August 11, 2005

8/11: Who You Gonna BlogCall?

Note: Because The Hotline is publishing four days per week in August, the next edition of the Blogometer will be posted on Monday, August 15.

Web readers: To go directly to the SCOTUS coverage click here.

Last p.m. the Blogometer listened in on a conf. call for bloggers -- termed a "BlogCall" by organizer Joe Trippi -- featuring Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist/mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. The call featured short statements by Trippi himself and co-organizer Bob Fertik. Trippi used his time to promote the website MeetWithCindy.org. Fertik noted that Sheehan has "been on this crusade for a year now," testifying at Rep. John Conyers' (D-MI) recent Downing Street Memo hearings.

Sheehan then gave a brief statement, thanking the bloggers on the call for getting the word out -- when the Secret Service "intimidated" her outside Pres. Bush's Crawford ranch, she said, it was the blogs who got the word out. Sheehan: "Thank God for the Internet and the blogosphere or we wouldn't know anything, and this would be a fascist state." Sheehan added: "One person can't make a difference, but one person with millions of people behind her can." Later in the call, however, she did admit, "I still don't know really understand what they [blogs] are."

At one point during the call, Fertik noted "hostile forces" in the MSM working against her, likely a reference to FNC's Bill O'Reilly, whom Sheehan said had lied about her. Salon blogwatcher Peter Daou later noted that the MSM would bury this story as best it could. Sheehan concurred, stating that of 4 interviews she had scheduled with MSNBC, 2 were canceled and 2 simply never took place. Sheehan: "They don't want it to be the story."

Questions came from About.com's Deborah White, bloggers from Crooks and Liars, Seeing The Forest, Arctic Beacon -- the site which pushed the dubious "Bush Indictment" story to the top of Technorati (see 8/10 Blogometer) -- and others. At one point, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) came on the line; she and Sheehan related like old friends, declaring their love and support for each other. In fact, at times it seemed less a conf. call and more a party-line support group. Although the debate about whether what bloggers do should be called journalism will continue, it does seem that the neologism "blogcall" does indeed describe a different event than a traditional reporters' conf. call.

In today's edition, we follow the latest developments in the CIA leak investigation, the strange tale of "Able Danger," a new memo on the progressive blogosphere written by bloggers for Beltway consumption. Plus, we debut a new recurring feature, describing the various online communities which bloggers have created for themselves. To jump straight to that, click here.

TRACKBACKS: Swarm Feelings

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

• "Cindy Sheehan" is the #1 search on Technorati this a.m.
  
  

  >> For regular updates on various stories related to Sheehan's endeavors, liberal Ramblings from My Mind has been posting seemingly around the clock -- to MSM stories, advocacy groups and independent bloggers. Crooks and Liars has plenty, too. An interview should be posted sometime today. Think Progress hosts the audio of Sheehan's appearance on Bill Press' radio show.
  

  >> News Hounds, which participated in the blogcall noted above, tells it from her perspective. Others who blogged it are Democracy Cell Project Blog, and Philly Future, and the Daou Report, which raises the same Aruba dilemma (liberal blog swarms still can't compete with round-the-clock coverage of stories like the disappearance Natalee Holloway) as he did on the call.
  

  >> In a diary for Daily Kos reports that an "anti-Cindy" rally sponsored by local conservative radio stations had either been canceled or moved. Also, as of last p.m., this particular diary entry had raised $1.4K to assist Sheehan's cause. Additionally, CNN's Anderson Cooper was originally going to have Sheehan on "360" but "chickened out" before it took place.
  

  >> Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford, at the Huffington Post: "This could be a perfect storm for a media frenzy, the political world's answer to the Aruba chase. A mother mourns the loss of a child and demands answers from the government. But unlike the poor mother of the girl missing in Aruba, the mother now living in a tent in Texas is at the center of a truly meaningful debate." He points out that Sheehan's story is getting attention, primarily from newspaper columnists across the nation.

