: Dean Is Still Helping Kerry?

Longtime John Kerry critic Mickey Kaus writes that Dem friends "have assured me that John Kerry -- whether he knows it or not -- won't be a candidate for president in 2008. Lack of fundraising support will force him to drop out before then, according to this theory, just as it forced Dan Quayle to drop out the year before the 2000 primaries. But something's changed since 1999 -- namely the ability of candidates to raise money in small chunks over the Internet. If Kerry can raise enough Web cash early enough, he won't care if the big donors don't want him. ... Kerry's permanent campaign is a way to keep on raising money while he still has Web celebrity value, before his rivals declare. Then nobody will be able to Quayle him." Note: Scroll to "Quayling Kerry?"

DLC's Marshall Wittman writes at his Bull Moose Blog that perhaps the C.W. "is wrong," and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) could be on the WH '08 ticket: "He is thoughtful, measured and has magnificent political instincts." Wittman applaud's Obama's response to Dean's comments, where Obama said: "As somebody who is a Christian myself, I don't like it when people use religion to divide, whether that is Republican or Democrat ... We are at a time in our country's history that inclusive language is better than exclusive language." Wittman compares him to ex-Pres. Clinton, noting that both "were deeply influenced by the civil rights movement which was rooted in a progressive faith tradition."

DEMOCRATS: Hard Core

In a post titled "Our core values, Part I," Markos Moulitsas writes: "I did a little exercise. I listed as many issues related to Democrats as I could, then tried to figure out why I believe in those issues. Then I extracted the core values." He lists "Smart Government," "Privacy," "Conservation," "Opportunity" and "US Leadership," and then lists the issues that relate to each below them. He adds: "am more convinced than ever that people don't want to hear about issues, they want to hear about values. And not 'values' in the sense of religion or the 'I hate gays' crowd, but those values that inform where we stand on the issues. Things like 'privacy' and 'opportunity.' In other words, they don't care so much about the issues, but how you arrive at decisions about the issues." He adds in a "Part II" later: "I'm not advocating that the party or anyone take my values outline and adopt it party-wide. ... What I AM advocating is that someone DO this sort of thing. It wasn't hard for me to come up with a quick outline of my own value structure. The trick is for someone with authority to do so."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Pulling Frank Rich Though The Eye Of The Needle, In The Space Of A Minute

In a lengthy post, JustOneMinute's Tom Maguire fact-checks and rebuts a 6/12 column by the New York Times' Frank Rich, which accused the Bush admin.'s "neo-Colsons" of mau-mauing Newsweek and the press re: the recent Gitmo controversies.

Blogger bete noir CNN pres. Jonathan Klein, quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "If I had one decision to take back, it would be the extent of our coverage [of the Michael Jackson trial]. Looking back, we should have just covered the beginning and the end." At The Huffington Post, comic Harry Shearer comments: "That's the way I want my trial coverage -- no unnecessary testimony and evidence to confuse me. Just have the cameras there on the days the big crowds show up. And it's nice to know he has no regrets about the paucity of CNN's coverage of, say, the Downing Street memo or the Darfur genocide."

The news about Columbia Journalism Review bringing on Nation publisher Victor Navasky to oversee its operations continues to percolate.. The latest blog to bring the situation to a wider audience is Vodkapundit. The news was broken by blogger David M on 5/31; the Blogometer first noticed on 6/2.

The Buzz blogger Eric Pfeiffer at National Review Online points out that a new column by the New York Daily News' Mike Goodwin about Dean and HRC "uses two identical techniques found in my article on Clinton last week."

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: Huffing And Puffing And Blowing Up Their Credibility?

Right-leaning Punditeer: "The Huffington Post is fast gaining a reputation as the most noxious, overbloated ship of fools sailing the Internet seas. It now seems little more than an amalgamation of has-beens seeking rejuvenation, current and former politicians hawking themselves and their pet issues via self-written PR releases, and a neverending parade of uninspired scribblings on the shortcomings of President Bush."

  • One case Punditeer's Stephen Leary notes is ex-Rep. Paul Findley's attribution of the quote "We have an Israel-centric foreign policy" to Sec/State Condoleezza Rice (see 6/10 Blogometer).
  • Hawkish moderate Roger L. Simon: "The antisemitism card has always been one of the great standbys when you want to stir up a little controversy, but The Huffington Post ... may find itself getting a little more notoriety than it bargained for ... I would doubt they do much serious editing at The Huffington Post (unless it's of Arianna's picture) but this quote, if it proves to be either made up or seriously out of context, would call for a strong and public retraction. We'll see how interested in the truth they are."

INTRODUCING: Next Up, ConDEMplations?

Starting in late May, GOPINION (pronounced "Gee, opinion!") is an elegantly-presented round-up of interesting posts from high traffic conservative and right-leaning weblogs.

MISCELLANY: Bloggers, At Your Service

  • Center-left U. of Pomona student Jonathan Singer posts an interview with ex-Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) at his blog, Basie!. Simpson, on Bush's SocSec plans: "Well, the Democrats haven't put up any proposals. They don't intend to. So there won't be any Social Security reform coming out of this Congress in my mind. I testified before a House committee with Tim Penny. I've never seen such sarcasm and hostility. Michael Oxley, the chairman, and Barney Frank seem to have a good relationship, but let me tell you, I heard plain old sarcasm and caustic comments." Simpson, on GOPers not "going nuclear" because of later repercussions: "Like a giant wheel with a hobnail boot. You set it in motion, it'll kick your opponent in the ass, but eventually it'll get you too."
  • This a.m., right-leaning Aussie Arthur Chrenkoff posts the 29th week of his "Good news from Iraq" series. As the Blogometer has noted before, Chrenkoff's roundups have been especially popular with pro-war bloggers in the U.S., and is also available at the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.
  • At TAPPED, Matthew Yglesias posts the latest installment of his tongue-in-cheek take on the Sunday newspaper op-ed.
  • At RedState, Mark Kilmer provides a thorough round-up of what was on the Sunday shows.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Quiet Celebration

In a post titled "The measure of success," A RedState contributor reports on a 6/11 rally on the Nat'l Mall "to celebrate the cause of freedom": "Organized and promoted by the conservative activist group, Citizens United, the rally featured an impressive lineup: the outspoken actor, Ron Silver; Tracy Byrd, the country music star; an American Idol performer, Kimberly Caldwell; a wounded veteran, courageous leaders from Afghanistan and Iraq -- a fascinating mix of personalities expressing pride and patriotism. Huge screens were set up on both sides of the stage, with a powerful sound system to match, ready to display the events of the Celebration of Freedom and Democracy to the thousands upon thousands there to rally for freedom. Thousands? There were 50. I counted."

LEST WE FORGET: Radical Chic & Mao-Maoing The Flak-Catchers

The lefty Fafblog, which bills itself as "the whole worlds [sic] only source for Fafblog," maintains a rotating "Picture of the Week" in its top-left column. This week's picture -- which is best seen in its native environment -- is a representation of a ginormous Chairman Mao looming over the proletariat masses. Caption: "Exposed to mysterious nuclear radiation, an ordinary chairman of the Chinese Communist Party swells to monstrous proportions and plunges into the ocean to satisfy his terrible hunger! Beware the coming of MEGAMAO!"

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 10, 2005

6/10: It's The MSM Vs. ... The MSM!

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Interestingly enough, several items floating across the Blogometer's radar screen involve at least 1 individual from the MSM using the blogosphere as a back channel via which to criticize another member of the media. In unrelated events, a Newsweek columnist goes after a FNC honcho, and the back story to a Washington Post article slamming an FNC anchor gets out. And there's lots about DNC chair Howard Dean, Guantanamo Bay and John Kerry's grades. Not to mention, plenty of internecine warfare on the blog scene.

TRACKBACKS: Brian Wilson's "Smile"

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • A report in the Washington Post titled "Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable" seems to be getting the most attention this a.m. More liberals link to it by about a ratio of 2 to 1.

    >> Liberal expat Avedon Carol: "What's really astonishing ... is not the depressing story it tells. What's astonishing is that it's on the front page of The Washington Post. What a shame it wasn't there a year ago." Others, including Rising Hegemon are more irreverent: "Yes, the insurgency in its last throes ... and Santa's coming this year finally too!"

    >> Conservative Ranting Profs: "At long last, the Post takes advantage of its enormous advantage over other outlets -- reporters fluent in Arabic -- and attempts to do real, honest to God, first hand, eyewitness reporting on Iraqi forces, embedding with them, rather than the other side." More: "The report is not encouraging ... But it is an important piece." But Right Wing News disagrees: "The whole piece is designed to convince the [Post]'s readers that the Iraqis are hopeless losers who'll never be able to defend their own country."

    >> More: Political Animal; Needlenose; Suburban Guerilla; Eschaton; DailyKos; ParaPundit; Informed Comment; Outside The Beltway.


  • On Capitol Hill yesterday, Dean was upstaged by the media horde trying to get to him, including an "insistent" Brian Wilson of FNC, as reported by the Post's Mark Leibovich.

    >> Captain's Quarters, on Leibovich: "So why did Leibovich single out Fox News and Brian Wilson? Could it have been an effort to prove [IL Dem Sen.] Dick Durbin's silly allegation that the entire news media takes its cues from Fox?"

    >> At Wonkette, Greg Beato posts the text of an e-mail from a Hill staffer who was present. In part, it says Wilson was "angrily interrupting reporters and shouting questions out of turn. After an initial swarm, reporters squeeze out of the door. Brian Wilson was wearing no credential of any kind (apparently that wasn't a red flag to anyone) and behaving bizarrely angry as noted above so Mark Leibovich asked who he was. Wilson went nuts responding to Mark (whose credentials were clearly on display) Who the f--- are you?"

    >> More: Michelle Malkin; TV Newser; Romenesko; Political Wire.


  • As the AP reports, Judge William Pryor is the latest of Pres. Bush's prev. filibustered nominees to be confirmed.

    >> Moderate Joe Gandelman: "So one part of the deal is working: the part of the deal that benefits the GOP. Soon the Senate will get a nominee that the Democrats object to and the REAL test will begin" Left-leaning Jeralyn Merritt: "The Senate will take up William Myers next, whom I refer to as the "fall guy" in the Senate compromise. He'll probably be confirmed -- the compromisers just didn't guarantee it." Right-leaning Election Projection/Intermission 2005: "That filibuster deal is looking sweeter by the day!"

    >> Scared Monkeys, Southern Appeal, Blogs for Bush, and RedState take notice as well. So does lefty Steve Soto, a little less enthusiastically.

GUANTANAMO: No Amnesty For Amnesty

Syndie columnist John Leo: "In a press release that most reporters ignored, the group also invited foreign governments to snatch certain visiting American officials off the streets and bring them to trial for crimes against humanity." Among the "suggested snatchees": Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Tenet, "and other unnamed civilian and military officials." Captain's Quarters notices that this fact has been "mostly ignored": "I have been unable to find the press release itself, but I have found plenty of approving references to the statement from left-wing websites such as Common Dreams, TruthOut, and Antiwar.com." Little Green Footballs notes that it made mention of the release on 5/26, linking to an online report that day on Amnesty's call for Bush and others to be "probed."

Moderate Sullivan: "I don't believe the military's account of how a Koran got splattered by a guard's urine. The reason is not that I have completely lost trust in the military's credibility (although I have a lot less faith than I did a couple of years ago, and that goes for Pat Tillman's parents as well). It's that the story, in its face, seems like something obviously made up." He goes into details, then asks: "Have I missed something? Or is this as laughable on its face as it appears to be?"

UCLA prof Eugene Volokh challenges a statement by Israel critic/ex-Rep. Paul Findley at the Huffington Post; Findley quotes Sec/State Condoleezza Rice as saying: ""We have an Israel-centric foreign policy." Volokh cannot find the quote, only a potential misinterpretation, and solicits input.

