July 19, 2005
BillBlast: Bloggers Share Their Legislative Views
Former meat-cutter and now-Sen. Bob Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, has been known to take exception to this long-ago, unflattering quote from German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck: "There are two things you don't want to see being made: sausage and legislation."
But von Bismarck's take on the legislative process may explain why popular bloggers do not dedicate as much space to legislation as to sexier subjects like war and politics. Lawmaking can be an ugly business, and only those with the strongest stomachs dare watch it closely.
Some bloggers do watch it, though, and that's why I am adding another feature to the editorial mix at Beltway Blogroll. Whenever I see particular bills mentioned in the blogosphere, I will point you to those posts. Just look for the "BillBlast" kicker.
To get the coverage started, here are links to recent blog postings about bills that would:
-- Extend and broaden The USA PATRIOT Act (addressed by both Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., at ConyersBlog and by Daily Kos. Conyers' post generated more than 100 comments.
-- Renew expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
-- Address concerns about exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act.
-- Make it a federal crime to sell violent or sexually explicit videogames to minors.
-- Mandate a 10,000-year radiation standard for Yucca Mountain, a Nevada site intended as a national repository for spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste.
-- Make "some wonky changes" to the law on occupational safety. The National Association of Manufacturers will count lawmakers' votes on the bills as key votes.
-- And give Native Hawaiians the rights of self-government as indigenous people that American Indians now enjoy.
As always, tips about coverage that I may have missed are most welcome.
Posted by dglover at 01:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In The Blog's-Eye: Tancredo Goes Nuclear
"Tancredo" has soared to near the top of the search terms at Technorati.com, a search engine for blogs. Early this afternoon, it ranked just one notch below "Karl Rove" and one above "Harry Potter."
The reason: Rep. Tom Tancredo suggested that a terrorist nuclear attack in the United States could prompt a retaliatory bombing on Mecca or other Islamic holy sites. Bloggers of all stripes have gone ballistic on Tancredo ever since, launching a rapid series of verbal missiles at the Colorado Republican, and conservatives are among his harshest critics.
Hugh Hewitt is among the bloggers on the front lines (see posts here and here), and he reminded readers of the recent outrage over comments by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "Every media voice that was raised against Dick Durbin's asinine comparison of Gitmo practices to those of Nazis and Pol Pot should speak with equal pointedness against Tancredo's speculation."
The conservative Captain's Quarters also roundly condemned Tancredo's suggestion. "The GOP needs to remind Tancredo of the wisdom of silence in some issues," Ed Morrissey wrote.
As with Durbin, Tancredo has defenders in the blogosphere. "We need tough talk and tough action on global terrorism, and what Tancredo said was actually mild in comparison to what Islamofascists have in mind for us," said La Shawn Barber. And Lump on a Blog wrote: "Any nuclear attack against this country by terrorists will lead to one of two conclusions: The destruction of our civilization or the destruction of theirs. Take your pick. There will be no in-between."
While Michelle Malkin said her "friend" Tancredo should retract his statement quickly (he declined to do so), she also challenged Hewitt's view that "Tancredo's words were 'the most irresponsible' opinions expressed by any American official." She linked to her own picks for that category.
Ironically, Tancredo last week blasted Chinese Major General Zhu Chenghu for threatening a nuclear attack against the United States if the United States took certain actions first. "For a senior government official to exhibit such tremendous stupidity by making such a brazen threat is hardly characteristic of a modern nation -- particularly one planning to host the Olympic Games," Tancredo said in a press release.
Tancredo is a blogger himself, but he has not yet addressed the issue at his blog. In fact, the blog has not been updated in more than three months. Now might be a good time.
Posted by dglover at 01:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In The Blog's-Eye: Hitler Lightning Strikes Again
Death and taxes may be the only certainties in life for the average citizen, but ill-advised political references to Adolph Hitler and the Nazis also are looking more and more inevitable for members of Congress these days.
Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., is the latest to get into trouble for making a Hitler comparison. After visiting the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he said on a radio talk show that Muslim terrorists imprisoned at the base are worse than Hitler because Hitler "sort of had a political rationale about what he was doing."
A caller quickly challenged LoBiondo about the comment, and he apologized just as quickly on the air and again later. But bloggers could not let the slip pass without criticizing LoBiondo and his colleagues who insist on making such references.