ROVE-PLAME-MILLER: Pincus And The Brain

Walter Pincus' latest Washington Post report on the CIA leak investigation raises eyebrows. While the article's hook is primarily that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is looking closely at how ex-Amb. Joe Wilson got the assignment to visit Niger -- the CIA and WH tell different stories -- a number of liberal bloggers try to read Pincus' hints, all the more intriguing because Pincus ends up having to report on his own previous reporting.

Liberal Needlenose: "Who cares if Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, and whoever else may have blabbed about Joe Wilson's wife all told a version of events that the CIA denies? Pincus coyly explains," of the 2 sources which "'appear to support the view'" that Valerie Plame suggested Wilson, the 2nd of them -- a Senate Intel Cmte GOPers' statement -- "'depends in good part on'" the 1st, the State Dept's INR memo. Needlenose: "In other words, in the course of an apparent inquiry into who sent Joseph Wilson to Niger, Pincus seems to "accidentally" stumble onto the discovery that the only document backing up the White House/Republican viewpoint is ... the State Department memo. You know, the same classified State Department memo that would get Karl Rove and Lewis Libby in deep trouble if it was shown to be their source of information about Valerie Plame Wilson." Rising Hegemon: "But importantly that version of events was given to [Bob] Novak, Matt Cooper and Pincus himself, most certainly from Rove and Libby. The State Department memo had information on Valerie Plame's status with the CIA. If Rove and Libby knew of that State Department Memo in advance, they are in some serious shit."

For Daily Kos' Armando, this backs up the notion that jailed Times reporter Judy Miller "may have been given the memo for her review by Lewis Libby. And that is why her testimony is critical to the investigation."

AMERICAblog, on the agreement between the WH, State Dept. and Senate GOPers: "Interesting. Are we looking at a conspiracy here?"

9/11: What Did They Know And When Did They ... Sorry, That Cliché Goes With The Above Item

Conservatives Ed Morrissey and Tom Maguire ponder new reports from the New York Times' Doug Jehl about "Able Danger" -- a Pentagon data mining project which supposedly identified Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers as al Qaedists in '00. The 8/11 report says the 9/11 Commis. was notified of the program 10 days before it issued its report; on 8/10 Jehl and cowriter Philip Shenon had quoted Commish John Lehman as saying they were unaware of its existence.

Noting that the 9/11 Commis. didn't mention Able Danger in their final report, Morrissey argues, they "ignored those facts which did not fit within its predetermined conclusions ... even though [Able Danger] absolutely refuted the notion that the government had no awareness that Atta constituted a terrorist threat." Maguire writes that Rep. Curt Weldon's (R-PA) claims look better in light of new reporting. He adds, "a point to ponder -- was Atta noted ... as a key Al Qaeda figure even in 2001, or was he just one name among fifty, or five hundred? I suspect that Congressional hearings into this will be forthcoming."

Early this a.m., Morrissey updates, re: the 8/11 story: "Interestingly, the New York Times changed its headline overnight from '9/11 Commission's Staff Ignored Military's Early Identification of Chief Hijacker' to '9/11 Commission's Staff Rejected Report on Early Identification of Chief Hijacker'. Nothing else changed in the story except the headline. Did the Times feel uncomfortable with the clearly accurate first headline and want to attract less attention in the blogosphere?"

Liberal War and Piece's Laura Rozen writes: "I was at a talk Weldon gave at the Heritage foundation back in 2002, where he was making the same claim and showing the same chart of the al Qaeda cells. ... I even went up afterwards and asked if it would be possible to get a copy of the chart that accompanied his talk and that he's been showing recently, but it proved elusive. So why is this coming forward in a more prominent way only now?" The link goes to a Real Video version of Weldon's address; the relevant portions are at minutes 24, 31, and 33:30.

