1/26: The Brady Bunch
What's the top story today? There's so much going on that we just don't have the time to decide. It's been a busy week, and today is no exception. We devote the most space to yesterday's Post.com chat with exec. ed. Jim Brady and several prominent bloggers, at which many issues were raised and none were put back down. It may put the cap on this particular episode, but the debate obviously will continue. One episode that's still on the air is the boycott of Chris Matthews, which is just getting under way now.
Getting away from the media, the left-blogosphere is pushing hard for the Senate Dems to filibuster Samuel Alito. While we haven't seen any ultimatums threatened just yet, the lefty bloggers are finding various Dems' excuses less than persuasive. Even if Alito cannot be stopped, some see a chance for a unifying Dem moment -- a moment the Hill Dems don't seem to recognize. Not that there isn't any acrimony on the other side of the aisle. Take acting Maj. Leader Roy Blunt, who appears to be purposefully alienating GOP-leaning bloggers. While few were inclined to support him before, this latest contretemps only makes it more likely they will be antagonistic toward him even if he wins the House GOP leadership race. In WH '08, as liberal bloggers are talking down Sen. Hillary Clinton, some conservative bloggers have been talking up John McCain more and more, despite their differences with him. But it's a delicate balance -- his support is partially based in the expectation that he would defeat HRC in the general election, but what if she doesn't make it that far?
Plus, the Palestinian elections, NSA wiretaps, and more impeachment scuttlebutt. Plus, our latest Blogger Spotlight.
HOUSE GOP ELECTIONS: Staff Infection
Following acting Maj. Leader Roy Blunt's poorly-received blogger conf. call last week (see 1/20 Blogometer), QandO's Dale Franks wrote: "I would rather lick fire ants off a stick than see Roy Blunt as Majority Leader."
And now according to Roll Call [sub. req.], Blunt spokesperson Jessica Boulanger said: "Dale Franks should get the soothing balm ready and beware: Fire ants attach themselves to a person by biting with their jaws, then pivoting their heads and stinging from their abdomens in a circular pattern at multiple sites. They tend to attack and sting in great numbers -- just like bloggers."
Mike Krempasky points out that Boulanger's "original zinger" matches almost exactly the description at Yahoo! Health: Fire Ants. He goes on: "At least she took the time to 'pluralize' the cribbed text so she could apply the smear to lots of bloggers. Way to build bridges with one of the most important emerging constituencies of the GOP. What would you people have done in the early 90's, pick fights with conservative talk radio hosts and call them nasty names? Genius."
At QandO, Jon Henke points out that Boulanger is an ex-aide to Tom DeLay, and her husband Todd Boulangerwas a member of "Team Abramoff." He writes: "It's as if they're intentionally trying to make our case for us."
Later that p.m., a RedState post titled "We Need John Shadegg" was posted by "The Directors" -- Krempasky, Ben "Augustine" Domenech, Erick Erickson and Clayton Wagar -- urging in bright red oversized letters: "Call (202) 224-3121 and urge your congressman to support John Shadegg for Majority Leader. This matters."
THE ALITO NOMINATION: Filibuster At Forty, Or Fight?
Scott Shields doesn't quite call for a filibuster, but does see an opportunity: "This is a moment of unity for the Democratic Party. I hope we're able to capitalize on it. There's quite simply no reason for any elected Democrat not to oppose the confirmation of Alito. "
In a post titled "Filibuster, You Idiots," VT-based N. Todd Pritsky pushes hard: "If you goddamned Democrats hang together on this, you can block Alito. ... You'd think right now if the GOP actually had this sewn up, we'd be hearing about how ALL Republicans had announced their intention to vote to confirm and they wouldn't be threatening to make a filibuster a campaign issue." BradBlog tells his readers, "your phone calls providing 'cover' for the Senators, or lack thereof, may make all the difference."
Armando quotes Sen. Mary Landrieu explaining that a filibuster won't do because there are bigger issues for the Senate to deal with, such as Katrina recovery. Armando offers a suggestion: "[W]hy not put off consideration of the Alito nomination until AFTER we deal with all those important issues she has outlined. I mean, since the Supreme Court is not important according to her, surely Alito's nomination can wait a few months before we address it."