Captain's Quarter's urged lawmakers to familiarize themselves with Godwin's Law, which holds that the longer online discussions last, the more likely they are to result in some type of Nazi or Hitler comparison. "We don't need to debate the relative merits of one form of fascism and oppression over another; they're all bad, grown-ups know it, and those who don't won't learn anything from sound bites like these," Ed Morrissey wrote.
Michelle Malkin simply posted a link to the analysis at Captain's Quarter's and put it under the heading "Dumb Republican of the Day." And Judgment Proof concluded: "Can our politicians please cut this whole Hitler comparison game out? It's really getting annoying, isn't it? Besides, the more you do it, the less effective it is. Let's use reason and logic over emotion and name-calling, please."
As those posts indicate, LoBiondo has had plenty of company, and Letters to Nowhere has a nice roundup of lawmakers who have been infected by "Hitler-itis" recently: Sens. Bob Byrd, D-W.Va.; Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; and Rick Santorum, R-Pa.; and Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.
The History News Network also tracks such references.
Posted by dglover at 01:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 18, 2005
Advocacy Ads' Newest Outlet
Advocacy is a staple of the blogosphere, and advocacy advertising on blogs is quickly becoming a popular tool for groups hoping to mobilize the online masses. That is exactly why readers of some popular blogs, most of them progressive or left-leaning, saw two ads on the Supreme Court vacancy almost as soon as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her pending departure.
The National Abortion Rights Action League was behind one ad. It urged readers to "stand for freedom" and warned, "Don't let Bush's choice end yours."
Readers who clicked on the ad were redirected to a site where they could endorse a form letter or edit it to their liking before sending it to their senators. The canned text read: "We deserve to know where the nominees to the Supreme Court stand on such core mainstream values as privacy, personal freedom, and a woman's right to choose.... Please ask tough questions during the confirmation process."
The second ad was the work of Unite Our States, a political action committee launched by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., as he explores a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.
The ad pushed the idea of "a Supreme Court for all Americans" and sent readers to a site where they could sign a petition to President Bush. "Tell the president to pick a unanimous choice," the ad said, and the petition notes the 99-0 vote in 1981 to confirm O'Connor.
Unite Our States ran its ad on about a half-dozen sites, including Dem Bloggers and Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, for about a week. The NARAL ad was online for about 10 days, according to communications director David Seldin.
"We have used them before and found them to be a very efficient way to reach an audience" that cares about NARAL issues, Seldin said.
He noted that blog readers who saw the ad visited NARAL's site, donated money, became "rapid responders" to spearhead grassroots lobbying on Supreme Court vacancies, and contacted their senators. "People are definitely energized," Seldin said.
The group ran a series of blog ads during the 2004 presidential campaign, Seldin said, and it probably will make another ad buy after Bush nominates someone to replace O'Connor.
Unite Our States is newer to blog advertising but just as enthused by the prospects. "We're trying to find politically aware, politically active Democrats," said Eric Carbone, a one-time Internet entrepreneur and now the coordinator of Web development for the group. "I find the blog ads to be a great way to get people to be aware of what you're doing."
Noting that Biden is "intimately involved" in the confirmation process, Carbone also said the PAC's online activities, which include ads on major sites like the Yahoo and Google search engines, are designed "to amplify what he's doing."
Carbone served as the director of online communications for the failed 2004 presidential campaign of Democrat Wesley Clark and helped create a blogging community for the campaign. He said Unite our States also will be creating a community of bloggers, and blog ads are helping spread the word about the PAC.
"I've already had bloggers writing to me asking what they can do to help," he said.
The online ad rush after O'Connor announced her retirement highlights the role blog ads can play when news is breaking, but they are fast becoming a staple in the policy world even when issues are not at the top of the agenda.
A recent sweep of the most popular blogs revealed ads on prescription drug imports, healthcare policy, stem-cell research, the anti-terrorism law known as the USA PATRIOT Act, the Central America Free Trade Agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and U.S. policy in Iraq.
The business has soared in the past year, said Blogads founder Henry Copeland, who was in Washington last week to help teach the K Street crowd new ways of lobbying. "It's far bigger now than it was even going through the election" in 2004, he said, adding that "the advocacy stuff is up tenfold even over last September."
The ad rates are posted at Blogads, and they range from $10 a week for a slot at lesser-known sites like LeftyBlogs to $5,000 for prime real estate at Daily Kos. Advertisers can pick their audiences based on issue or political philosophy, among other options.