Kevin Drum writes that he was recently sent a link to a report on Able Danger in the latest Government Security News, but initially passed when he noticed Weldon was the key source. However, the story is more detailed than the Times reports. Drum wants to hear from Commis. Exec. Dir. Philip Zelikow, but for now guesses "that Weldon and his source may be considerably embroidering the scope and reliability of what the Able Danger team actually uncovered ... as people are often wont to do after the fact.

Going on the 8/10 story, Mickey Kaus suggests that the Times is "asymptotically approaching the truth, bloggy-style, by publicizing an uncertain story and initiating what is in effect a dialogue with those who have additional, clarifying information to offer..."

Ranting Profs notes, the Times makes "no effort made at all to make it clear that this happened during the Clinton administration, but more damning, there is no effort made to explain that" Able Danger's info wasn't shared because of the "wall" between intel agencies. Baldilocks: "Are the agencies working in concert now to help decrease the likelihood of another attack? I pray so."

REPUBLICANS: ANWR Doing This Why?

Hugh Hewitt calls it "astonishing" that so many House GOPers oppose including ANWR in a budget procedure, and warns what will happen if "the GOP does not deliver on new oil exploration in a time of $60 a barrel oil": "I doubt the Speaker will be swayed, but if this measure fails in the House, it will be an invitation to the base -- every bit as compelling as the failure to confirm [John] Roberts would be in the Senate -- to sit out '06."

BLOGS VS. THE DCCC: Oh Come On, Emanuel ...

Liberal Swing State Project's Bob Brigham -- who since the OH 02 vote has been vocal in his criticism of the DCCC's hesitancy to compete in non-swing CDs -- writes of a conf. call with DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), he has "never left" a conf. call feeling "so uninspired ... First, the DCCC screwed up the format of the call so that it was one directional. The blogosphere by nature is a fan of communicating-with instead of talking-at. Then Congressman Emanuel actually went out of his way to blab about the one-directional nature being a good thing and then talked about wanting more of it." More: "I'm holding out hope for Emanuel. ... But nothing leads me to believe that the DCCC realizes the importance of investing early and running full campaigns. Everything still seems based on the last two weeks and 30 second ads."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas writes, "campaigns have learned the wrong lesson about the [Paul] Hackett surprise, with a bunch of campaigns asking to 1) meet with me, and 2) help them raise money. That's a double insult." He writes, "I'm not a gatekeeper. I don't decide who is "in" and who is "out". All these campaigns profess love for the netroots, yet none of them seem to be doing anything more to "reach out" to the netroots than sending me an email." More: "And just as importantly, the netroots is not an ATM. It's a message and activist machine. You do everything right, there's some money. But if you start sniffing around the blogs expecting to see dollar signs you're going to be sorely disappointed."

Liberal Matt Yglesias, at TAPPED: "[T]hanks to Howard Dean, Paul Hackett, Brian Schweitzer, and others it seems to me that more and more liberals are ready to hop onto the gun-toting progressive bandwagon. ... Riding support for gun rights to a rapprochement with elements of the white working class strikes me as obviously the correct move for Democrats to be making."

NETROOTS: Have The Potential To Help, But Still Dangerous -- You Know, Like Guns

NDN's New Politics Institute -- which aims to help Dems work with the left-leaning blogosphere more effectively -- releases a memo penned by MyDD's Chris Bowers and BOPnews' Matt Stoller, titled "The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere." The memo describes the growth of blogs and of their influence, the differences between the liberal and conservative halves, and advises campaigns on how to best make use of political blogs.

The advice supports the recent trend of including non-supporters in blog-related events, such as Tim Kaine's GOV campaign, and the FRC's efforts with Justice Sunday II (see 8/10 Blogometer) "Link to interesting blog posts from your web site/blog; make sure you link to a few posts that disagree with you. This will lend your online presence more credibility. Listen and respond to criticism. These are your friends and often not that experienced in politics -- treat them like they are here to learn, not like they are cynical, hard-boiled reporters." Along the same lines, Bowers and Stoller note that even like-minded bloggers can't be expected to toe an official line when the facts don't support it. They advise: "It is important to remember at all times that bloggers are both campaign activists, and a sort of journalist. ... Treat bloggers like friends and allies, but also realize you are on the record."