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Kerry, Quite Contrary

Right-leaning Independent Sources, on why Los Angeles Times "in an 853 word piece, LA Times staff writer Stephen Braun manages to avoid any reference at all to the biggest piece of news [Kerry's lackluster grades] to come out of Kerry's long-delayed release of his Navy records. He writes that the records 'contained no bombshells, and his enemies were still not satisfied.' Braun uses much of the piece to beat on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. ... Does the LA Times story -- or, rather, non-story -- reflect its lefty bias? Probably. But in this case they are even farther out than the NY Times and the Washington Post, which can still recognize a good story when they see it."

  • Slate's Mickey Kaus: "Why would Kerry not just make a clean release to everyone? I suppose he might not want his enemies poring over the documents for discrepancies they can use to keep the story alive. But that consideration would seem to be outweighed by the suspicions the limited release creates. ... A lot of clever thinking seems to have gone into that Form 180 signing."
  • JustOneMinute: "We Need A Hero! Which is to say, if the WaPo can file a FOIA request, anyone can. And, depending in what Kerry signed, the Navy Personnel Command may be more forthcoming. Or, if not, that is a good hint about what Kerry actually authorized." Requirements: someone who "is not afraid of forms," "has enough clout that the Navy will respond in this geologic era," and "has the resources to follow through."

Michelle Malkin follows up on a 6/8 post titled "SCREAMING ISLAMISTS IN NYC DESECRATE FLAG...MSM YAWNS." She writes this a.m.: "The video of screaming Islamists desecrating the American flag on a NYC sidewalk still hasn't gotten any MSM attention. But the Islamists are watching closely -- and now they've issued a threat against Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, who first publicized the video..."

BuzzMachine: "Do we smell a trend: A week ago, Tom Brokaw got into Iran for a series of reports and now ABC News is getting into North Korea."

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: Firing Rangel, Boiling Bloggers And Oliver Twisted

Conservatives MaxedOutMama, Florida Cracker point out a thread at the left-wing Democratic Underground message board from earlier this week castigating Markos Moulitsas for: 1) (briefly) running a racy BlogAd for a reality show, dismissing complaints, then partially retracting (see 6/7 Blogometer). As the DU commenter notes, DailyKos has had "a major dustup over feminism" where "[m]any feminists have left the site in anger. I spent some time last night reading the threads. All I can say is that we have much work to do in the progressive community." Another commenter castigates Moulitsas is not an "educable male" but instead is "fully entrenched in his sexist ways -- addicted to certain sexist attitudes and behaviors -- and absolutely unwilling to give up any more of them than he already (thinks he) has." Meanwhile, Women Kossacks, the DailyKos splinter site mentioned on 6/7, seems to have suspended activities. Conservative INDC Journal gives the debate a wider airing on the right, and links to other blogs that mock the situation.

NYC-based James Wolcott, on Iraq hawk bloggers: "I'm amused, amazed, and annoyed that bloggers thousands of miles away from the actual death and destruction chide the rest of us for "not getting it" and wanting to bury our heads in the sandtrap when, as Sir Lancelot notes, New Yorkers themselves have a saner, wider, calmer perspective as the years pass. And unlike so many of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, New Yorkers don't have the luxury of or inclination to demonize Arabs and Muslims and hat-tip Michelle Malkin or run sceered every time a couple of Them materialize in our visual field."

At QandO, libertarian Jon Henke chides liberal blogger Oliver Willis: "If you recall, when [GOP PA Sen.] Rick Santorum made a similarly offensive 'Hitler' comparison a few weeks ago, Oliver Willis noted a few right wing blogs and wrote: 'Not one of these blogs has a single word on Rick Santorum calling the entire Democratic party Nazis. That's how they work, folks. This is how they do it." When Instapundit, the very next morning, put up a post decrying Santorum's remarks, Willis wrote [in that post's comments] 'Yeah it just took him 24 hours to do it.' In the interest of fairness, I'll note that it's been 24 hours since [Dem NY Rep.] CharlieRangel's remarks , with not 'a single word' from Oliver Willis on Rangel's comment. It's also been over 3 months since [WV Dem] Senator [Robert] Byrd's Hitler comparison, without 'a single word' from Oliver on that front. ... That's how he works, folks. That's how he does it."

FNC: Another Back Channel Battle

Newsweek's Jon Alter writes at The Huffington Post writes, after publishing a satirical column which "sideswiped lots of people in today's media" including FNC chair Roger Ailes. Now, Alter reports, he has "heard that [Ailes'] stooges were out peddling a story to the press that I was guilty of a conflict-of-interest and should have disclosed in my column" that he had previously sought work at FNC. Alter defends himself, dishes on a meeting he had with Ailes, and concludes: "He assumes his adversaries are patsies who will be easily cowed into silence. This time, he assumed wrong."

"Atrios" at Eschaton: "Apparently Fox News has just said 'aw, f--- it' when it comes to covering the deaths of American soldiers. They stopped updating their fatality list almost a month ago."

REPUBLICANS: For Reals?

Conservative Shape of Days, on news that ex-CA recall candidate/porn star Mary Carey: "No, we are not all Christians, but there's a Christian ethic that seems to be widely held by Republicans. Christians refer to it by the glib shorthand, 'Hate the sin but love the sinner.' It's a pretty -- hold your gasps, please -- liberal way of looking at the world. ... This idea means that being a porn star ... does not automatically disqualify a person from being a member of the Republican Party."

MyDD diarist "Annatopia" posts photos of a Chevy Suburban plastered with pro-Bush bumper stickers, including one that says: "GOP: God's Official Party." "Annatopia" asks, "can someone please remind me why calling the GOP the party of white christians is so offensive?"

DEMOCRATS: 1) Media Goes After Dean; 2) Bloggers Raise Big Sums For Dean 3) Say To Self: "Self, This Is Like Summer '03 All Over Again!"

On 6/8, Duncan "Atrios" Black wrote: "I've been resisting the idea of encouraging people to donate to party orgs for various reasons. But, the Democrat insider attacks on Howard Dean are, frankly, an attack on all of us. ... So, if you're a wee bit unhappy with the way the spoiled brat Dem insiders are behaving, go give Howard Dean a few bucks." He links to a DNC webpage for grassroots fundraising which tracks donations he brings in. As of 11:00 p.m. on 6/9, 845 for $37285.98.

From The Hill: "Democratic fundraisers say that there is growing concern over what they call Dean's lack of attention to major donors and that donors are much less likely to give money if they don't have sufficient opportunity to meet with the party's leadership." LiberalOasis: "Halley-Frickin-Loo-Yah. Dean is attempting to fully put the party in the hands of the people and minimize the influence of corporate interests. And the big money guys don't like it. Another part of Dean's strategy is to empower the state party operations."

FEC: Attention, Netroots!

GOP activist Mike Krempasky notes that the DNC did not join the bipartisan opposition to potential FEC rulemaking that would regulate blogs: "I am not a Democrat. But if I were, boy - would I be ticked. Especially if I were a Democratic online activist who's put his faith in the new party leadership to change the nature of politics from an elite cadre of decisionmakers to a real grassroots movement. ... What's that sound? Utter, deafening silence. Nothing. Neither [ex-Dean consultant Joe] Trippi, nor [Howard] Dean, nor any national Democratic committee (DNC, DCCC, DSCC) submitted word one to the FEC for this rulemaking. The Republican National Committee did. Kerry-Edwards '04 did. Bloggers themselves did." More: "Three calls to the DNC yesterday by yours truly were met with complete and total bewilderment. And not one single returned call. "I don't know anything about that," was all one staffer in the communication shop had to say."

IN THE STATES: Rub A Dub Dub, Three Coloradoans Prolonging A Hubbub

Colorado Pols: "The Denver Three, you'll remember, are the three people who were booted out of a President Bush "town hall" event on social security back in March. There hasn't been much news about them now for more than a month, but like that weird smell in your grandmother's house, they just won't go away." The blog reports that CO Dem Reps. Mark Udall and Diana DeGette plus Sen. Ken Salazar have sent a letter to the Secret Service asking for an update on the investigation; text of the letter is included in the post.

Conservative NE blogger Good Morning America posts an NE GOP release from 6/8 denouncing a post on the NE Dems' official blog by NE Dem exec. dir. Barry Rubin referring to GOP official Carlos Castillo as "Tio Tomas," which is Espanol for "Uncle Tom." The post includes a link to the NE Dem blog post, which has since been removed. At the NE Dem blog, not much is happening. NE Dem dep. dir. Heath Mello wrote, prior to this kerfuffle: "To be honest with you, blogging hasn't caught on in Nebraska like in New York, Montana, or California..." This a.m., said kerfuffle rated a mention in the Lincoln Journal Star, which includes a condemnation by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and calls for Sen Ben Nelson (D-NE) to do the same.

RedState has an update on Ralph Reed's GA LG bid: "After weeks of being hammered" over connections to Jack Abramoff, Reed "finally tried his hand at an offensive maneuver. Reed sent out an email to his supporters and others accusing the Atlanta Journal-Constitution of political bias" and "set the record straight." More: "In related news, rumor has it that two individuals listed on a fundraising invitation for Ralph Reed, said they did not want to be listed as hosts, yet are listed. I've tried contacting both for comment, but so far have not heard anything. In yet more related news, sources are telling me that the Republican House Leadership is trying very hard to keep House Republicans neutral in the Lt. Governor's race." Yet more: "In still other Georgia news, word has spread throughout the GOP grassroots that the Governor's team is smelling danger. Governor [Sonny] Perdue has not been able to keep a lot of deep loyalty in the grassroots and is taking steps, as best he can, to correct that. Subtle dread has been seeping into Republicans across the state that Cathy Cox just might get the Democratic nomination and toast the Governor."

Kennedy Vs. The Machine notices that Nat'l Assoc. of Wholesalers is taking note of Rep. Mark Kennedy's (R-MN) SEN bid: "Knowing that the race is on their radar 18 months out brings some comfort."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Inevitable?

Left-leaning Ezra Klein, on what happens the next time the Dems take power: "Democrats will have to raise taxes, the only question is how." He offers his own take: "Democrats need to make taxes about programs rather than paychecks. The country is ideologically conservative, which is to say theoretically selfish, so if you ask them to give up more money to fund unknown government projects, a "no" response shouldn't exactly shock you. But the country is also operationally liberal, so if you tell them you need some more money specifically and solely to fund something they like, that's a transaction as much as a tax increase, and it engages the liberal side of Americans as surely as it does their conservative halves. ... Ask for the money, explain what it'll buy, lock it into place (with the constraints on the revenue being sunsetted after five years to preserve future flexibility), and argue for it in context of a program people like, not a tax increase they never will."

LEST WE FORGET: Larry, Quite Contrary

BlameBush!'s faux lefty "Liberal Larry" exculpates John Kerry's poor college grades: "Grading students like sides of beef isn't only barbaric, it's impractical. Although some white males have managed to slip through the protective filter of affirmative action, college campuses are far more diverse than they were 40 years ago. The good ol' boy, country club colleges of the ango-elite are a thing of the past. Today, students hail from a variety of racial backgrounds, belief systems, genders, and subgenders, each with their own socio-perceptual and multisensory learning style. As a Professym of Midget Studies and the Kama Sutra at Evergreen State College, I would find it a daunting task to pass any of my little buddies under a grading system that doesn't take into account the cornucopia of cultures that comprise a typical student body."

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 09, 2005

6/9: Friendly Fire

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Some of the posts worth noting today involve some loyal partisans taking on the leaders of their own parties. Not necessarily shocking is the unease some lefty bloggers feel about DNC chair Howard Dean for his generalization of GOPers. That level of concern has now reached the point where some are already considering an exit strategy or wondering if Dean is intentionally trying to be forced out so he can run for the open Senate seat in VT. It should be noted that the longtime pro-Dean bloggers still support him and are even trying to use this opportunity to raise money.

A bit more surprising is Michelle Malkin's criticism for Pres. Bush. Some righty bloggers had already taken shots at the MSM for, in their view, misinterpreting Bush's comments about Gitmo during an interview with FNC's Cavuto. Malkin says the blame is squarely on the President's shoulder for any ambiguity.