BLOGS VS. THE MSM I: Vapor Trails
Early last p.m. Post.com exec. ed. Jim Brady invited several bloggers to participate in a live chat on Interactivity Ethics. The participants: lefty Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake, press critic Jay Rosen of PressThink, righty Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and new media guru Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine. The chat was interesting, if disjointed.
Besides Brady, Hamsher was the only blogger present who had an active part in the last week's controversy over ombudsman Deborah Howell's misstatements on the Abramoff scandal and subsequent dispute about the Post.com blog comment boards; the others were there to add perspective rather than try to settle the issue.
Rosen argued that the Post didn't understand how its temporary silence compounded the problem: "From Sunday afternoon to Thursday, then, the Post and Howell were speaking loudly by doing nothing, sending the message 'there's nothing amiss,' or 'we don't hear you,' or 'just the usual partisan griping.' ... There's news value for outraged readers in a big non-response. The news for them is: you don't count, even when you have a point. Not answering the criticisms of her Jack Ambramoff column was escalating behavior, and the Post began it immediately."
Some left-leaning bloggers, Hamsher included, felt Reynolds' presence was incongrous, because he very rarely enables comments on his site. 
More than one questioner pressed him about this, to which he replied: "I've never had comments. I get about 1000 emails a day, and I don't have time to look at those, post on my blog, AND moderate comments. And unmoderated comments raise a risk of the kind of thing I mention above, as well as possible libel and copyright issues. I've actually considered bringing someone in to do that, but that seems too impersonal."
For the interested liberal bloggers, much of the focus has moved away from Howell toward the removed comments. Challenged on this point, Brady stood firm: "It was of a cached page of one of the two problematic posts, and as I have mentioned a number of times, didn't have any of the posts that we'd removed. If you want to act as it that's proof of clear exaggeration, I think you lose some credibility when you talk about the press and its burden of proof. If The Post had used that burden of proof to show that Abramoff directed money to Democrats, you'd rightfully be all over them."
In the end, Hamsher didn't feel her questions were answered satisfactorily. Back at her own site, Hamsher let her irritation be known: "[T]he fact remains that the real debate is between me and Brady; Rosen and Jarvis were filler and Reynolds was just there as a junkyard dog. And because of all the filler, Brady was able to avoid getting pressed on a story that he has had a great deal of success fobbing off to the media which has innumerable holes if anybody with any technical sophistication were to really press him."
The A-list left-blogosphere joined in: Duncan "Atrios" Black wrote, "all this could be settled by Brady sending any of us doubters the several hundred intolerable comments he has claimed existed." Lefty Digby challenges Reynolds' claim to civility, quoting Instapundit from 1/28/05: "There was a time when the Left opposed fascism and supported democracy, when it wasn't a seething-yet-shrinking mass of self-hatred and idiocy." (The topic was liberals ignoring Ward Churchill.) Markos Moulitsas: "Thing is, the media and political establishment have learned to accept 'incivility' from the Right. It's expected. It's normal. It becomes like the freight train in your neighborhood that only visitors notice. But from the Left? Heavens! Liberals aren't supposed to fight back! They're supposed to lie there and take it. Like good liberals. And when they don't? Well, everyone suddenly gets the vapors."
The right-blogosphere was not a party to the inital controversy, and so mostly stayed out of the debate. One who did, Snarkaholic, argued that Hamsher hid her background as a Hollywood producer, listing herself as mere blogger. NRO's Media Blog, Stephen Spruiell points out that, "right on cue," just as Reynolds indicated that he feared comments on his site would be attributed to him, AP quoted "one man" on the Little Green Footballs comment board railing against Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein (see 1/25 Blogometer).
Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we should have a bit more to say on the issue of blogs and comment boards.
BLOGS VS. THE MSM II: What, No Contact Info For The Regulars On "The Chris Matthews Show"? Not Even Liz Marlantes' Phone Number?