The company, which will mark just its third anniversary next month, now arranges ads for self-organized networks of bloggers who sell blocs of space geared toward certain audiences. The current options include the Law Blog Ad Network and the Political Insider Ad Network, which includes blogs as diverse as D.C.'s Political Report, Political Wire, PoliPundit, Talking Points Memo and Wonkette.
Even small buys can be surprisingly successful, Copeland said. He noted one "home run" by a candidate who paid $20 for a blog ad that netted a $2,000 contribution. "There are some people who swear by the $10 blogs," he said.
Copeland would not disclose any overall revenue numbers for proprietary reasons, but he said that a year ago, the company was surprised to receive one $5,000 ad order a week. Now such orders are placed every couple of days and sometimes daily. A year ago, he said, groups that were trying to sell their messages were just experimenting with blog ads. "At this point, it seems to be an established part of everybody's media mix."
Copeland has a prediction for this fall, when the people who authorize ad buys are back from summer vacation: "I really get the sense that there's going to be an avalanche come September."
Posted by admin at 07:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2005
The Court Speaks On Campaign Finance
A federal appeals court's Friday ruling on campaign finance law triggered a ripple of reactions in the blogosphere.
The decision upheld an earlier opinion that the Federal Election Commission had imposed regulations that undermined a 2002 campaign finance law. The lower court had ordered the agency to adopt 15 new rules, and the FEC had asked the appeals court to drop five of those demands. "We affirm [the district court's ruling] in all respects," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said.
Allison Hayward, a former lawyer at the FEC, offers ongoing analysis of the latest decision at Skeptic's Eye (see here, here and here. Rick Hasen of Election Law also shared his insights.
Mark Tapscott of the Heritage Foundation ranted against the ruling at Tapscott's Copy Desk. He lamented that the decision is evidence that under current legal precedent, "Congress can pass laws regulating First Amendment rights, and the federal courts will uphold those laws."
Captain's Quarters has posts here and here, and The Lonely Centrist commented, too.
Posted by dglover at 08:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CapitolLink: Rep. Hilda Solis On Pesticide Testing
California Democrat Hilda Solis made her blogging debut at The Huffington Post with an appeal for the Bush administration to end pesticide testing that threatens families.
Her complaints: Low-income families are being paid to expose their children to high levels of pesticides, and the Bush administration is considering rules changes by the Environmental Protection Agency that she said "would legitimize the actual dosing of children and pregnant women with pesticides as an ethical practice."
The Senate recently voted to block the latter action, but Solis said several members of that chamber are backing an effort by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., to implement the draft regulations. "If we really want to protect public health, then Congress will send the president a bill to fund the EPA which retains the ... 'time-outs' on the testing of pesticides on humans, not one which allows pesticides to be tested on pregnant women and babies," Solis said.
Also at The Huffington Post, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., pressured President Bush to either force Karl Rove to explain his involvement in the outing of a CIA agent or demand that he resign as a presidential adviser.
Posted by dglover at 08:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Apology Not Accepted
Beltway Blogroll reported earlier this week that RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman will be one of the participants in the new blog at GOP.com. He made his first post two days later, pointing readers to his apology, on behalf of the Republican Party, for a history of trying to benefit politically from racial polarization.
"Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization," he told the NAACP. "I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
Well, the apology does not appear to have taken in some blogging circles, where critics are echoing the reaction of DNC Chairman Howard Dean. "When you insist on keeping the gains of your evil acts, you are not sorry," Bread and Circuses concluded. "Republican dominance in the South came as a result of racist appeals; as long as the successors to those segregationists do little or nothing to see blacks achieve social, political, and economic equality, the apology is a lie."
The Republic of T. said the apology rings hollow because several Senate Republicans recently did not endorse an apology for not doing enough to stop the lynchings of blacks in U.S. history. "Mehlman's apology is not just too little, too late. It's also an insult because they're not sorry. After all, it helped get them to where they are today -- by appealing to the very worst in human nature."
And Windy City Watch said if the GOP wants to prove its sincerity in apologizing for the "Southern strategy" to gain political power, the party should distance itself from conservative talkmeister Rush Limbaugh, who characterized Mehlman's NAACP apology as "absolutely absurd."
Not all bloggers were so critical, though. Cracker Squire praised Mehlman, and Georgia Politics Unfiltered said Democrats should consider the GOP's desire to court black voters as a warning not to take them for granted.