Elsewhere, liberal bloggers are fired up by The Guardian's report on oil companies call the shots on environmental policy. Conservative bloggers are celebrating the confirmation of another Bush nominee. Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has sparked a minor firestorm for implying that the "fraud" Iraq war rises to the level of a modern Holocaust. Several chime in on redevelopment plans in Lower Manhattan. And don't miss the latest blogger spotlight.

TRACKBACKS: Deaniacs

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

DEAN: The Midnight Blue/Purple Divide

Lefty MyDD: "In less than 24 hours, the 'We've got Dean's back' DNC website received $660.16. Not bad, but we need to do more." A MyDD commenter calls Dems running from Dean "Fox Democrats."

Lefty Marc Cooper: "Dean's job and the Democrats' job, especially at a time when Bush's polls are heading into the potty, is to put forward a proactive alternative message that goes beyond Daily Kos and MoveOn readers being able to get their jollies. ... The mistake that Deaniacs make is to confuse an aggressive tone against the Republicans with an aggressive statement of what Democrats actually believe in. ... When he stepped into the 2004 presidential campaign he started saying the right thing at the right time and sounded to many like he was really something different. But more than out-of-the-box, Dean is looking more and more like he's just plain off-the-wall. Dean vowed to win back the red states for the Democrats. This is the way? In the end, I don't think it's going to matter very much. Dean will soon be gone."

The Mahablog: "Here's an outrageous idea--why don't the Dems actually get together and agree on a plan of attack, and who's going to say what, and then back each other up instead of picking each other off? Maybe if Dean goes overboard, it's because he's carrying the burden of attack by himself."

National Review's K.J. Lopez: "And this is how Howard Dean is helpful to Democrats -- folks like [Sen.] Barack Obama can position themselves as the sane wing of the party."

BUSH: "W. Stands For Waffle"

Righty Michelle Malkin, on Bush's FNC interview: "Some Bush supporters will blame the liberal media for misinterpreting his ambiguous remarks. Puh-lease. There is only one person to blame for serving up this messy waffle. If W. doesn't want to create the perception of capitulating to the Gitmo mau-mau-ers, Islamists, and Jimmy Carter juggernaut, there's an easy way to do it. Mr. President: The next time you are asked whether Gitmo should be shut down because Jimmy Carter is whining, just say--and this is short enough to write on your palm if you need a reminder--'No.'"

JUDGES: Worth A Second Look?

Righty Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Does the fact that Democrats now seem to be bemoaning The Deal necessarily make The Deal a good one? No. ... But before it blows up, we will have seen between five to seven jurists confirmed by the Senate. And if the 'extraordinary circumstances' clause is being (rightfully) defined narrowly in the press, it may be far easier to defeat future filibusters than it was prior to The Deal." More: "This is not to say that ... we should suddenly become sanguine and cheerful about the prospect of Bill Frist as Majority Leader. ... But it just might be that both he and Senate Republicans in general are in a stronger position regarding the issue of judicial filibusters than many initially believed."

RANGEL: Strong Words

Rangel, in an interview with Steve Malzberg, on Iraq: "This is just as bad as six million Jews being killed. The whole world knew it and they were quiet about it, because it wasn't their ox that was being gored." Asked to clarify his comparison: "I am saying that people's silence when they know terrible things are happening is the same thing as the Holocaust, where everyone would have me believe that no one knew those Jews were killed over there."

Conservative Lori Byrd at PoliPundit: "I am not shocked by the Holocaust comparison one bit. After all, Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust and Democrats have been comparing Bush to Hitler for years now. They just haven't been quite this specific before this."

BLOGGERS VS. THE MSM: Ace, Get Your Gun

Ace of Spaces HQ cites a report that violent crime is down since the assault weapons ban expired: "I talk a lot about media bias here. Too much, some people say. And sometimes I think it's too much too. But the institution charged with reporting important information to us -- information useful for making political decisions -- simply refuses to relay facts like these to us."

Seeing the media bias turn the other way, Oliver Willis notes Bush's falling poll numbers on Iraq and asks [entirely in bold face in original post]: "When will the media stop being so deferential to this man and his acolytes and start aggressively questioning why the hell he's taking our nation in a direction we don't want to go?"

CJR Daily enjoys CNN's 1-hour feed of CNN international. Even a promo ad during the feed "contained more hard news than the five minutes of 'CNN Live Today' that followed."

IN THE STATES: Swamped

Jeff Jarvis notes that the NJ GOV race will be millionaire versus millionaire. When you also have a "rich guy mayor" (we assume he's referring to NYC's Bloomberg), Jarvis concludes: "The system is leading us to a point where the rich guys spending their own bucks will be taking over every office they can afford. There's something so... so... colonial English about that. Finance reform is not the answer, clearly; it is taking power away from the people and giving it to the powerful. We need to fix that (again) and at least shorten the length of campaigns so there's less time to spend all that wealth."

Alexander McClure's "inside scoop" on NJ GOV: "Even those Republicans who did not support or were lukewarm about ['02 SEN nominee] Doug Forrester's candidacy for the Republican Gubernatorial nomination in New Jersey seem bullish about the businessman's ability to pull an upset in the fall."

Swing State Project seems to like NE.

MISCELLANY: Lest We Forget

Jeff Jarvis: "The great tragedy of 9/11 is almost three years gone and still the hole stares at us because we are too political and incompetent to fill it and, worse, we are allowing the innocents and heroes of that day to be used to fulfill political agenda." He discusses reports that the International Freedom Center being planned for the site "is practically being turned into what Bill Maher has wanted: a Why They Hate Us Pavillion. ... On my grave, please do not build a memorial to the mistakes of my neighbors and ancestors. Don't stand on the grass above me and flagellate. Just let me lie there in peace, please." Also discussing the subject: Wizbang, Michelle Malkin

Charles Bird writes gives a detailed look of Amnesty International at RedState, then asks: "Should conservatives beat 'em by joining 'em? To me, the answer is yes, and that's why I joined Amnesty International today. That's right. I am now a member in good standing. The executive director of Amnesty International USA, William Schulz, sent me a nice and friendly e-mail thanking me for joining his group and for providing financial support."

Secular Blasphemy introduces us to a "peace goat."

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: The Power Line And The Glory

Today the blogometer talks to righty Scott "Big Trunk" Johnson, one of three contributors to Power Line.

What is your full name?

Scott Wynn Johnson

What is your age?

54

Where did you grow up?

St. Paul, MN

Where do you live now?

St. Paul, MN

What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?

I have been a full-time practicing attorney for 26 years.

When did you start blogging and why?

Three years ago over the Memorial Day weekend. I started blogging on the invitation of my long time writing partner, law partner and friend John Hinderaker when he first set up Power Line on Blogger.

What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?

Writing about the 60 Minutes II story on President Bush's Air National Guard service on the morning of September 9 changed my life, but my favorite posts have been devoted to exploring American popular music. One of my favorites is about the song "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" because it combined my interests in music and literature in what I hope was an entertaining way.

Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?

I try to read and write from 5:00 to 7:00 am every day and to post two or three items that have something of interest for readers who check us each day.

Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

Favorite political blogger: Excluding my colleagues John Hinderaker and Paul Mirengoff, I think I would have to say Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs and Jay Nordlinger via his online Impromptus column at National Review Online. Favorite non-political blogger: Roger Kimball of Armavirumque.

Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?

Michael Barone and Charles Krauthammer.

What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?

"Special Report with Brit Hume" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?

Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Weekly Standard, National Review.

What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?

Hugh Hewitt, Little Green Footballs, Instapundit, Roger L. Simon, No Left Turns, Michelle Malkin, Lucianne, Drudge, Claremont Institute.

How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?

I read the Wall Street Journal in hard copy on weekdays and the New York Times on the weekends.

How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?

I would like to think that the new media will have a chastening, constructive and positive effect on the quality of the old media. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Inspired, lefty "Atrios" thinks he's figured out what conservatives remind him of: "[P]eople I've known who are in the breakup stages of an emotionally abusive relationship. In those final moments, post breakup, they convince themselves that this person ... who they've been fighting with for months or more is the most wonderful perfect human being on the planet and they feel the deepest and truest love for them that could ever be felt by anyone. In the middle of the trauma of a rough breakup it's easier to seize on that than the alternative (truth) - that you just wasted a few years with a truly awful awful person."

LEST WE FORGET: Things Could Be Worse

Eugene Volokh sees a quote from new French PM Dominque de Villepin that starts: "Let us stop drinking from the enchanted waters of Letheand ..." and is glad not to be French. "In fact, maybe that should be our reaction any time President Bush is mocked for misspeaking: 'Hey, at least it's not 'Let us stop drinking from the enchanted waters of Lethe ...''"

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 08, 2005

6/8: It's Kerry Over Dean -- Again!

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Today's coverage pretty much ipsa loquitur:

TRACKBACKS: The Gloatosphere

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • For the 1st time since the Blogometer started metering the blogs (if that is what we do here), 2 links that drove most of the blog writing on 1 day (yesterday) are the next day (today) the same 2 top links: to Michael Kranish's pair of stories in Boston Globe on John Kerry's military service and lackluster grades. Yesterday the quick reactions came almost entirely from those whom the news ostensibly helps (here, conservatives), but in a typical pattern, those who ostensibly suffer (here, liberals) join the chatter once the news has time to sink in. Many asked why, if the military records contained no big story, why not release the form? James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal was one of the first to note that the school records story "answers that question"; this seems to be the accepted interpretation across ideological lines.

    >> Left-leaning Peking Duck sums up the left's disdain for SBVT and frustration with Kerry: "I understand not wanting to kowtow to the Swift Boat Superliars, but it would surely have spared him from a lot of grief." Lefty "Roger Ailes" takes a swipe at a moderate lefty who pushed the story: "Poor Midget Mickey Kaus will now have to find a new chicken to choke." For his part, Kausfiles offers a fast-paced look at the fallout from the news; he points out several bloggers who argued last summer that Kerry wasn't so smart, including moderate Madison-WI prof Ann Althouse

    >> At Blogs for Bush, "Unfit for Command" author John O'Neill, saying Kerry's level of disclosure "is hardly what we called for." Meanwhile, Power Line updates a post we linked yesterday to raise a question: "A knowledgeable reader called to say that the Navy would not have Kerry's complete service records; according to the caller, the records are retained by the National Personnel Records Center. He pointed out that the Navy's Web site directs veterans seeking their records to the National Personnel Records Center (click here for the Navy site's instruction). It would have been nice if the Globe had included this information in its story."

    >> Blogs linking to the medical records story: Ezra Klein; Kevin Drum; DailyKos; Oliver Willis; QandO; The Anchoress.


  • Regarding Kerry's grades, few conservatives even compare their collegiate experience to Kerry's. INDC Journal: "I'd mock Kerry's yearbook photo, but I know that mine is out there somewhere." Clayton Cramer says he can never be POTUS: "My grades in college were way too high."

    >> But some are more serious -- BeldarBlog calls on the Globe to do the same: "Perhaps Mr. Kranish's and the Globe's analysis of the new records has been fair, balanced, accurate, and complete. But there's no excuse for preventing the public from seeing the source documents." Hugh Hewitt asks, "why in the world doesn't the [Globe] post the documents on the web site for all to see and read? Answer: A bastion of MSM is playing guardian of the news again, interpreting the docs for the public too limited to understand."

    >> Lean Left defends Kerry, writing, "nobody -- least of all Kerry -- ever claimed Kerry was smarter than [Pres.] Bush because he got better grades. He's smarter than Bush because, well, because he's smart, and Bush is ... dumb."

    >> Linking to the grades story: The Moderate Voice; Tom Maguire; Brad Plumer; Liquid List; Patterico's Pontifications; The Right Coast; Silflay Hraka; Roger L. Simon; Patrick Ruffini.


  • In further demonstration of the principal that gloating precedes analysis, we have yesterday's late-releasing report from the San Francisco Chronicle that DNC chair Howard Dean called the GOP "a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party."