As he hinted earlier in the week 1/23, AMERICAblog's John Aravosis has launched a full-fledged boycott targeting "Hardball" and host Chris Matthews. It's actually the already extant Open Letter To Chris Matthews site, but with a new design, a FAQ explaning the boycott. The site explains its beef Matthews, a former aide to House Speaker Tip O'Neill: "Matthews is perceived, wrongly, as a responsible and objective mainstream journalist with a reputation for calling it as he sees it. That gives his partisan smears a veneer of credibility that makes them particularly offensive and dangerous in a nation at war." (It's probably worth noting that while Matthews has indicated he voted for now-Pres. Bush in '00, he is not a GOPer.)
On the front page are the e-mail addresses and telephone numbers of execs at Toyota, Verizon and Intuit (all companies which advertise on "Hardball"), the e-mail addresses and telephone numbers of MSNBC execs, and a call to action. The FAQ also cites 2 examples of Matthews putting filmmaker Michael Moore or the Dems into the same rhetorical spot as bin Laden and al Qaeda; the site provides video and transcripts for each.
The latest post criticizes a segment from last night's program in which Matthews defended a Dem ad targeting DeLay. Aravosis concludes: "Whether an intentional lie, or sloppy journalism, Matthews yet again skewers the left by skewing to the right."
On 1/24, NYC-based atty Glenn Greenwald argued that the NSA wiretap defense put forward by Bush and ex-NSA dir./Lt. Gen Michael Hayden was "factually false." As he explained, a 6/02 bill introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH), S. 2659, "would have eliminated the exact barrier to FISA which Gen. Hayden [on 1/23] said is what necessitated the Administration bypassing FISA ... it would have "eliminated the 'probable cause' barrier (at least for non-U.S. persons) which the Administration is now pointing to as the reason why it had to circumvent FISA." The WH rejected the bill and it failed.
Washington Post's Eggen reported on this for the 1/26 edition, and gave a hat tip to Greenwald: "The DeWine amendment -- first highlighted this week by Internet blogger Glenn Greenwald and widely publicized yesterday by the Project on Government Secrecy, an arm of the Federation of American Scientists -- is the latest point of contention in a fierce political and legal battle over the NSA monitoring program."
Conservative Mark Coffey is impressed by Greenwald's work on the issue, but doesn't agree with his conclusions: "Glenn's latest discovery, while quite interesting, is not the glaring contradiction it is made out to be if one examines the assumptions underlying the administration's position, regardless of the correctness of those assumptions." Greenwald himself acknowledges Coffey's thoughtfulness, but otherwise, he notes, "I can't help but note that ... the usually vocal and responsive pro-Bush contingent in the blogosphere has been deathly quiet regarding this issue."
PALESTINIAN ELECTIONS: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose?
With Hamas pulling ahead of Fatah in the Palestinian elections, Mahmoud Abbas has stepped aside and asked Hamas to form their own gov't. Back in the states, bloggers on the right as well as the left are digging in for a major diplomatic challenge at best and see deadly confrontation on the horizon at worst. Unlike many issues in the blogosphere, this one doesn't seem to break down along partisan lines -- perhaps more pessimistic/optimistic lines.
Captain's Quarters, on Hamas: "They have chosen war and the annihilation of Israel over the two-state solution favored publicly (if not fervently) by Fatah. Europe and the United States need to wake up from their delusional dreamland of a situation where both sides in this conflict want a peaceful conclusion and a world without hatred for their children and grandchildren." All Things Beautiful agrees with parts of both of the above, but hardly finds a middle path: "The Palestinian elections have amounted to deciding which one of the terrorist parties the Palestinians will vote for. Which method of killing do the Palestinians prefer? Disgraceful." Liberal Running Scared sounds much like the conservatives above: "A glorious triumph for the export of democracy. Too bad they seem to have voted for the terrorists and war. Some people would do well to dust off their history books and read up on Germany's 1933 election. Free and fair, and with a devastating result."