The Texas Whip challenged the mistrust of Mehlman. "Melhman's apology was sincere," contributor Tyler Norton wrote, "and Tyler hopes that the Republicans will hold fast to his word."
But Norton added that President Bush needs to end his five-year run of not speaking to the NAACP. "Is it any wonder that the black vote doesn't support Bush and his policies if the president won't take the time to even meet with the largest black group in the nation?"
Posted by dglover at 07:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 15, 2005
In The Blog's-Eye: Lawmakers Under Fire
There may be no such thing as bad publicity if you're trying to peddle a product, but if you're a politician trying to win votes and outlast enemies, there is such a thing as bad "blogicity." A few choice posts in the blogosphere can trigger a wave of hostility, and the next thing you know, a powerful sweep of the "long tail" has temporarily knocked you off your political feet.
Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., is the most notable politician bruised by that long tail, but he is not the only one to have found himself squarely in the blog's-eye. Last month, the targets were Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and the handful of senators who refused to endorse an apology for lynchings of the past. And this week, the primary target has been Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.
Santorum's alleged sin is two-fold: In a 2002 Catholic Online article, he blamed child sexual abuse by priests on liberalism, and he blamed Boston for that liberalism. The outcry against Santorum first burst into the blogosphere in late June, after Philadelphia Daily News columnist John Baer resurrected Santorum's statement. Then Round II began this week, when The Boston Globe mentioned the issue and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., took to the Senate floor to demand an apology.
Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, "a Catholic and a conservative" like Santorum, castigated Santorum as being "unfair in the extreme. ... Santorum's remarks attempt to turn the blame away from the criminals and onto the victims. Those remarks were wrong three years ago, and he should have known better than to repeat them now."
Lorie Byrd at PoliPundit warned, "If Rick Santorum wants to run for president, he is going to have to learn to spend a little more time thinking before engaging his mouth." And Michelle Malkin added that to single out Boston "as more of a fertile breeding ground for sexual abuse than the rest of the country is just wrong. And dumb."
Durbin, whose rhetorical misfire about U.S. military abuses prompted one blogger to coin the word "Durbinize," also was back in the sights of Power Line this week. Other recent marks have included Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Sen. Bob Byrd, D-W.Va.
Such blog eruptions happen often enough that I'm going to start tracking them here. So if you want to know the bloggers' latest prey, just look for the "In The Blog's-Eye" kicker, and if I fail to mention someone, please send me an e-mail or post a comment.
Posted by dglover at 04:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The Center Of The Blogosphere
An audience member at last week's Heritage Foundation event on the relationship between bloggers and journalists asked the panelists (including me) whether a moderate blog could survive in a medium dominated by conservatives and liberals.
I don't know the answer, but maybe the folks at Donklephant will have some good insights down the road. Weblog Empire just launched that group blog for people "who have an interest in politics but don't agree with either side on everything and are turned off by the unquestioning partisan nature of many leading blogs today." (Hat tip to Instapundit).
Donklephant hopes to appeal not just to political moderates but also advertisers who want to reach the middle. "Donklephant gives advertisers the chance to actually sell to a politically aware and interested audience, as opposed to preaching to the converted, as is the case with most political blog advertising," Weblog Empire CEO Duncan Riley said.
Point your browsers to Beltway Blogroll on Monday to read more about the role of advocacy ads in the blogosphere.
Posted by dglover at 02:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 14, 2005
Supreme Court Watch
Here are the blogs dedicated to covering and/or influencing the debate over judicial nominees, particularly the replacement for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
-- Bush v. Choice (published by the National Abortion Rights Action League)
-- Confirm Them (published by RedState.org)
-- Confirmation Whoppers, a new blog whose aim is to "document each day's wildest, most irresponsible quotes in the Supreme Court confirmation process, whether it's from a senator or special-interest groups."
-- Daily Blog (published by The Committee for Justice)
-- The Daly Report (published by the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary)
-- NominationWatch (published by the National Women's Law Center)
-- The Supreme Court Nomination Blog (published by SCOTUSblog)
Here are other policy blogs that are following the nomination but that are not dedicated exclusively to that issue:
-- ACSBlog (published by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy)
-- Bench Memos (published by National Review Online)
-- Inside Opinions: Legal Blogs (published by Law.com)
I will be updating the lists as new blogs are created or as I hear of ones that I missed. So please send tips.