    >> Conservative Alexander McClure: "I have to believe that Dean is doing this intentionally. I believe he wants to be forced out of the position so he can run for Senator in Vermont. There is no logical explanation." Captain's Quarters: "Mad How wants to talk about race again. All I can say is that I've seen the Reverend Al Sharpton, Howard -- and you are no Reverend Al." Right-leaning James Lileks, at his new ScreedBlog (about which more later):" "'White Christian Party' ... plays into another hard-left paranoia: all them Jaysus people are a step away from whipping up a batch o' pointy hats with pillow cases and a can of spray starch, and marching into a field to hold hands around a cross and listen to someone demand that the entire book of Leviticus be made an amendment to the Constitution." Note: No permalinks -- look for "HowDe Ho" on 6/8.

    >> Those linking to the Chronicle or otherwise on-topic: Little Green Footballs; Professor Bainbridge; Michelle Malkin; GayOrbit; Le Sabot Post-Moderne; PunditGuy; Political Wire; Scared Monkeys; VariFrank; GOP Bloggers.


  • The left has gloating of its own to do: The Washington Post reports that Bush's approval ratings are still falling, that "Americans continue to rank Iraq second only to the economy in importance -- and that many are losing patience with the enterprise." This news is only picked up on the left, where the reaction approaches

    >> DailyKos posts graphs of Bush's decline and asks: "NOW can Democrats demand some accountability from Bush?" Richard "Bradley" Blow at The Huffington Post: "The president has devoted an enormous amount of time to his ideologically-driven crusade to privatize Social Security (big problem, wrong answer). In fact, crusades -- whether they involve Terri Schiavo, judicial nominations, the war against Darwin, or the war in Iraq -- are the hallmark of Bush's second term." Liquid List searches for analogies for how bad these numbers are for Bush: "If it were a nomination, it would be Kerik's. If it were a speech, it would claim that Niger sold yellow-cake uranium to Iraq. If it were a job, it would be lost."

    >> Linking to the Post: Informed Comment; Demagogue; TalkLeft; The Sideshow; The Left Coaster; Political Animal; MyDD.

BLOGS VS. THE MSM I: We're Bigger Than U.S. Steel

At MyDD, Chris Bowers compares the ratings for FNC, CNN and MSNBC with the pageviews counted for 1 week of BlogAds' liberal blogs: "Without any doubt, the blogosphere in general now far surpasses the three cable news networks as a source for news among Americans under 55. Granted, this is probably due to the extreme dedication of many who read blogs, as the six million or eight million or however many million page views probably translate into a much smaller number actual people. ... Then again, that blog readers are more dedicated to political news than cable news audiences, yet still comparable in size, would lead one to believe that the blogosphere is far more responsible for determining the political zeitgeist than anything or anyone on cable news. I guess we are the MSM now."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM II: Leave The Gun, Take The Connolly

On 6/6, the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly said on FNC's "Special Report" that "I believe close to 100" homicides of detainees in U.S. custody have been confirmed -- which raised the suspicion of host Brit Hume, and then conservatives watching. Jackson's Junction posted video, while Gateway Pundit does some digging and finds the actual number is 27. Michelle Malkin then "called Connolly this morning at the Washington Post, informed her that her comments have sparked controversy in the blogosphere, and asked her to explain." Connolly "promptly e-mailed" 7 stories from Nexis to buttress her claim. But Malkin writes, "none of the seven articles she sent provide any substantiation for her "close to 100 homicides" allegation. Two of the articles are irrelevant and two flatly contradict her claim." On the 6/7 show, Hume sided with the blogs and issued a correction; The Political Teen provides video.

Eric Alterman notes the following New York Times headline: "The News Media Is Still Recovering From Watergate"; Alterman comments: "Um, could someone tell the Times copy editors that media is a plural noun. 'Media Are' not 'MEDIA IS.'"

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: The Blogs That Didn't Bite

Left-leaning Loaded Mouth, under the header "Have some a-listers become irrelevant?": "I've been doing some research into the bigger blogs over the past couple of days. My targets have been Atrios, Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, Talking Points Memo, and Wonkette. The reason for my research is to see if they have linked to either After Downing Street or the Big Brass Alliance. Unfortunately, not only haven't they linked to these two groups, but these blogs have hardly even talked about the Downing Street Memo. Folks, this kind of shit just doesn't happen on the right. They have the strength of unity, which is why they are so adapt at spreading their propaganda and placing us on the defensive so often. And it sickens me to think that a story like the Downing Street Memo is all but ignored by the whales on our side of the blogosphere..."

Liberal Why Are We Back In Iraq? agrees, and elaborates. He updates: "Atrios finally blogged about the Downing Street minutes today: "Did Bush Lie? well, no shit." 5 words are better than nothing."

Self-described "so-called liberal journalist" What It Is Today: "The press finally got around to asking Dubya about the Downing Street Memo, and they got a two-fer -- he was holding a news conference with Tony Blair. And there they were, lying out loud."

SENATE '06: By The Numbers

Conservative Baseball Crank presents a "ranking of the Senate seats to be contested in 2006, from most to least likely to change parties, based on adding (1) the incumbent party's percentage of the vote in the last race for this seat (S%) to (2) the incumbent party's percentage of the vote in the 2004 presidential election (P%)..." DalyThoughts provides adds a few more "components," re-calculates the figures, and produces a different chart.

BOLTON: And When The Band You're In Starts Playing Different Thunes ...

Power Line disagrees with itself about whether Sen. John Thune (R-SD) is wise to oppose John Bolton's nod in a protest over an SD base-closing. Paul Mirengoff is not pleased, but John Hinderaker is more philosophical: "Actually, I admire Thune's political instincts. Among other things, I think he's trying to establish a track record that shows he can't be crossed without consequences. If more Republicans did that, it would be a good thing." Mirengoff relents: "I guess South Dakota guys have to stick together."

CAMPAIGNS: TPM Gets Koch-ed Up

Josh Marshall asks: "Who or what is Americans for Prosperity?" He calls upon the "few thousand eyes" reading the blog to help out. He reports later that AfP "is the political arm of Koch Industries (i.e., a front) which the Koch family uses to aid conservative causes in general and stuff the Bush White House wants done in particular." It also leads to CSE and the Indie Women's Forum, where "it's pretty hard to see where one group starts and another stops. They just all seem to lead back to Koch Industries, run by the Koch brothers," sons of Fred Koch, a "founder of the John Birch Society." He announces more will come.

IMMIGRATION: Just Below The Radar

Right-leaning Wizbang notices a story in the Brownsville Herald about a federal judge who is holding illegal immigrants for deportation: "It's a telling sign of the lack of enforcement of our immigrations laws that a federal judge actually enforcing the law is newsworthy."

IN THE STATES: OH, This Sounds Like Fun

"Pounder" at DailyKos reports the OH Dems will stage a protest calling attention to Coingate, and adds: "They deserve some credit and support for this, not only organizing it, but also spreading the word via their regional organizers and contacting the Ohio Blogosphere. ... Come along if you live close by or have nothing else better to do ! Should be a hoot and help push the national press into the story."

  • He updates later with breaking news: as the Toledo Blade reports, the OH Bureau of Workers' Compensation "admitted today that it lost $215 million in a high-risk fund that few people knew about."
  • Swing State Project picks up on the post and adds: "I think this bolsters my speculation of a few days ago, namely that it is a certainty that other similar state funds (pension, workers comp, what have you) around the country are being mismanaged if not looted. The only reasons the Ohio scandal was brought to light was because of the highly unusual investment vehicle in question (coins), and the diligent work of the Toledo Blade. (Nice to have a tiny bit of my faith in the media restored for once.)"

Alexander McClure at PoliPundit sizes up the results of the NJ GOP's GOV primary: "For [Bret] Schundler, this is an extremely painful defeat. It was very close, and I'm sure his advisers feel that their lack of money caused the narrow loss. He could remain a viable candidate in the future if he endorses Forrester and seeks to unite the party. Finally, for Doug Forrester, this is his second opportunity to win statewide. Needless to say, he is the candidate that [Dem Sen. Jon] Corzine does not want to face. He has pockets deep enough to offset Corzine's advantage. Moreover, he has a demonstrated appeal in South Jersey, where Corzine is perceived as weakest."

INTRODUCING: Roxy Lileks It!

Left-leaning Rox Populi comments on ScreedBlog, the new blog by popular right-leaning humorist James Lileks: "Today we examine the strange case of Mr. Lileks, a seemingly normal guy until 9/11. That's when, by all accounts, he lost the plot -- along with Christopher Hitchens, Dennis Miller, and that 2nd rate spy novel writer guy who wears the weird hat [Roger L. Simon], but who's name I can never remember. Mr. Lileks has seen fit to start a new virtual space in addition to his boorish Bleat, where he regularly waxes neurotic about being his child's primary caregiver, gays (in a very revealing me-thinks-he-doth-protest-too-much manner, if you ask me), and moving to the safety of the strip mall capital of the world -- Arizona. His new site is called ScreedBlog. There, it seems, he waxes neurotic about terrorizamenting, all while making an all-too-abundant use of Roget's Thesaurus and hat-tipping LGF."

On 6/7, National Review Online debuted the latest in its expanding line-up of blogs. This one is a media blog, currently called Media Blog. NRO is taking suggestions for a permanent name. The blog's author is Stephen Spruiell. Meanwhile, NRO has altered their lineup in another way: their Beltway Buzz blog is now simply The Buzz, complete with a new URL (although the old page forwards the reader to the new one).

MISCELLANY: De Plane! De Plane?

At Galley Slaves, Vic Matus relays the story from a "friend who saw the low-flying plane over Washington last night." The Blogometer isn't sure which low-flying plane this is (there are no news stories about it, although we know that Reagan Nat'l Airport did stay open late due to the storm). Nevertheless, the friend writes: "That plane came probably within mere seconds of being taken down with the missiles on top of the New Executive Building. This was the closest ever a low-flying big civil plane got to the White House thus far. Even on 9/11, the Pentagon plane was much farther away from it than this one." Matus figures that "the pilot had mistakenly followed Rock Creek Park Valley, thinking he'd been over the Potomac Valley all the time."

UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh notices that according to the KY bar's "Kentucky Rules of Professional Conduct," if you're an atty in KY "and you want to blog using your real name, you must pay $50 per post. (Each post is a separate instance of 'furnish[ing] . . . written, printed or broadcast information.')"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Here's To You, Memeorandum And Technorati

Actress Anne Bancroft passed away on 6/7, and the blogosphere chimes in with a round of respectful obit posts. Top blogs leading with some version of the phrase, "Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson," include: TalkLeft; The Corner; Roger L. Simon; Pejmanesque; and L.A. Observed. They are joined by several dozen blogs also using the phrase.

LEST WE FORGET: Berzerkeley's Future -- A P.C. Theme Park?

L.A.-based Roger L. Simon reports that "Jefferson Elementary School in Berkeley is no longer named after that notorious slaveholder from Monticello, VA" and has been renamed Sequoia "(after the tree, not the Cherokee chief)." He theorizes: "A secret strategy could be unrolling here. Berkeley is slowly and inexorably turning itself into a Political Correctness Theme Park. This stealth business plan will be actuated on April 25, 2009, on the fortieth anniversary of People's Park when the entire city will be shut down, cars banned from the streets and henceforth admission charged to non-residents the way it is is in Disneyland. Every night parades with fireworks will be held led by over-sized dolls of Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsburg and Jerry Garcia. All streets will be scented with patchouli, meat banned from the restaurants and only tie-dye clothes (or in some instances hemp) be permitted."

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 07, 2005

6/7: Debacle, Interrupted

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Much talk was given over to the SCOTUS's ruling on federal and state laws respecting marijuana, which the Blogometer will mostly not cover. For a sample, law prof Lawrence Solum provides a summary of the Ashcroft/Gonzales v. Raich (PDF) decision. For his federalism-minded dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas gets good marks from conservatives; libertarians agitate for legis. to change the situation. For more, click here.

For the rest of the day's big news, keep reading:

TRACKBACKS: Bloggers Offer To Kerry John's Books Home For Him

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • In 2 articles by the Boston Globe's Michael Kranish today, it is revealed that Kerry earned a C-average at Yale, including a few D's, and has released his military records to the Globe. Conservative bloggers crow at first, but many still find questions unresolved.