On the other hand, conservative poli sci prof Steven Taylor points out that Fatah was not totally peaceful itself, and adds: "I take some solace that Hamas comes to power through legitimate elections, not a military take-over and that they will have to govern." Liberal Steve Clemons is inclined to agree: "The question though is what happens when a public votes democratically for a group like Hamas? My view is that one hopes Hamas learns to play in a heterodox political order and matures beyond its commitment to violence. Most serious Israeli officials believe that that is happening inside Hamas and say that the threat is no longer Hamas -- but rather the lesser-organized, self-initiating jihadist terrorists that are tougher for all parties to control."
Noting that polls had predicted that Fatah would hold on, James Joyner shares an academic observation: "Apparently, exit polls are lousy predictors of vote outcomes even in the Middle East. This isn't all that surprising since, after all, that's not what exit polls are designed to do. They remain quite useful at their intended purpose: giving detailed insights after the fact of what motivated voters."
WHITE HOUSE '08: If Hillary's Down, Is McCain Out?
At The Plank, TNR's Noam Scheiber asks, whether Alito being justice could help HRC's WH bid. According to the Hotline/Diageo poll, as Washington Post's Cillizza puts it, "approximately one-fifth of Republicans view Clinton favorably -- a group (perhaps moderate women that lean toward the GOP) that could push her over the top in a general election." Scheiber adds: "If, as expected, Alito is confirmed, and if the court begins further restricting access to abortion, I think this key group may well fall in line behind Hillary."
NC-based conservative Betsy Newmark considers what impact HRC could have on McCain's expected bid: "The irony is that Republicans may annoint John McCain as their champion because they think he's the only one who can slay the Wicked Witch, but it will turn out that some other conservative candidate might have done just as well. And then we'll be stuck with McCain."
Power Line's John Hinderaker: "Yesterday, I heard John McCain on Michael Medved's radio show. It was a reminder of how good McCain can be. And how conservative," especially backing up Bush's "telephoning the anti-abortion demonstrators in Washington. McCain said ... this was a tradition that goes back to President Reagan." Hinderaker adds, "it may not take too much to win over conservative Republicans like me. Especially if the choice comes down to McCain or a Democrat like Hillary Clinton, whom I'm pretty sure McCain would trounce."
Lorie Byrd protests the "McCainity" going around on the right: "I do agree that he would be a strong candidate, at least until the media and the Democrats turned on him. I don't, however, think he can be trusted and I don't think he has the temperment to be President. ... Much of McCain's popularity is a result of not only a fawning press, but of years of heaping praise from Democrat politicians like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and others who will not be so kind to McCain if he is the Republican nominee. "
LOBBYING REFORM: Lifestyles Of The Broke And Infamous
On 1/25, NAM pres./ex-MI Gov. John Englertestified before the Senate to discuss lobbying reform. This a.m., NAM VP and chief blogger Pat Cleary defends his trade in a post at the Manufacturers Blog: "These two weren't dancing on the edge of the law, they were so far beyond it that it was, well, illegal. For this they were caught and will be punished. Advantage the rules. ... Having caught one guy going 100 m.p.h.," Congress has now "decided to lower the speed limit for everyone to 35." He defends the cong. staff tours that NAM pays for as truly educational: "To a person these have been a huge hit. For most, it is the only time they have ever been on a shop floor. Nothing like hearing about health care or energy costs directly from the folks who have to pay it. More important, every one of these trips has received the written blessing -- in advance -- of the House and Senate ethics offices."
At MyDD, Matt Stoller posts a letter from the House Dem leadership outlining their proposed reforms. Stoller is troubled: "I'm really quite puzzled by the strategy of going for lobbying reform. Lobbying isn't really the problem, lobbying is a method of gaining access to legislators. Bribery and extortion seem to be the immediate problems, followed by the structural issue of having to dump millions into every race to win, which is what gives lobbyists power over lawmakers." He adds, "until a House member is willing to file an ethics complaint ... this whole thing strikes me as quite cynical."
IMPEACHMENT: You Make The Call!