UPDATE: Rick Hasen of Election Law is covering the confirmation process with a particular focus on how a new justice could impact election law. In his article for The New Republic Online, summarized at his blog, Hasen argues that O'Connor's departure could "lead to both the deregulation of campaign financing and a serious challenge to major parts of the Voting Rights Act. Such changes would, in turn, mean radical shifts in the way elections are conducted in the United States."
UPDATE II: The Washington Post is blogging the Supreme Court battle, too. Its latest foray into the blogosphere, and arguably the newspaper's boldest blogging experiment on the policy front considering that comments are allowed, is dubbed Campaign for the Supreme Court.
Posted by dglover at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 13, 2005
CapitolLink: Rep. Slaughter On Truth-Telling
New York Democrat Louise Slaughter tells readers of Daily Kos, The Huffington Post and MyDD that "the strength of the president's word is being tested" as President Bush ponders what to do about White House adviser Karl Rove.
"If Mr. Bush attempts to cover up what is a gross abuse of power and a vicious, destructive and near-sighted act of political vengeance," she wrote, "then he will have failed to live up to the promises he has made."
Slaughter is quickly becoming one of the harshest critics of both Bush and Rove over Rove's role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Yesterday she started a petition to Bush demanding Rove's firing. Now she is using ads in the blogosphere to direct people to that petition, and the Web address Rovespinkslip.com redirects people to the petition, too.
"Send a personalized pink slip to Karl Rove at the White House because Bush refuses to do it himself," says the ad, which is running at Daily Kos, Dem Bloggers, MyDD and other sites. "If they end up knee deep in pink paper, perhaps the president will finally fire Mr. Rove, giving him the real pink slip he so greatly deserves."
The ultimate goal: 100,000 personalized pink slips within a few days.
Bluegrass Report, Eschaton, ReidBlog and other blogs, meanwhile, took note of the suggestion from Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., that certain members of the mainstream media "be shot" for giving "a free ride" to Joe Wilson, Plame's husband. "Joe Wilson was a shameless self-promoter," King said on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country," which is hosted by former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla. "Everything about his story was either a lie or a hoax, or he was incompetent."
Finally, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo ridiculed the trio of GOP lawmakers who he said the Republican National Committee picked to defend Rove: King and Sens. Norm Coleman of Minnesota and John Cornyn of Texas. "For all his occasional zaniness and bad positions on various issues, I've got a certain respect for King," Marshall wrote. "But these three are the water-carriers? This is the best they can do?"
Posted by dglover at 10:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Campaign Blogging In The Buckeye State
Voters in Ohio's 2nd District will choose a replacement for Republican Rob Portman in an Aug. 2 special election, and The Stakeholder, the blog of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is billing it as "a campaign that could cement the blogosphere's reputation as leaders in the Democratic Party."
Portman left the seat to become U.S. trade representative, and with Portman having won 72 percent of the vote in the district last fall and President Bush netting 63 percent, GOP candidate Jean Schmidt seemed to be a sure bet for victory. But that was before the Ohio Republican Party was rocked by a scandal involving state investments in rare coins.
Now the DCCC sees an opportunity to trim the Republican House majority, and it is calling on bloggers to help the cause by supporting Democratic candidate Paul Hackett. "Can we raise $25,000 in two weeks to get Paul Hackett elected?" Stephen Yellin wrote at The Stakeholder. "We did it in 2004 with Ginny Schrader in a week, and this race is no less important. And when I threw the first pebble into Ginny's wave of money, I knew that her race mattered. So does Paul Hackett's."
By way of reminder, Schrader was dubbed "the candidate of the netroots" by Daily Kos, which also created "Blogosphere Day" (July 19, in case you're wondering) to recognize how bloggers rallied around her campaign in Pennsylvania's 8th District. Schrader lost her 2004 race against Republican Michael Fitzpatrick, finishing with 43 percent of the vote to his 55 percent.
Democratic blogs that have been covering the Hackett-Schmidt race regularly include MyDD, Ohio 2nd, Ohio Watch and even Lorax Political, which is published by a blogger in Seattle.
The race also is getting attention at GrowOhio, a new blog from the campaign of Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown, and at the blog of the Democratic National Committee. And today the contest generated a front-page post at Daily Kos (also cross-posted at GrowOhio).