    >>At PoliPundit, the SF-180 clock finally comes down after 128 days, as the Boston Globe reports that Kerry has signed the form and released his military records. "PoliPundit": "About 145,678,984 of you have e-mailed me to note that John Kerry claims to have released his military records. PoliPundit.com has been a driving force in the never-ending quest to get Kerry to come clean, and I don't believe Kerry has yet complied. ... I'm taking the Kerry SF-180 clock off the top of this page, since Kerry has finally given in. But ask yourself this: Why has it taken Kerry more than a year to take this step? Where are those missing hundred pages?"

    >>A header at Decision '08 refers to the wisdom of signing Form 180 during the WH race: "Is John Kerry the Stupidest Politician Alive?" First sentence of the post: "All signs point to yes." USS Neverdock: "The biggest question of all remains unanswered. What type of discharge did Kerry originally receive?" Wizbang has more questions including about Kerry's grades. Ankle Biting Pundits compares Kerry to "Pinto" from "Animal House."

    >> Liberal Eschaton links to the story, but writes about the SBVT instead: "Still liars. Someone should count up the number of hours on cable news these people were given, and then we could talk about it at a conference on blogger ethics."

    >>More: Vodkapundit; Brothers Judd; Power Line; Michelle Malkin; Pejmanesque.


  • A New York Times report on Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) big NYC fundraiser draws a modest amount of attention, nearly all from the left.

    >> Liberal Ezra Klein dubs the speech "Hillary Gone Wild." Arianna Huffington: "The trouble with Hillary's speech was that for all the partisan speechifying, it was almost exclusively empty rhetoric that she was dishing out. ... Indeed, throughout the speech, Hillary adopted the tone of a powerless activist whining about those in power rather than a high-profile member of the World's Most Exclusive club. The low point came when she blamed much of the Republicans' success on a too timid press corps." At CAF's ThinkProgress, David Sirota praises those same comments about the press: "The reason I said those comments are courageous is because there are very few politicians in Washington willing to give voice to the public's frustration with the media. Conservatives have made an art form out of intimidating the media -- and its time for progressives to fight back by demanding the press do its job, instead of serving as a propaganda machine."

    >>Plus: People's Republic of Seabrook; Slant Point; Corrente; The Corner; Political Wire.

BUSH: The White House'll Git You Ef You Don't Watch Out!

Moderate liberal Bull Moose: "The Moose urges Mooseketeers to prepare themselves for the Bush summer offensive. The next two months could be critical to the future of the Bush Presidency and the Republican hold on power. Since the inauguration, Bush has been falling in popularity and his agenda has stalled. ... Beginning this week expect the Bushies to launch a fierce counter-offensive against the Democratic insurgents to regain control over the capital. They will move a form of social security privatization through the Senate and House. More right wing judicial nominations will be offered. A showdown is imminent over one or more Supreme Court vacancies. And Dr. Frist has much to make up for in his failing panderfest to the right."

At TPMCafe, Josh Marshall mostly agrees: "A few years back I wrote that the Bush presidency resembled a confidence game -- and the one thing I a con artist can never allow is their appearance of mastery and control to be broken."

Liberal New Donkey: "When it first became apparent that the Texas scam of Reed taking Abramoff-generated Indian Casino money to run anti-gambling initiatives had been replicated in Alabama, I thought: Hmmmm. Texas and Alabama. Alabama and Texas. Don't we know somebody famous who made these two states his personal political stomping grounds in the 1990s? Some guy named [Karl] Rove? ... Somewhere, the bloodhounds are gathering and getting the scent of dirty dollars. It will be interesting to follow their trail."

WHITE HOUSE '08: Brownback ... He's A Lego Maniac

With Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) putting a hold on a Bush jud. nominee, a diarist at RedState calls "incomprehensible, no matter how pro-life he is."

  • MyDD's Chris Bowers disagrees: "It is not incomprehensible, it merely shows that the nuclear option was a right-wing power grab, pure and simple. Further, with Frist's Presidential chances dead in the water after his failure to nuke the Senate, it great to see the theocon heir apparent engage in a little self-immolation."
  • Liberal The Anti-Sam: "Opposition is fine. If he wants to vote against her in the full Senate, that is certainly his right. However, bottling her up in committee so that she never gets a vote is extremely hypocritical. Doesn't Brownback believe all such positions receive an up or down vote from the senate?"

In a post to his One America Committee blog, '04 Dem VP nominee John Edwards tries to downplay his differences with DNC chair Howard Dean. At the site, the post has attracted about 150 comments since its posting last p.m. But only a few blogs have picked up on the Edwards post, including left-leaning Politology, which writes: "For those that are all in a tizzy about Edwards supposedly "rebuking" Dean's statement about many Republican (lawmakers) not working an honest day in their lives, it would be instructive to read this blog entry by John Edwards."

DailyKos, on "hateful anti-immigrant crusader" Rep. Tom Tancredo's (R-CO) interest in a WH bid: "Immigration WILL be a big issue in the coming years. And there's a way to approach the issue that doesn't include frothing at the mouth. ... Illegal immigration isn't something to cheer. But we can't ignore it, and we can't cede the issue to hate-mongers like Tancredo."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: All Too Throaty

Libertarian Megan McArdle at Assymetrical Information: "To journalists ten or twenty years older than me, this is the long-awaited end to a grand mystery. To people my age or younger, it just doesn't matter that much. Baby boomers, many of whom seem to have trouble accepting the fact that time has passed, often seem incredulous that the major formulating events of their lives simply aren't that interesting to everyone else. Vietnam and Watergate have become the language of public debate, even though both ended over thirty years ago."

  • On his MSNBC blog, lefty Eric Alterman continues to go after Ben Stein.
  • PressThink's Jay Rosen compares post-Watergate journalism to a church, and some top j-schools' new investments: "Maybe what we need is not funding for a new church, but a breakaway church, or two, or three of them. (And what is Fox News Channel, but that?)" Jeff Jarvis adds: "And what are bloggers but 10 million Luthers pounding on the door?"

Conservative Wizbang, moderate Mickey Kaus, and liberal Kevin Drum all go to work on a David Cay JohnstonNew York Times piece, "Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind."

Liberal journalist Anne Lamott: "You will never believe in a million years what I just saw on the CNN morning news: NEWS! You could have blown me over with a feather. ... The first three stories were about Darfur, the Baath party congress in Syria, and Rumsfeld on North Korea. I am not making this up; I swear to God." CJR Daily has a similar report, titled: "CNN Stuns U.S. With Actual News."

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: Men Cannot Live On Progressive Causes Alone

A group of female participants at DailyKos have started a separate blog, Women Kossacks. Its creation may be due in part to a controversial post by Markos Moulitsas (cut from the Blogometer at the last minute) wherein he criticizes the "women's studies set" and then backtracks.

At Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte opines: "I'm not gonna dodge it like a coward, which was my first inclination. And I'm not gonna mince words, either -- as someone who gets called a man-hater and a sexist on average once a day, if not more, I can safely say that Kos was being a big weenie about being called out for honest-to-god sexism in touting out the tedious stereotype that feminists are humorless wretches."

BLOGS VS. THE WORLD: Geldof Taps Blogs (And Joe Trippi) To Help Save The World

Conservative John Hinderaker at Power Line: "Joe Trippi called me last week and asked whether I would cooperate with him in setting up a conference call in which bloggers could talk to Sir Bob Geldof about his Live8 campaign to persuade the industrialized countries to help Africa. ... I agreed mostly because I think highly of Joe, and thought it would be nice to participate in a bipartisan activity. On the merits of Geldof's campaign, I had reservations ... To say that I was impressed would be an understatement. Geldof is an extraordinarily knowledgeable guy. Equally important, he is not soft-headed about Africa's problems. He emphasizes free markets and the need for political reform, which should be, and according to Geldof will be, a condition of the assistance that he advocates."

Jeralyn Merritt from TalkLeft writes while still on the phone: "We're asking Sir Geldof questions now. He's so passionate on the subject. This is not a campaign to raise money, it's one to influence policy. They want bloggers to spread the word. If you're a blogger, lend your voice."

IN THE STATES: And The Winner Isn't ...

Stephan Sharkansky, one of '04 GOP GOV nominee Dino Rossi's most tireless supporters, writes at Sound Politics: "Congratulations to Mr. Rossi for a fight well fought. Among the two gubernatorial candidates between whom the margin of separation was 1/13 the number of illegal votes, he would have been the better governor. May he stand to fight another day." 240+ comments follow.

  • Washington State Political Report: "The Democrats should seek court sanctions against the Rossi gang for filing the suit and also for signing motions that were not supported by the evidence. In opening AND closing argument, Rossi's mouthpieces repeatedly referred to evidence that they did not submit, and this is sanctionable behavior." More from the WA Dem perspective at Horses Ass.
  • RedState: "Rossi has just announced he will not appeal today's ruling to the state Supreme Court. Smart. That court is wired to WA Ds, and Dino finally needs to rise above the fray. ... The contest suit was more than worth the gamble. Yawning gaps in the credibility of the state and King County election systems have been widely exposed. Rossi's future political fortunes get a boost; as do chances for a well-crafted election reform initiative in WA."
  • Liberal Whiskey Bar: "I can hear the sound of conservative heads exploding from 3,000 miles away. I've got a feeling Judge [John] Bridges has just been added to the right wing's list of 'out of control' liberal judges -- notwithstanding the fact that local Republicans were praising his fairness just a few days ago. ... On the other hand, it's at least mildy encouraging to see the Democratic Party in Washington State give as good as it gets, and fight for power just as ferociously and effectively as the GOP did in Florida."
  • From DC, Michelle Malkin live-blogged the proceedings.

A few bloggers at The Left Coaster take on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA). One regular notes that he "refuses to return the money that he received" for his campaigns from scandal-beset GOP fundraiser/coin dealer Tom Noe. Another writer, citing a report that Schwarzenegger donors get "special access," writes: "Can a case not be made that those who so participate in the governor's 'reform' of California are "motivated by economic self-interest" instead of "doing the best job for the state"?"

MISCELLANY: Newt's Heir?

A few liberal bloggers have been linking to a post at Washington Monthly's Political Animal, featuring an exercpt from "The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo" by liberal journalist Rick Perlstein. In the pamphlet, Perlstein "argues that Democrats need to stop their relentless effort to fine tune every campaign in an effort to attract swing voters (a stock ticker approach), and instead pick some big ideas and stick with them (a superjumbo approach)." One oft-quoted passage: "Here's a riddle: what is a swing voter? More and more, it is an American who thinks like a Democrat but refuses to identify as one. ... If it is true that party identification ... is the best predictor of voter behavior, isn't getting this selfsame public to identify with the Democratic Party much, much more than half the solution?"

Liberal Tapped, on freshman Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who has been "on the leading edge of Republican pushback efforts on ethics issues," asking whether House Min. Leader Nancy Pelosi's aides "violated House rules by discussing" a MS House race in Pelosi's office. Tapped's Sam Rosenfeld: "It's likely McHenry has been puffed up a bit by papers like Roll Call and is enjoying the attention, but that's part of the reason he's worth keeping an eye on. The goofy ethics micro-issue he's latching onto, the outsized rhetoric, the angry letters -- this is classic Newt Gingrich-style bomb-throwing, and the fact that it's a deep backbencher lobbing the bombs only enhances the comparison."

Liberal TX blog Burnt Orange Report solicits new bloggers: "Writing for BOR is a great opportunity to become more involved in politics and activism. BOR is read by about 60,000 visitors a month, and blogging for us is certainly one way to get yourself read and known by leaders and activists in the Texas Democratic Party."

INTRODUCING...: More Blogs

SCOTUS Blog, by the "botique" SCOTUS-focused firm Goldstein & Howe was a major focal point of discussion of Aschroft v. Raich yesterday. Concurrently, they also launched a new blog, the Supreme Court Nomination Blog.

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: One, Two, Three, Can You Digby It, Sucka?