In a post at Tapped, Sam Rosenfeld asks for reader input about whether an attempt to impeach Bush is worth the effort: "The office consensus here seems to be that the substantive merits of an impeachment case are real enough, but that an actual push to impeach the president is, um, a spectacularly misguided idea on many levels. Level 1 can surely be summarized in three words: 'President Dick Cheney.' Then you get into a lot of slightly subtler questions about political strategy and backlash and what lessons ought to be learned from the Clinton impeachment, etc. This certainly seems like an idea that ought to be nipped in the bud early. At any rate, what do people think?" The 1st half of the 39 comments split about eventy before tilting strongly in the direction of impeaching Bush.
Ezra Klein, himself a contributor to Tapped, explains at his own blog why he doesn't favor impeachment: "Impeachment may be the sexiest and most gratifying of legal remedies for overstepping executives, but more attention, I think, should be paid to censure. It's a moderate response that codifies presidential wrongdoing and locks in perceptions of illegality. It short-circuits partisan defenses and rallying points that would refocus attention on the politics rather than the substance of the crime. And it strikes me as the most likely way to handicap Bush's second term and create favorable electoral results for Democrats, the only two outcomes actually able to constrain the executive branch." Dadahead, like many of the commenters at Tapped, finds the "President Cheney" argument unconvincing.
CO-based atty Jeralyn Merritt is on the fence: "I favor working to take back the White House and Congress in 2006 and 2008 rather than expending energy on impeachment, but if this President keeps going the way he has been, that could change."
BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Mr. Baseball
Today the Blogometer talks to conservative Dan McLaughlin, who writes the baseball-and-politics blog Baseball Crank, and also contributes to RedState.
What is your full name?
Dan McLaughlin. While I don't blog anonymously, I don't use my full name with middle initial online so as to maintain a tiny bit of distance from my professional identity as an attorney.
What is your age?
34
Where did you grow up?
Nanuet, New York, a suburb of the City. I mainly grew up around the children of New York City cops and firemen.
Where do you live now?
Queens.
What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?
I'm an attorney, practicing securities and commercial litigation. I've volunteered a bit for campaigns, nothing substantial. The first one was Jim Rappaport's 1990 Senate campaign against John Kerry.
As a baseball writer, I wrote for the online edition of the Providence Journal in Providence, Rhode Island. My September 11 column ran in the dead-tree paper.
When did you start blogging and why?
I knew Bill Simmons from college, and in May of 2000, he asked me to do a semi-regular baseball column for his Boston Sports Guy website; it wound up as a weekly gig. After he moved to ESPN.com, I wrote for Art Martone at the Providence Journal from July 2001 until February 2003. But I wanted to write about politics, too, and preferred the flexibility of blogging, so in August 2002, I started a Blogspot blog. My current site, combining baseball and politics, opened April 14, 2003.
What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?
A lot of my favorite posts have been on baseball topics ... two stories where I really did some digging were my post on the Vietnam records (or lack thereof) of the 2008 presidential contenders and on the Commerce Department's budget.
I had a lot of fun with the "AWOL Bush" story, which involved shooting down a lot of misimpressions, but I was basically just collecting analysis from other people. My favorite recent post was an essay on the Harriet Miers debacle.
Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?
I grab breakfast and blog in the basement first thing in the morning until I run out of time and have to catch my train. I mostly don't blog at work, for obvious reasons. I blog on Friday nights sometimes, although I try to use the weekends to work on longer-term blogging projects, like baseball statistical studies. I try to do one or two short posts and one longer one, on a good day. Plus, I post quick thoughts to the RedHot section at RedState now that I'm a contributing editor there.
Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?
There's a lot of good ones, but I guess I'd have to say Instapundit, since I read him the most regularly. Also Tom Maguire, James Taranto, Mickey Kaus and Vodkapundit.
Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?
For politics, Mark Steyn, hands down. Also Jonah Goldberg and Charles Krauthammer. Non-political, of course, there's Bill Simmons and Dave Barry.
What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?
Probably CNN Headline News, which is always on. I get about 90% of my news from the internet, and since I'm basically at work all the time during the week, I don't see much TV. I probably haven't watched an entire evening newscast on the networks in 13 years.
What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?