The full PDF version includes an Appendixed directory for the top 100 liberal blogs by traffic, which is very much incomplete, sometimes omitting contact names for well-known blog authors (such as non-anonymous bloggers at Daily Kos and Swing State Project. It also assigns category names to blogs, such as Community, Commentary, and News Site, which are all self-explanatory. Yet it also includes a category as Magazine, which we're pretty sure doesn't refer to the recent FEC-spurred fad for jokingly renaming blogs "online magazines." Unfortunately, there is no methodology to explain this. There is also a complementary list of top conservative blogs, albeit with less detail provided.

Lefty economist Max Sawicky comments this a.m. that he thinks Bowers' and Stoller's NDN's Sitemeter records are off, writing, "if I took the Sitemeter numbers seriously I'd be well-advised to find another pastime." On the same note, Bowers wrote about the memo at MyDD and had to add this update: "Just got an email from Democratic Underground. Turns out their weekly page views are actually around 7,000,000 -- bigger than Daily Kos. Holy Crap. Much bigger than I thought. I wonder what Free Republic is. "

SENATE '06: We're Not Above Instant Clichés Here -- Ahem ... Can He Hackett?

In light of his "fatass drug addict" remark (see 8/10 Blogometer) TNR's &c. asks whether "neophyte" Paul Hackett has what it takes: "[O]ne wonders whether Hackett's sharp tongue could lead to a gaffe-fest during a far longer and harder statewide campaign." More: "Hackett blew off some campaign opportunities in the race's final hours ... and grew openly hostile towards the media." If Hackett wants to challenge Sen. Mike DeWine (R) in '06, Dems "should make sure he's clear about what he's getting into."

DeWine is #1 on MyDD's latest target list of vulnerable Senate GOPers, followed by Rick Santorum (PA), Lincoln Chafee (RI), Jim Talent (MO), Conrad Burns (MT), Jon Kyl (AZ), Bill Frist's open TN seat, and John Ensign (NV).

AIR AMERICA: Franken's Monster

Michelle Malkin keeps the ball rolling re: the "Air America Scandal" -- the phrase is on a GIF icon she and other bloggers use with each related post -- by noting stories from the New York Post and New York Daily News. The 2 papers report on a shake-up at the Girls & Boys Club which had curiously laned $875K to the radio network. She also links to several other bloggers closely tracking developments.

Radio Equalizer's Brian Maloney quotes Al Franken commenting on-air about the issue: "And he uh, borrowed (laughter) $875,000 from, I don't know why they did it, and I don't know where the money went, I don't know if it was used for operations (softer, faster), which I imagine it was." Maloney: "Care to elaborate on this, Mr. Franken? That's a big point to bury in your public statement. ... Don't you feel you've a moral obligation to get to the bottom of this, Mr. Franken? Why not be above-board, rather than misleading and evasive?"

INTRODUCING: Real Ultimate Power Line

Power Line's John Hinderaker announces: "There are lots of places to go for breaking news, but until now, to our knowledge, there hasn't been a place where you could go for the latest wire service stories, web-based commentary, and other news sources. So we created one": Power Line News, which is "intended to be the ultimate resource for news junkies. You can check out breaking news stories, see how the stock market is doing, and pick up the latest in blog-based political commentary via RSS feeds from top political sites." Power Line News features a world map underneath the title banner; when one rolls the mouse over continents/regions/major countries a pop-up window displays links to major papers from that area. Below are 2 columns -- the left is devoted to an AP newswire, features RSS feeds for Power Line, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, PoliPundit and Captain's Quarters.

MISCELLANY: What's So Funny?