Today the blogometer talks to lefty "digby," who writes Hullabaloo.

What is your full name?

Wouldn't you like to know? Just call me digby.

What is your age?

48

Where did you grow up?

All over the world. My father was in the military and then the military industrial complex.

Where do you live now?

Santa Monica, Califronia

What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?

I work in a very unglamorous part of a very glamorous industry doing what most white collar workers do. Shuffling papers and sitting in meetings. It's as dull as dishwater; trust me. I have never worked on anything more than a local political campaign and walking precincts for the Democrats every four years. I have experience in the entertainment media, but not the press. From what I can see, there is little difference.

When did you start blogging and why?

I started writing on usenet and political boards back in the 90's during the Great Republican Panty Raid. At the time I considered it a healthy new alternative to drunkenly sitting at the end of the bar pontificating to the ashtray, and certainly an improvement over banging my head repeatedly against a wall.

Seriously, it was a beautiful little example of that vaunted dot-com synergy. The internet became available just as American politics turned batshit crazy. When blogs emerged as the next big thing it seemed a natural fit for me --- my own little soap box where nobody could tell me to shut up. It quickly evolved into an obsession. I've barely left the house in three years.

What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?

I can't say that I have a favorite post. I've been at this a long time now, by blogging standards. I wrote a series of posts on Lincoln's Cooper Union speech in which I compared the current state of politics to the period just before the civil war that people seemed to find intriguing. And of course, readers can't get enough of my post excerpting passages from James Dobson's childrearing tract "The Strong Willed Child" in which he brags of beating his little daschund (named Sigmund, of course) with a belt.

Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?

Let's just say it's an up-at-dawn, soul destroying seige that I can never fully tell you about.

OK. I admit that it's hard to pry me away from the computer. But sadly, sometimes I have to actually do things that make a small amount of money. No matter what, I'm always online first thing with my morning cup of caffeine. I check in all day and often throughout the evening. During the election I was posting constantly. Otherwise it depends on my work schedule or my level of inspiration. I try to write several posts a day but often fall short.

Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?

That's very tough. There are a huge number of great bloggers out there and I read most of them at one time or another. I'm dependent upon Atrios to tell me which way the wind is blowing in the blogosphere every day. He's got a real nose for the zeitgeist. Avedon Carol reads more blogs and posts interesting links to them than any human should be allowed to do. For sharpness and clarity of thinking, nobody is as good as Matthew Yglesias. I don't know how anyone can read and write so much, so constantly, so well. The Daou Report reads all the right wing blogs so I know what's cooking with them. And for the sheer joy of reading wonderful prose, both humorous and moving, I always read James Wolcott, Roy Edroso, Jeanne D'Arc and Arthur Silber.

I'm afraid I don't have time to read any non-political bloggers. If I'm not reading political blogs, newspapers, magazines or books, I'm working, sleeping or interacting with fellow humans. Sometimes even with my spouse.

Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?

Paul Krugman is probably most liberal bloggers' favorite columnist because he is the only one who writes the way we write. In our view he tells it like it is -- smart, uncowed straight talk, filled with righteous indignation. I have also long loved Gene Lyons and for political analysis, Ron Brownstein is always interesting.

Frankly, I think the liberal punditocrisy is a big part of liberals' problems and is what perpetuates the milquetoast image that's killing us. I have a much bigger beef with them, as a group, than I do with the MSM as a whole. I understand why Democratic politicans sometimes have to be cautious and overly prudent: they have to face voters and Republicans. I have no idea why liberal pundits are so timid.

What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?

Any show that features young reporters looking at computer screens and reading from blogs. That's what I call exciting television news.

Actually, there is virtually no news program worth watching on television. I often have it on in the backround while I write, but it's mostly to document the outrages. The shout fests are so predictable by now that I can keep the sound off and mouth the talking points before they even regurgitate them. I get my news from a large variety of print and online sources.

What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?

NY Times, Washington Post, BBC, MSNBC, The Guardian, Weekly Standard, The New Republic, National Review and a few others. I visit other newspapers also, but irregularly, and often through a link on a topic I'm researching.

What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?

I visit all the top liberal blogs and many others as well. I also regularly read Slate, Salon and Democratic Underground, Smirking Chimp and the like. I don't really have a ritual, however. I tend to write longer pieces, and I don't write all that fast by blogging standards, so some days I never get past the NY Times or Daily Kos.

How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?

I read the L.A. Times every day in its dead tree version.

How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?

If I knew that I'd be making some stock buys right now. I really have no idea.

Blogs and other online media will eventually be seen, I suspect, as helpful to the dailies and newsmagazines in that they are for the first time in many years beginning to make the printed word the default method to get real news again. It's just more fragmented and less local than it used to be -- like everything else in the world. And yes, they have to put up with criticism, but they also have many more eyes that are reading them. It seems like a fair trade-off.

Blogs will be their friends once they find a modern financial model to make a decent profit from the internet. (Subscriptions aren't going to do it. It has to be advertising.)

As for content, as I said, the internet serendipitously came along at the same time that American politics fell off a cliff. The mainstream media continues in its failure to either see or admit that. Blogs are simply filling a void. When the world goes nuts you can either ignore it and hope it goes away or start screaming. We're screaming. If the mainstream media finally hears us and takes stock of itself many of us will probably go back to shopping or watching "Law and Order" or whatever it is we did before impeachments, supreme court decided elections, inscrutable wars, torture and nuclear options began happening and the media blithely carried on as if everything were normal. I earnestly look forward to that day.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Another Installment Of "The Way Blogs Work"

Today we're going to learn about "memes," also known as "tags," also known as whatever happened to e-mail forwards. Functionally, little separates the contemporary "meme" from the once-ubiquitous e-mail forwards of yesteryear, both of which ask the recipient to answer some diverting, thoughtful questions about one's own preferences or experiences, and then forward them along to friends. A key difference is that memes and tags are played out on blogs, and so are written with the possibility of public consumption in mind. And unlike the personal nature of many old e-mail forwards (i.e. "what one quality do you look for in the opposite sex?"), today's memes tend to be more substantial. Some are about politics, but more are about ideas than power, and many are about books.

One meme that's going 'round the blogosphere at this moment are 4 simple (but diverting) questions about books. We start with lefty Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Making Light, a regular stop for the Blogometer. One person who cited him was libertarian James Landrith. All bloggers mention where their links came from -- i.e. who tagged them. Let's go backward from Landrith: from Knappster to Being Thomas Luongo to a few economists, starting with The Eclectic Econoclast and Economics With A Face to Freespace to TexasBestGrok to Llama Butchers to Irish Elk to an actual member of the clergy, Diary of a Suburban Priest, and another, Zadok the Roman, to Cnytr to Deo Gratias to parent bloggers such as Minivan Mom to Philothea Rose at Home to Illuminated Obscurity to Working Mommy and Sarcastic Kitty on 5/13. We can't go back any further, unfortunately, because Sarcastic Kitty didn't include the URL of her tagger. Anyway, we think you get the idea.

LEST WE FORGET: Protester Protesters Protested

Protest Warrior is a GOP-leaning satirical activist group that enjoyed some attention during WH '04, but lately has been less active. Jesus' General is a Dem-leaning satirical blog along the same lines as the pro-Bush BlameBush!.

The Jesus' General blog is run by "Gen. J.C. Christian," who until recently subscribed to the Protest Warrior mailing list. Recently J.J. Honeycutt from the Spokane Protest Warrior chapter sent out an e-mail soliciting ideas for a new meeting, and "Gen. J.C. Christian" wrote in:: "We're facing a manpower crisis. When I look at our membership, I see a lot of able-bodied men and women of military age. I say we hold a rally at the recruiting station. Then, after a few speeches, we all go in and sign up. Heck, we can always fight the liberals later. It's time to take the Protest Warrior flag to Iraq."

After trading a few e-mails, in which "Gen. J.C. Christian" declares himself to be "above all else, one hundred and ten percent heterosexual," a final reply comes from Honeycutt: "Hey, I found your website... neat stuff. I subsequently deleted you from the our PW chapter. Thanks for the memories." Jesus' General sums it up: "I've been dishonorably discharged." There is a brief, polite comment on Honeycutt's blog, Rock For Life.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 06, 2005

6/6: Another Day Before Dean Blows Up As A Story?

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Do the online Dem activists still stand with Howard Dean? Is John Kerry calling on Congress to impeach Pres. Bush? Does Amnesty Int'l still think that Gitmo is a "gulag"? Are conservatives angry at the media for how they handle media stories? Are liberals trying to sort out their differences and find out how to win? Read on to find out.

TRACKBACKS:

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • With Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) and ex-Sen. John Edwards criticizing Dean and a LAT/AP story about the turmoil being widely quoted, Dean is arguably the story of the morning: QandO; Baldilocks; Political Wire; Pejmanesque; Southern Appeal.

    >> Liberal Hullabaloo: "We know that Bush and his cronies believe they will lose credibility if they admit they are wrong about anything and they are probably right. ... However, there are plenty of liberal hawks like Joe Biden, for instance, who also seem to be backed into a corner because they think that they will lose credibility with... who, exactly? Fred Hiatt? Tim Russert? Because they sure as hell won't lose credibility with the base of the Democratic party --- they'd be heroes. See, to us, admitting you were wrong about Iraq means that you gain credibility, not lose it.

    >> Liberal Ezra Klein disagrees: "Edwards and Biden, frankly, are right to denounce Dean. I like the Governor but his recent rhetoric doesn't just go too far, it goes there pointlessly. What, for instance, is the use of saying Republicans have never made an honest living in their lives? I'm as partisan as they come, but with Republicans easily winning the middle class, even I'm not able to believe this is a clear cut proletariat v. bourgeoisie confrontation."

    >> Conservative Ipse Dixit is one of several who thinks Dean's job is in jeopardy: "Howard 'Even Better For The GOP Than Terry McAuliffe' Dean's days as DNC Chair seem to be numbered. His (short) tenure thus far in that position has been marked mainly by embarrassingly outrageous remarks about Republicans (which is saying something given the standards of Democrat rhetoric) and, worse, lousy fundraising. I think we know which of the two has more to do with the fact that prominent Democrat Sen. Joe Biden (plus still-thinks-he's-a-prominent-political-figure John Edwards) are criticizing his remarks."


  • On the right, there are many links and little disagreement that Amnesty Int'l is losing the argument against Guantanamo Bay. Reuters report on Amnesty Int'l dir. William Schulz, who said on "FNS" that he doesn't "know for sure" if Gitmo is a "gulag." Linking: Secular Blasphemy; Oh, That Liberal Media; The Corner; PoliPundit; Joe Gandelman; Little Green Footballs; Publius Pundit.

    >> Slant Point sums it up for many: "We all know the rhetoric is at DefCon 5 these days over the war, and Amnesty ... is just the latest to toss verbal missiles at America without evidence or reason other than milking the anti-American machine that lives off hype, hysteria and hate. The 'Gulag' remarks were not even in the official AI report, but the damage was done. Newsweek couldn't have wished for a better June."

DEAN: The Screaming Deanies

Longtime Dean watcher/Dem activist David Sirota: "Dean understands that these centrist elites will never be his base of support within the party - nor should a chairman want them to be. So he has a political incentive to stay on the populist progressive message as DNC Chairman. In other words, the grassroots and the progressive wing of the party have become crucial to his political career/survival - and that's who he is going to fight for. ... It's true, some of Dean's best qualities are double edged swords. Outspokenness can sometimes lead to mistakes. Candor can sometimes lead to giving voice to a truth the political Establishment just doesn't want to admit. But that's really no excuse for high-profile Democrats to publicly attack him in the press as they have recently."

Lefty Dadahead: "Biden has no clue what 'the majority of Democrats' think, unless by that he means the majority of his buddies in the Beltway. ... So do us a favor, Joe: next time you have a problem with Dean, make a f---ing phone call."

  • Dem Oliver Willis: "Whether you agree or disagree with what Howard Dean said, why bother condemning him? The only people who want you to condemn it are: 1) the media, in their endless strategy to paint the Dems as being "in conflict", 2) the Republicans. There's nothing to be gained here."