Republican bloggers in the Buckeye State who have mentioned the race include Porkopolis, Right Angle Blog and VikingSpirit. But NixGuy apparently made its last post June 27, offering this bold proclamation: "I took the sidebar link for the 2nd District posts down. Unless Jean Schmidt is caught having tea with Patricia Schroeder, this race is over."
Posted by dglover at 04:19 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
RNC Stakes Its Claim In The Blogosphere
The Republican National Committee officially launched its revamped Web site today, and the new version of GOP.com includes a blog.
Not surprisingly, one of the first posts addresses the controversy swirling around White House adviser Karl Rove. The post criticizes Democratic leaders for "taking their political cues from the far-left, MoveOn wing of the party" and links to a Wall Street Journal editorial defending Rove, as well as an article in The Hill indicating GOP congressional support for him.
Word has it that RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman will participate in the blog.
Posted by dglover at 01:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 12, 2005
CapitolLink: Rep. Watson On The Price Of War
California Democrat Diane Watson debuts at The Huffington Post with an entry on the costs of the Iraqi war. The price in cash: $200 billion so far and as much as $600 billion by 2010, according to the Congressional Research Service.
"I think $200 billion for peace and democracy is worth it if we had something to show for it," Watson wrote. "But we haven't gotten peace and democracy." She said the nation instead has bought animosity from extremist enemies, mistrust from allies, an erosion of U.S. leadership and credibility, and an "endless occupation" of a dysfunctional country plagued by a powerful insurgency. And on top of that, more than 1,700 Americans are dead and more than 13,000 wounded.
"The bottom line," Watson concluded, "is that our Iraq policy has become a festering wound that bleeds away more and more of America's wealth, America's security, America's leadership, and America's young men and women in uniform."
Posted by dglover at 01:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Roving The Line: The 'No Comment' Briefing
Garrett Graff, the author of the FishBowlDC blog at mediabistro, made headlines in March when he became the first blogger to seek and secure a one-day pass to the White House press room. Lots of bloggers no doubt wish they had been so lucky today, a day after White House adviser Karl Rove was officially named as a source in the controversy surrounding the outing of a CIA agent.
That was topic A, B, C, D, etc., at the regular White House press briefing -- and press secretary Scott McClellan toed the White House "no comment" line every time the mainstream media quizzed him about Rove's involvement or reminded McClellan of the promise by President Bush to fire anyone involved in the leak. Now McClellan's credibility is topic A among liberal bloggers, who for days have been ridiculing the White House press corps for its lack of inquisitiveness about Rove.
Daily Kos resurrected the press secretary's past denials that Rove was involved in the controversy. David Corn recounts the highlights of the press briefing and says: "Everybody in the room -- and out of it -- should review McClellan's exchange with the reporters to see how he and this White House do business. After what transpired, no reporter should take McClellan's word at face value (if they ever did)."
And TAPPED, a blog at The American Prospect magazine, concludes that McClellan's "credibility today sunk about as low as it can get. ... If there is one thing that reporters hate, it's being played for patsies. McClellan has publicly humiliated some of the most prominent reporters in the country by persistently feeding them information that has now been revealed to be false, and I'm pretty darn sure that they are not going to grant him any favors and extend him the benefit of the doubt in the future."
UPDATE: Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., is demanding on her campaign blog that Bush fire Rove immediately in order to "keep his word," and she urged her readers to do the same by signing a petition. "What Rove did is reprehensible," she wrote. "Putting the life of an undercover CIA agent in jeopardy cannot be tolerated. He clearly deserves his pink slip."
UPDATE II: Bloggers on the right had a different take on the press conference. Michelle Malkin defended the right of White House reporters to bark at McClellan during the briefings but then noted, "isn't it funny how Beltway reporters who get all prissy and whiny about one Fox News Channel reporter asking the DNC chairman one mildly aggressive question have no problem turning pack-rabid on McClellan?"
Malkin also links to Lorie Byrd at Polipundit, who said the MSM reporters "sounded a bit like playground bullies, but ones with too meticulously styled hair and a little too much whine in their voices and prissy shoulder and hand motions to come across as exactly tough guys."