• Responding to Mithras' complaint, noted in this space on 8/10, that there are no funny conservative bloggers, IMAO's Frank J. explains why Mithras doesn't think conservatives are funny: "KEY HUMOR ASPECT NUMBER ONE: Humor involves shared, unsaid beliefs between who tells joke and who hears it." Brainster agrees: "Just as people who are likely to find the endless twists and turns of Plamegate fascinating are also mostly the ones who hollered 'Whitewater? Boooorrrrinnnng!'"
• As of 8/10 Technorati's David Sifry is up to part 5 of his "State of the Blogosphere" report (see 8/3 Blogometer). He posts a bar chart as comparing popularity "as a function of links" among blogs and the MSM. New York Times, Washington Post and Yahoo! News handily lead all other U.S. news sites; the top blog is cool-stuff compendium Boing Boing, which is bigger than USA Today, FoxNews.com, and a few others. Daily Kos and Instapundit, the only 2 political weblogs in the list, trail Salon and MTV.com but lead the Los Angeles Times, Slate and NRO. At his Part 4 concerns "spam blogs" and "fake blogs."
• CJR Daily interviews Abbi Tatton and Jacki Schechner, CNN's "Inside the Blogs" reporters.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Modern Era Of Ticket-Splitting

Vanity Fair's James Wolcott tells left-leaning hawks, "by subscribing to Bush's War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq with every corpuscle of your tired body you've made common cause with Republican conservatives, neoconservatives, and Christian fundamentalists who are dedicated to destroying those parcels of liberalism on which you stake your tiny claims of pride..." At Instapundit, left-leaning hawk Michael Totten says he voted for a GOP WH and a Dem Congress, adding: "Politics isn't binary, James. It's not a war between the white hats and the black hats -- or the blue hats and the red hats for that matter. ... If you're a liberal I suppose the choice is an easy one. Some of us non-liberals see nuance and shades of gray"

LEST WE FORGET: Sports Guys Vote, Too

Page 2's Bill Simmons: "What will we see? That's easy -- a female president. If you don't think Hillary Clinton will be running the country in four years, you're crazy. Ever been stuck in a room full of women when they decide on something ridiculous like "Andie McDowell has been the most beautiful woman in Hollywood for the past 15 years" and they will absolutely stick together until the death when you're posing counterarguments? Well, I think that's how the 2008 election is going to unfold -- Hillary is going to be Andie McDowell-ed right into the presidency. If she becomes president, that means any woman can become president. It's too important not to vote for her. So they'll vote for her." Conservative Vox Popoli: "The amazing thing about Simmons is that his uniquely convoluted reasoning leads him to the correct conclusion far more often than not, as long as the Celtics and Red Sox aren't involved."

SPECIAL: In Turnaround

What the blogosphere is saying about Pres. Bush's pick of John Roberts for the SCOTUS:

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum rewrites the NARAL ad to make it less "outrageous" and more effective. He changes it so that it is clear Roberts' briefs were filed well before the clinic bombing referenced in the ad, and changes the middle section to say: "John Roberts was just doing his job: he was defending conservative ideology for the first Bush administration. But conservative ideology has real world consequences."

NRO's Stephen Spruiell reports that NARAL was behind the rumor that FNC would air their ad: "I just got in touch with Dan Balz, who wrote the Washington Post report that Fox News along with CNN would be running an ad from NARAL falsely accusing John Roberts of harboring sympathies for abortion-clinic bombers. As I mentioned in an update to the post below, FNC told me that NARAL 'actually never approached us for a buy.' Balz confirmed that he got the bum information from NARAL and that the Post will run a correction, and good for them. Now. Will CNN announce that it reported incorrectly that Fox News would also be running the ads? Or will it continue to pass on NARAL's lies about its lying ad?"

ROE V. WADE: Let's Get Contrarian

CAP's Supreme Court Extra has been surprisingly quiet over the past week, but now returns with a post arguing that the possible "overruling" of Roe v. Wade is not the key issue, "but whether it will be emptied of its substance through a series of incremental cutbacks."