On 6/4, Dean said: "I would make the argument that America is safer when Democrats are in the White House, than when Republicans are in the White House..." Alexander McClure responds at PoliPundit: "Does anyone remember how his party and the media re-acted when Dick Cheney said that George W. Bush's defeat might mean an attack on America?" He adds, sarcastically: "I'm sure we will hear similar outrage."

Conservative Beltway Buzz points out this a.m.: "ABC News reports DNC grassroots fundraising director Nancy Eiring has resigned. Eiring was 'one of the few holdovers in the Dean era'" from McAuliffe's time at the DNC.

FOWLER: When They Said They Wanted Democrats To Fight, This Probably Isn't What They Meant

Swing State Project's Tim Tagaris describes a scuffle between Donnie Fowler and Swing State Project's Bob Brigham, relating to Fowler's own DNC bid and the role blogs had in shaping that race. Of Fowler, he writes: "What's amazing to me is, here is a guy that headed up the Michigan field operation for Kerry in 2004, boasts of himself as a lifelong organizer, ran for DNC Chair, and still doesn't recognize the necessity of talking with people, not at them. He used the blogs as a billboard for his brouchereware, got called on it, and has the audacity to get pissed." He updates later: "Bob just called me to say Donnie Fowler Jr. just threw a punch at him -- and missed. I'm sure he'll have more when he returns." Brigham updates himself, later. A number of lefty bloggers start taking notice.

DEMOCRATS: Daddy, What's A Democrat?

At TPMCafe, Columbia prof Todd Gitlin reflects on attending the CAF conf. in DC (see 6/3 Blogometer). He singles out a few alarming speeches: Arianna Huffington "sneering at 'spineless'" Dem leaders, "among whom she counted" Sen. Hillary Clinton; Jesse Jackson for implying his support for a "progressive" 3rd party; ex-NOW pres. Kim Gandy castigating John Kerry, Rev. Jim Wallis and Bono for centrist tendencies, saying: "If this is what it means to be a big tent... then I say let's keep the skunk out of the tent." Gitlin concludes: "There may be combustibles here to blast the Democratic Party apart. When we don't have George W. Bush to keep us glued together, the centrifugal spirit will rise again. Fox News, with its usual restraint, said the conference was 'plotting to shift the balance of power.' If only."

"Armando" at DailyKos writes more on the "Big Tent" tug-of-war. Touching on the topic via a Washington Post article, he writes: "Ben Nelson is the Senator from Nebraska, not Senator of the Democratic Party."

Matt Yglesias writes, "when you ask if America is "the greatest country in the world" most voters say that it is. When you ask if Democrats believe that America is the greatest country, most voters say that they do not. I think it's clear that this perception creates some electoral problems. Indeed, it's a particularly serious kind of electoral problem because my guess is that the perception is probably correct."

  • Tom Maguire snarks: "And in related news, I expect some future pollster will discover that Dems also have a bit of a problem explaining how it is that they are deeply religious but never let it affect their public policy positions. The suspense is brutal, as the reality based community [i.e. liberal blogs] slowly confronts reality."

WAR ON TERRORISM: Do We Still Want To Win?

MN-based conservative Ed Morrissey: "Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, dear readers, and friends, I submit to you that this week represents the nadir of responsible thought about the war on terror." The Koran abuse story "has been front-page news for two or three weeks now, ever since Newsweek decided to run a poorly-sourced item about Gitmo guards flushing a Qu'ran down a toilet. Now we have the Pentagon report detailing five supposed events where guards mistreated copies of the Muslim scripture, and the media and the blogosphere have reacted like this is another My Lai."

  • Author/columnist Austin Bay finds the report intriguing but incomplete, but says: "Five incidents -- is that a pattern of abuse? Is that indicative of a policy? Of course not." On the story about a soldier urinating into a cellblock vent, he notes: "I see ABC News is hyping the urine story -- 'urine' is such a grabber as a headline. Will stories be written and aired about the prisoners' backgrounds? Who are these men? What did they do when they served with Al Qaeda and the Taliban?" Last we checked, the post had six updates by Bay and 60+ reader comments. There are similar thoughts from Power Line and La Shawn Barber, Michelle Malkin.

Univ. of MI prof Juan Cole, on Biden's call to raze Gitmo: "Absolutely right. The main reason is not that it is a continued scandal and creates a very poor image among Muslims worldwide of the United States. This allegation is true, and the US press has done a poor job of covering the continued fall-out of the Quran desecration story among Muslims world-wide. But it isn't the main reason the prison should be closed. The main reason is that the Bush Administration established the prison at Guantanamo in hopes of gutting the Bill of Rights. ... Guantanamo Prison should be closed because it was conceived as the beginning of the end of the American Republic."

KERRY: Unimpeachable?

Conservative RedState, on Kerry's statement to the New Bedford Standard-Times that he will "raise the issue" of the so-called Downing Street Memo -- a leaked document that says that Bush had decided to attack Iraq long before approaching Congress with the issue -- upon return to D.C. RedState, on what Kerry's call means: "Since Republicans control the House by a fairly large margin, there is zero chance that we will see any Articles of Impeachment come out of this. Instead what we might get is a bunch of impotent Democrats, possibly assisted by the Press-Democrat itself, waving arms and howling at the Moon about how Bush needs to be impeached because a memo drafted by the British government uses the work 'fixed.'"

DC-based lefty Mark Schmitt assesses how the right frames this issue: "[A]ny mention of the memo makes you automatically a nut calling for impeachment. And instead of discussing the memo, we'll argue about impeachment. Very clever. But there's a limit to these tricks, and I think it's been reached."

DC-based righty Bill Ardolino is tipped off to an eyebrow-raising story from AlJazeera.com (which he later notes is not affiliated with Al Jazeera the TV network): "John Kerry to call for impeachment of George Bush" He concludes: "This is either bad reporting (not including the direct quote that reveals that intent) or propagandizing/sensationalism."

Liberal The Next Hurrah writes that 1990s-era "impeachment fatigue" lingers, and in an acknowledgedly "tin foil hat-ish" post, argues that despite the "Downing Street Memo," impeachment is a "pipe dream even with a Democratic Congress. Worse, I'm sure the Bush people know this. Worse still, I think they knew this even before Bush ran for president the first time."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Social Security Or Pretty Girls? Hmmm ...

Right-leaning Instapundit: "In response to Linda Foley's refusal to either substantiate or retract her charges against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, journalist Hiawatha Bray is running for the Newspaper Guild executive committee as a write-in candidate." Bray is a business/tech columnist for the Boston Globe. As he wrote in an open letter to Foley posted in late May, Bray has been outspoken in his concern about her allegations.

GWU prof Orrin Kerr: "I am often amazed at how brazen the MSM can be in selecting what types of missing persons reports it selects as leading stories, especially on websites and TV. The missing person is almost always young; always a woman; always white; and always attractive. Right now the CNN.com home page is leading with [a] missing persons story, featuring (of course) a photograph of the attractive young woman front and center."

Liberals Josh Marshall and "Billmon" object to the Los Angeles Times reporting that Bush campaigned on Social Security reform during the campaign. Billmon disagrees, saying the press ignored substantive coverage to focus on the SBVT, etc: "The media simply took Bush's vague, mushy and highly misleading description of his "reform" plan at face value, and discounted any evidence to the contrary as partisan cheap shots."

James Wolcott weighs in on Okrent-Krugman (see 6/2 Blogometer) and the suggestion that the New York Times encouraged Okrent: "I don't think Times management and editors hate Krugman so much as they resent him. And what they resent is not so much his politics or his intellectual swagger as his indisguisable independence. ... Krugman ... has carved out his own constituency with readers. That makes him harder to control. Consequently, he doesn't have to play the same games everyone else does."

IN THE STATES: Coin Of The Realm

Colorado Pols goes in-depth on just how Dem GOV candidate Rutt Bridges' campaign kick-off turned "disastrous."

AmericaBlog, on the ongoing Coin-gate scandal in OH, as uncovered by the Toledo Blade: "Today, the paper has FOUR, yes FOUR, major political stories examining the role "Coin-gate" will play in next year's race for Governor. ... What a great way to spend a Sunday... reading about squirming, nasty Ohio Republicans wrapped up in the biggest scandal to hit that state in decades. And, they are all involved."

Charleston Daily Mail columnist Don Surber sizes up a possible match between Sen. Robert Byrd (D) vs. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) at his personal blog: "Attacking Byrd as old or racist or even pacifist will not work. Capito knows this and likely will do the same as Ireland did. She will present herself as a new, fresh face for the 21st century. She might do this by agreeing with the Legislature that Byrd is the West Virginian of the 20th Century. This is gonna be fun. Old politics vs. new ideas -- and the battle of [Capito father Arch] Moore and Byrd, two old lions who never squared off when they could have in the '60s and '70s.

WATERGATE: Revise? No Consent

Liberal Max Sawicky attempts to undo "historical revisionism" from the right (and some from the left) about Watergate: "The Felt hubbub from the Right aims to intimidate the press and potential whistle-blowers from the pursuit of justice. And there's a whole lot of justice that remains to be done."

Obsidian Wings quotes a few passages from the Nixon tapes and Watergate testimony to rebut the "revisionism" of Ben Stein and others (see 6/3 Blogometer) and writes: "This is not just the normal lying, cheating, and minor corruption (although Nixon had a particular flair for that) ... This is planning murder, arson, and of course burglary ... This is not just 'what all politicians do.' This was different."

"Atrios," at Eschaton: "I shouldn't be surprised by this stuff anymore, but the Nixon revisionism has been so extreme that in a decent society some of the players (cough Ben f---ing Stein cough) would never be handed a microphone again."

MISCELLANY: Bubblicious

Blog pioneer/vc/ICANN board member Joi Ito discusses the decision he was party to that created the .xxx designation: "Our approval of .XXX is a decision based on whether .XXX met the criteria and does not endorse or condone any particular type of content or moral belief. This is not the role of ICANN. I realize that some will view this as ICANN endorsing pornography on the Internet, but this is not the case."

Bloggers, particularly on the left, have been talking about the possibility of a burst housing bubble for some time. Among them, Matt Yglesias and right-leaner Kicking Over My Traces. Now Dan Gillmor writes, the San Francisco Chronicle "deserves much credit for taking a stand on this brewing financial debacle for so many people now leaping into a market where they are being played for suckers. Desperate to buy -- if that is the right word for taking out interest-only or no-down-payment loans -- before it's "too late," they are taking chances that too many of them will bitterly regret."

DailyKos contributor Al Rodgers posts the images of many, many screen grabs from network and cable news over the weekend. If you didn't watch any TV news in the past few days, read this and you may feel as if you had.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: How To Make It In Blogging Without Really Trying

Hugh Hewitt: "At the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC a few weeks back, the panel of which I was a part was asked by an audience member how to build an audience. My advice then was to grab a single topic and obsess long enough and in enough detail as to attract an audience interested in that subject. Contested, important races are the easiest way to stake some turf and attract a following. Readers will come for the news and hopefully stay for the analysis."

LEST WE FORGET: Building Materials

What a pre-fab building in West Virginia looks like.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 03, 2005

6/3: May The Force Of Language Be With Us

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

With posts about John Kerry and re-instatement of the draft among the topics of discussion out there today, one might think it's '04 again. Howard Dean is saying mean things about GOPers, so maybe it's more like summer '03. Or, considering that ex-Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal is getting into a heated debate with conservatives on the web, it's almost like '97. But it's definitely '05 because Deep Throat's identity is out and still the subject for discussion, and there's an interesting rumor going around about William Rehnquist's retirement and Pres. Bush's choice to replace him. Also because, you know, it actually is '05.

TRACKBACKS: Same Field, Different Subjects

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • Liberal bloggers are all over a report from the New York Times on parents' increasing objection to allowing their children to be recruited by the military. To some of them, a draft seems imminent. Among those linking: The Light of Reason; People's Republic of Seabrook; TBogg; When Silence Becomes Betrayal. There's also conservative Vox Popoli, who seems to agree with the left on the issue, writing, it "couldn't happen to a more appropriate administration."