At TPMCafe, meanwhile, blogger Matthew Yglesias said, "Count me out of the current round of blogospheric speculation that based on today's gaggle the White House press corps has 'had it' with the Bush administration and is about ready to start jabbing in the knife. ... The Bush team has gotten remarkable good press because they understand the mechanism by which newspaper political coverage is generated and have successfully devised means of systematically manipulating that mechanism. Editors and reporters have it in their power, of course, to change the way the mechanism works (and they should do it!), but they're not going to wake up one day and do it just because they're mad at Karl Rove."
Posted by dglover at 09:00 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
July 11, 2005
CapitolLink: Rep. Conyers Wants You
Michigan Democrat John Conyers has saturated the blogosphere with posts about the infamous "Downing Street memo" on the run-up to the Iraq war. Now he is recruiting bloggers as foot soldiers in his own public-relations war over the memo.
The goal of Conyers' latest offensive, which he mentions at ConyersBlog and Daily Kos, is to create "a timeline of everything we know about the fixation with war in Iraq, the manipulation of intelligence, and the deliberate misrepresentations made both to the Congress and to the public."
He asked bloggers to let him know what key dates and events should be included in the timeline. As of early Monday afternoon, the request had generated nearly 500 comments on the two blogs combined. "I think it's brilliant of you to use Daily Kos as a think tank," one visitor to ConyersBlog wrote. "Good goin'!"
In another item at The Huffington Post yesterday, Conyers quickly responded to the news that White House adviser Karl Rove was a source for Time magazine's Matt Cooper in the controversy over the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Conyers suggested that the news proves President Bush has abandoned his 2000 pledge to "restore honesty and dignity to the White House." And he joined the chorus of liberal bloggers who are chastising the White House press corps for not asking questions about Rove's role. "Not a word about the disgusting hypocrisy of an administration that came to office promising to 'change the tone' in Washington now attacking a critic through his spouse," Conyers wrote.
UPDATE: In a follow-up post, Conyers invited his readers to "compare and contrast" the statements of Vice President Richard Cheney in 2000 and White House press secretary Scott McClellan today.
Posted by dglover at 08:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CapitolLink: Rep. Poe On The Supreme Constitution
Texas Republican Ted Poe cited his past as a judge a week ago in arguing that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being treated fairly. And today at The Huffington Post he mentions it again.
The message this time: Poe knows the Constitution, and he knows that too many justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are not adhering to it when they include the thinking of foreign courts in their rationale for U.S. legal decisions.
"I submit that looking to foreign court decisions is as relevant as using the writings of Reader's Digest, a Sears and Roebuck catalog, a horoscope, my grandmother's recipe for the common cold, tea leaves, star gazing, or the local gossip at the barbershop in Cut N' Shoot, Texas," Poe wrote.
Posted by dglover at 08:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 08, 2005
Journalists vs. Bloggers
Ever since bloggers took their rightful spot in the limelight of the Information Age, media folk have vigorously debated whether bloggers are journalists.
Jay Rosen of PressThink proclaimed that debate "over" in a January essay he submitted for the Blogging, Journalism and Credibility conference at Harvard University, but I decided to add my voice to the debate today anyway. The venue: a Heritage Foundation roundtable that focused on the relationship between journalists and bloggers.
Mark Tapscott of Heritage's Center for Media and Public Policy hosted the event and already has begun blogging about it at Tapscott's Copy Desk. The other panelists were Ed Morrissey of the Captain's Quarters blog and Jim Hill, managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Here is the proverbial nut graph of my speech: "Instead of being part of the Fourth Estate, [bloggers] are part of something new. I call it Estate 4.5 -- a nod both to the profession whose excesses galvanized many bloggers and to the medium they use. Bloggers are like inspectors general, the independent watchdogs of government. Just as IGs are not part of the agencies they oversee, bloggers are neither part of government nor journalism, but they keep a wary and watchful eye on both. And in so doing they provide a valuable check against the arrogance, inadequacies and abuses of all four estates."
The full text of the speech:
We're here today to answer the question, "Are bloggers and journalists friends or enemies?" And the best way to answer that is by listening to what the two camps say about each other.
Because I'm a journalist, I'll start with the blogger bashing that unfortunately is all too common among my colleagues. I keep a running list of journalistic rants against bloggers, and it is a nasty list.
Journalists have called bloggers:
-- "Jumped-up dunces with PCs"
-- "Barroom loudmouths"
-- "Salivating morons"
-- And "the headless mob"
In February, columnist and editorial cartoonist Ted Rall wrote this: "Bloggers are ordinary people, many of them uneducated and with nothing interesting to say. They're sitting in their rec rooms, regurgitating and spinning what real journalists have dug up through hard work. They don't have sources, they don't report, and no one holds them accountable when they make mistakes or flat out lie."