Bench Memos' Gerard Bradley disagrees with the notion that the SCOTUS's current balance should be kept: "Should Lincoln have sought to keep the Court delicately divided between those who thought that Dred Scott was rightly decided -- and those who didn't? ... Do not the calls for 'centrist,' 'mainstream,' and 'moderate' views in a nominee -- all to "balance" the Court -- imply that, to constitutional questions at last, there are no right answers?"

COMMUNITIES: In The Company Of Blogs

As people tend to self-segregate in the offline world, so do people who spend a lot of their time online find, join or create affinity groups. While the larger world has buttons, apparel and bumper stickers, the blogosphere has buttons, badges, icons and flags advertising one's interests, origins and beliefs. Today we begin what we expect to be a weekly series focusing on the associations that bloggers have created for themselves.

We thought a good way to get started would be to ask someone who has already been following the phenomenon closely: N.Z. Bear (not his real name) who for several years has maintained a popular blog-ranking website, The Truth Laid Bear, or TTLB. In mid-June, Mr. Bear revamped TTLB, introducing a Communities page to keep track of the various alliances, brotherhoods and sisterhoods that have formed. He was generous enough to oblige, and explain the TTLB Ecosystem and how it led to the creation of his Communities page:

"TTLB is most widely known for the Blogosphere Ecosystem, which ranks blogs according to the links they receive from other blogs. The Ecosystem has existed in its current form for over two years (and was originally born in a more primitive and manually-generated state way back in June 2002), and has proven to be tremendously -- perhaps even obsessively -- popular. But the Ecosystem suffers from a weakness: it views the blogosphere as an undifferentiated mass, providing a single, hierarchical listing across every single weblog it tracks. Which is fun for bloggers who want to know where they stand in the blogosphere-wide popularity contest -- but not all that useful for blog readers looking to find the particular blogs that are covering subjects they are interested in.

"My new Communities feature fills this gap by providing individual pages dedicated to sub-groups of bloggers. Each community page shows the most recent and most popular posts by member blogs, as well as an Ecosystem-like ranking that shows the relative popularity of blogs within the community. Some communities are informal ones grouped by factors like nationality -- such as Iraqi
or United Kingdom blogs. Others are more organized collectives where bloggers consciously banded together around common interests -- such as The Cotillion (conservative women) or the Life, Liberty and Property community (libertarian/anarchist/minarchist bloggers).

"The existing community pages at TTLB are a mix of groups I reached out to prior to the launch of the Community function in June, and groups that have requested inclusion on their own. And more are being added all the time."

To give you a better idea of what he is talking about, below we have partially reproduced the TTLB Communities page as it looked as of this a.m. Some groups N.Z. explained above, others are self-explanatory, and others we'll get to eventually:

Community Name                    Members     Recent Posts
Gossip, Celebrities & Fashion         8            66
Raging RINOs                         74           306
The Academy                          24           124
The Conservative Brotherhood         16            42
The Cotillion                        49           106
The Axis of Naughty                  23            43
The Liberal Coalition                33            47
The Wide Awakes                      42            68
Life, Liberty, Property              55           136
The Big Brass Alliance              282           759
Milblogs                            202           203
Canadian Blogs	                    409           553
Blogdom of God	                   4521          2197
United Kingdom Bloggers            3240           690
The Alliance of Free Blogs          405           770
Humor & Satire                       43           105
Iranian Bloggers                     32            21
Iraqi Bloggers                       35            13
Gunbloggers                          88           120
Education Blogs                      22            26
The Blogging Tories                 116           146
Munuvians                           167           223
College Football Blogs               54            51

Over coming weeks and months, the Blogometer will tell the stories behind many of the communities TTLB tracks, and plenty that it currently does not (if yours is not, you can e-mail him here). We'll explore how these communities came together, what they mean to the bloggers who participate, and what enduring significance they may have. For the veteran blog reader, it should be an occasion to revisit old times. For the newcomer, this should be a useful way to get acquainted with the personalities and predicaments of the blogosphere that has gone before.

Posted by at August 11, 2005 12:52 PM