    >> Markos Moulitsas at DailyKos: "Once upon a time, my wife and I sparred over military service for our son. ... My wife and I no longer have that argument. ... As I've written before, it breaks my heart that the military is no longer a viable option to many people who could benefit from its pluses." TalkLeft cites Kos and adds: "I think the 'special skills' draft will be first. And with all the troubles recruiters are encountering, it may not be long off."


  • Over on the right, Amnesty Internat'l's characterization of Gitmo as a "gulag" remains a major topic of discussion. A Washington Post-hosted Reuters dispatch is linked by Chrenkoff, Opino Juris, Little Green Footballs and The Corner, among others.

    >> Right-leaning INDC Journal, quoting a Pentagon report saying some Gitmo detainees are allowed to play soccer, checkers and chess: "Now that Amnesty International has declared Gitmo the 'gulag of our time,' the terrible stories are leaking out..." My Pet Jawa delves into the facts about the Soviet gulags in a lengthy post. Near the end: "Shame on you Amnesty International, I will never take your accusations seriously again."

SCOTUS: Rehnquist's Out, McConnell's In?

Conservative Steve Dillard writes at Southern Appeal, and cross-posts to Confirm Them: "Rehnquist will step down in the next four weeks: I don't think this news will come as a surprise to anyone, but I just received a phone call from an extremely reliable source who tells me that it's a done deal. My prediction: President Bush will tap Judge Michael W. McConnell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit to fill the Rehnquist vacancy and to be the next Chief."

In the Agora concurs on the choice of McConnell: "McConnell is solidly conservative, but not in a partisan manner. He's an intellectual conservative, not a political conservative and that carries much weight with me. He has a long track record of scholarship that will provide plenty of fodder for the various liberal advocacy groups ... to oppose him. But ultimately, he is confirmable."

Since first posted on 6/1, Dillard's post has attracted a modest amount of attention, mostly from other conservative bloggers.

DEMOCRATS: Howard Huge

Jackson's Junction records video of Howard Dean at the annual CAF conf. Said Dean, as first broadcast on C-SPAN: "You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever and get home and still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well Republicans, I guess can do that. Because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives."

  • Ankle Biting Pundits highlights more off-beat comments from Dean, including: "Is there a problem with the defense posture when we pick on dictators that are irrelevant to the United States and then leave nuclear powers like North Korea and Iran alone? Yes."

At his own blog, The Nation's David Corn reports from the "Take Back America" conf. in D.C.: "When Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean spoke to the group in the morning, he too said not a word about the war in Iraq. After [John] Edwards finished and starting working the crowd, one attendee ... approached him and remarked, 'You didn't say anything about Iraq.' He looked straight at her and replied: 'You're right.' It was left to Arianna Huffington ... to chide the Democratic Party for ignoring this 300 billion pound gorilla."

  • Fellow Nation contributor Marc Cooper comments on Corn's post: "Ms. Clinton buzzed through town last night in her quest to shake out some Hollywood dough. This is, of course, how real politics are conducted in this country. Take your name recognition, mix in your network of entrenched party operatives, hacks and local elected officials, water it with plenty of campaign cash a coupla-three years out, and eventually make yourself inevitable."

REPUBLICANS: Pay As You Vote?

Conservative Pekin Prattles posts the text of a GOP fundraising letter signed by Senate Maj. Leader Bill Frist. In part: "I am counting on you to help the NRSC prepare for what is likely to be one of the toughest and most consequential debates in recent memory. Help us deliver on the principle of up-or-down votes for the President's judicial nominees." Captain's Quarters, well known among conservative bloggers for encouraging them to not donate to the NRSC until there's a vote on each of Bush's nominees: "No doubt the NRSC would like to improve its fundraising, but to claim it needs more money from Republicans to force a vote on the floor of the Senate defies common sense. All the GOP needs to get a vote is the spine to demand it."

WHITE HOUSE '08: Your Country Needs You, John

Conservative JustOneMinute expresses his exasperation with John Kerry in a post inspired by Instapundit, whose post was originally based on a column by the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby. JustOneMinute, on Kerry's complaints about "Republican Noise Machine subdivision of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy": "Please, I'm begging now -- Kerry should just sign the Form 180 and send it in -- let everyone see the military records, and show the world that the Swift Boat critics were off-target. As a bonus, the news judgment of the NY Times, which has yet to mention the phrase "Form 180" and has never called for the release of Kerry's military (or medical) records, will be vindicated. ... Sign the form and silence the skeptics! Bring it on, Tall Dour One. And don't forget your war diaries, too."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Anarchy In The U.S.

Last p.m., John Hinderaker at Power Line posts a brief e-mail exchange between atty James Green and ex-Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal re: the latter's Guardian column asserting that GOPers effectively filibustered Clinton's jud. nominees. Power Line agrees with Green that Blumenthal is incorrect; Hinderaker terms him "Sid Vicious."

  • This a.m., Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo posts an e-mail sent by Blumenthal directly to Hinderaker. Marshall comments: "Without going into the specifics of this exchange, it's always struck me as more a matter of humor than debate that Republicans actually try to argue that they didn't spend the better part of a decade doing to Clinton nominees what Democrats have now done, less successfully and less systemically, to Bush's."

Righty radio talker Hugh Hewitt, on Dan Rather's "LKL" appearance last p.m.: "It is hard to be angry or even exercised over the sad spectacle of an old man trying so hard not to admit that he'd been played for a fool, but when Rather asserted, twice, that a 'prudent person' might judge the absurd forgeries as real, the damage done by the [Dick] Thornburgh whitewash became undeniable. Rather, and who knows how many others, have convinced themselves that there's a chance the forgeries weren't forgeries, and have also seized on 'the panel's' conclusion that no political bias was at work."

DailyKos fisks a letter to the FEC by Carol Darr from GWU's Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet (IPDI). Darr asserts that bloggers should not be given the "media exemption" from regulation that the press now enjoys, writing that bloggers are activists, not journalists. Kos disagrees: "It's D.C. Establishment versus those of us outside of D.C. THAT's what blowhards like Darr are trying to protect. So please offer up examples of political activists inside the media machine (like Roger Ailes, Paul Begala, etc.) so we can blow that asinine argument out of the water."

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: Persona Habits

Anti-filibuster compromise Patterico's Pontifications takes umbrage with compromise defender Ace Pilots for suggesting that the non-compromisers put their party ahead of their country: "I virulently oppose the filibuster 'deal' ... But I wouldn't question the patriotism of someone who disagrees."

  • Ace Pilots: "Welcome to the internets, Patterico." He discusses the roles bloggers play: "One of the easiest, most popular, roles is what I'll call Party Enforcer ... The Main Stream Bloggers (and any others who might admit to being affected by this dynamic) have gone overboard. There's a lot of 'playing to the galleries' in the blogosphere, and at some point, it goes beyond mere entertainment and moves into partisan ... divisiveness."

Conservative Lorie Byrd at PoliPundit, on FNC labeling Huffington "Progressive Blogger Arianna Huffington": "I can think of many descriptions of Huffington from her public life over the past couple of decades. Former Newt Gingrich devotee, ex-wife of failed Senate candidate and really rich guy, Michael Huffington, Al Franken's on-air bedmate in Comedy Central's 1996(?) campaign coverage, failed CA gubernatorial candidate, rich woman whose various households and modes of transportation consume more energy than my entire family will in our lifetimes and those of our grandchildren but who insists on lecturing us on energy conservation -- yes. Progressive blogger? Sorry, but no. Even taking the Huffington Post into account, I don't think that is what immediately comes to most people's minds when Arianna Huffington appears on their television screens."

WAR ON TERROR: Faster, Democrats! Kill! Kill!

Oliver Willis writes, at a 6/2 CAF presser featuring co-dir. Robert Borosage and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), he asked Schakowsky "about the lack of national security/foreign policy issues being discussed. I was not happy with the response. The left has this notion that if we simply shift the discussion to be about economic issues ... that we can neutralize the issue of security, terrorism and war. No way. In the era of 9/11 and Iraq, America is going to vote for the movement that they perceive as the movement that will protect them and kill the bad guys." At Eschaton, Duncan "Atrios" Black makes a similar observation.

Liberals Against Terrorism: "I don't usually go in for cheap shots these days, as they're so easy ... but what's up with the Bush administration rushing to name the pro-Enron Chris Cox as the new SEC Chair when AFAIK there's been no similar rush to fill long-vacant counterterrorism slots and top Treasury jobs, the State Department is still waiting for Karen Hughes to do whatever she's doing, and there's been no US ambassador in Iraq for some months now?"

Drawing upon the resources of Daily Kos, Susan Hu has launched a project "examining several sets of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for evidence relating to the physical abuse and torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and the denial of legal rights to these detainees under U.S. and international law."

DEEP THROAT: Follow The Links

At the Huffington Post, right-leaning Robert A. George quotes ex-Nixon aide/lobbyist Ken Duberstein on Deep Throat: "What options did he have? He couldn't go to the White House Chief of Staff (Haldeman or Ehrlichman); he couldn't go to the Justice Department (John Mitchell); he couldn't go to the White House Counsel (John Dean). He did something responsible. The congressional committees hadn't been formed yet. What do you do? Felt put America first."

Jonah Goldberg, whose mother Lucianne Goldberg became involved in the Whitewater via Linda Tripp, writes at The Corner: "But if you're going to say that Tripp wasn't heroic while Felt was, you are going to have to make a very careful explanation about why his motives were purer and more high-minded than Tripp's were alleged to have been. Because, it seems to me that motive goes to the heart of heroism. If I shoot a rapist by accident while cleaning my gun, the result is good but I don't think anyone would call me a hero. If Mark Felt leaked to Woodward in order to screw his boss or to pay Nixon back for being passed over, you're free to think the result was good. But don't give me this hero nonsense."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A Lying, Conniving Peacemaker

Not a few right-leaning bloggers, including Little Green Footballs, link to an online column by ex-Nixon speechwriter/monotone-voiced comedian Ben Stein at the American Spectator: "Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad? Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. ... He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded. That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying, conniving peacemaker."

LEST WE FORGET: That 70's Source

If you missed the "Daily Show" segment earlier this week about the Deep Throat revelation, or just wnat to see it again, Crooks and Liars has the full video.

Posted by at 12:00 PM

June 02, 2005

6/2: Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.

Although the Blogometer focuses primarily on domestic politics and campaigns, we must first mention that one of the largest stories making its way around the blogosphere is the Dutch vote to reject the EU constitution. However, it is only an issue on the conservative blogs, or more accurately (and interestingly) on blogs that supported the Iraq invasion. Worthwhile posts are available Daniel Drezner and Secular Blasphemy.

In an interesting development for both WH politics and the blogosphere, John Edwards invited a number of well-known bloggers to his home in Georgetown for dinner. Most are staying mum, but a acknowledge the meeting on their blogs.

Just as the FEC is about to stop accepting public comments on the subject of regulating political blogs, a coalition of bloggers on the left and right get together and send in a letter.

Meanwhile, a blogger breaks another news story about a shake-up at a venerable journalistic institution.

TRACKBACKS: Deep, Deep Trouble

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • The most popular link of late last p.m./this a.m., according to Memeorandum and Technorati, is to Washington Post asst. managing editor Bob Woodward's front-page story on "How Mark Felt Became Deep Throat."

    >> At the Huffington Post, Richard Bradley (nee Blow) asks: "The circumstantial evidence mounts that Mark Felt was not lucid enough to decide on his own to out himself as Deep Throat." Lefty Eric Alterman, after praising Felt: "Let's add a few complications, however. Mark Felt was a liar. ... My point here is not that he was good, but also bad. My point is that there are far worse things than lying, particularly in politics." After a reader wrote Talking Points Memo about a softball Chris Matthews interview with G. Gordon Liddy, TPM asks, "can anyone send me some particularly rich and egregious examples of chat-meisters on the various shows getting crooks and felons like Colson, Liddy et al. to dump on Mark Felt without pressing them on their own crimes?"

    >> A few