For "straight" news, CNN, and sometimes MSNBC. For sports, ESPN.com. I avoid the Fox site because it has too many popups. It's worse than ESPN for pop-ups. I'm also a big fan of surfing the Google News front page. But I read more of the magazine stuff -- National Review, OpinionJournal, the Weekly Standard, Slate.
What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?
Changes from day to day, but there's a bunch I try to get to almost every day -- Instapundit, RedState (of course), Baseball Musings, The Corner, How Appealing, Vodkapundit, WSJ's "Best of the Web", JustOneMinute, Kausfiles, QandO, Althouse. Then there's the next tier I aspire to read regularly but don't always have time for: Captain's Quarters, Power Line, Matt Welch, Asymmetrical Information, ConfirmThem, Lileks, Yglesias, Kevin Drum, Protein Wisdom, Wizbang, Volokh, Patterico, Hewitt, Hardball Times, Always Amazin', MetsGeek, Baseball Primer. And, of course, the Blogometer.
How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?
We get the NY Daily News and (I hate to admit it) the NY Times at home. I often skim the Daily News in the morning, but rarely open the Times, which my wife reads. I get the Wall Street Journal at work, but I'm not always as diligent about reading it as I should be. I used to read USA Today religiously for its baseball coverage, but I've gotten away from that.
How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?
Blogs can sometimes beat the MSM at reporting news, if there's a story a blogger is well-positioned to get. But on the whole, I don't see blogs taking significant market share from the MSM in terms of its delivery of hard news.
One theme I've noted is the danger bloggers pose to what baseball analysts might call "replacement-level" pundits, who have editorial-page or network gigs but aren't gifted writers or reporters and don't have any particular subject-matter expertise (legal, medical, economic or military backgrounds). For years, these folks made a good living rehashing conventional wisdom. But the blogosphere has unearthed a whole world of amateurs who can basically do the same thing or better at little or no cost, and sometimes offer more specialized subject-matter expertise. Basic economics tells us that this will eventually drive down the price, or eliminate the jobs, of replacement-level pundits as more MSM outlets figure out that they don't provide all that much value that can't be obtained better and more cheaply by tapping the blogosphere for op-ed pieces and TV appearances.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: There But For The Disgrace Of Blogs
Trying to get by while hoping that nobody rembers your past? Currently involved in activities your former supporters might not approve? If you've been in the public spotlight before and have a skeleton or two rattling around, your anonymity or peace of mind may not last very long. Here's an example from the right and left:
- Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan hasn't got much press lately, but she's gotten a bit now for her trip to Venezuela where she joined an event with anti-American pres. Hugo Chavez. MRC's News Busters points out that it's still underreported compared with Sheehan's former prominence: "You may not have heard this story because it wasn't mentioned on Today, the Early Show or Good Morning America, among others. This is one of those cases where the bias is in what's not reported." Alarming News finds it interesting that Sheehan is now also criticizing ex-Pres. Clinton: "[Clinton's] policies are responsible for killing more Iraqis that George Bush."
- Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum writes, "I note that the New York Times has published a piece by John Lott today and I just have to ask: what is Lott doing writing op-eds for them?" Lott has been controversial for fabricating research asst, "Mary Rosh," but Drum refers specifically to an incident where Lott "posted, retracted, and then reposted fraudulent data and then covered it up." He adds: "If anyone from the New York Times editorial page is reading this -- or anyone from any other editorial page, for that matter -- do your credibility a favor. Stop publishing this guy. In a decent world, he would have been blackballed from polite editorial society long ago.
LEST WE FORGET: How Long Before He Decides He Wants To Spend More Time With His Family?
Matt Yglesias, who blogs about politics and policy for Tapped and TPMCafe while devoting much of his personal blog's postings to NBA basketball, manages to combine policy and sports for TPMCafe: "One of feminism's less-heralded achievements is that sexual harrassment law may not only provide an increased measure of equality in the workplace, but also offer the New York Knicks a much-needed pretext for firing the egregious Isiah Thomas. Just saying."
In yesterday's edition, we mistakenly attributed a post by Daily Kos front-page contributor SusanG to Daily Kos front-page contributor McJoan. Click here to return to the corrected section.