Bloggers have just as much animosity toward the press. They refer contemptuously to the "mainstream media" and the "media establishment." They claim as trophies the careers of Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd of The New York Times, Dan Rather of CBS News, Eason Jordan of CNN and Jeff Gannon/James Guckert of something called Talon News. And if some of them had their way, Newspaper Guild National President Linda Foley would be looking for a new job now.
That evidence makes it abundantly clear that bloggers and journalists are enemies. They are intellectual adversaries engaged in battle on the front lines of a 21st-century information war.
Appreciating the depth of that conflict also helps answer another much-debated question: Are bloggers journalists? And the answer is a resounding "no." Bloggers are not journalists and clearly have no desire to be. They are grassroots activists who, if inclined at all to quit their day jobs and change careers, are more likely to end up in political or policy circles than journalistic ones.
But the truth is that most bloggers are just happy being bloggers. Instead of being part of the Fourth Estate, they are part of something new. I call it Estate 4.5 -- a nod both to the profession whose excesses galvanized many bloggers and to the medium they use.
Bloggers are like inspectors general, the independent watchdogs of government. Just as IGs are not part of the agencies they oversee, bloggers are neither part of government nor journalism, but they keep a wary and watchful eye on both. And in so doing they provide a valuable check against the arrogance, inadequacies and abuses of all four estates.
Bloggers like to say that journalism is something you do, not who you are, and they have done some great journalism. I admire their work and have even used it to better my own.
But just doing journalism doesn't make you a journalist any more than doing first aid makes you a doctor or emergency medical technician. Any more than representing yourself in court makes you a lawyer. Any more than loaning money to a friend makes you a banker. Journalism is a profession.
On the flip side, journalists are not bloggers, either. I have blogged about religion from Russia and adoption from Guatemala, and I just started Beltway Blogroll, a column in blog format that is focused on blogs. But I am a journalist, not a blogger.
Like it or not, we journalists are part of the "establishment," one of the four estates. No matter how hard we may try, we simply can't gain the perspective of bloggers who are not part of our club. Bloggers bring fresh insight, unyielding passion and a whole lot of sass to the public sphere, and they answer to no one but themselves.
Bloggers are not part of the journalistic-corporate complex that controls information from ivory towers; they are the militiamen of the information revolution. They are, as Jay Rosen of PressThink says, the Court of Appeal in the State of Supreme News Judgment.
Bloggers are not journalists because they "think outside the box," and we don't. I once had a supervisor who told me repeatedly to think outside the box. When I asked him to explain what he meant, he couldn't. I was so aggravated by the experience that when I left that job, I started a newspaper column called "Inside the Box."
Thanks to bloggers who have hurled cyber rocks upside my head over the past few years, I'm at least aware that life does exist outside the box now. But inside the box is where I remain -- and all of my journalistic brethren are right there with me.
I strongly advocate that we journalists adopt the technology of bloggers to enhance our editorial products. But I also appreciate that we are not and never will be bloggers. Try as we might to escape our past, we can't help but see the world through green-tinted eyeshades.
The bottom line: Journalists and bloggers are entirely different creatures occupying the same universe the Constitution calls "the press," and they are adversaries. But journalists, bloggers, the government and "we, the people," have benefited greatly from that adversarial relationship -- and hopefully we will continue to do so.
Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine said it best when he put it this way recently: "Journalism is institutional, impersonal, and dispassionate; blogs are human, personal, and passionate. ... At the end of the day, I don't want to see blogs turn into an institution, or try to, for then they wouldn't be blogs anymore."
Posted by dglover at 03:40 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
July 07, 2005
Blogging The London Terrorist Attacks
The Counterterrorism Blog is all over the story about the terrorist attacks in London.
One of the group blog's contributors raises questions about the authenticity of an Internet posting that claims responsibility for the attacks. International terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann said the claim, made by a group calling itself Al-Qaida's Secret Organization, is likely a hoax.
He noted that the posting was deleted and that "the language in this latest Internet statement is oddly reminiscent of a series of hoax threats received last summer from an alleged terrorist group calling itself the 'Tawheed Islamic Movement.'"
Another group called Organization of Al-Qaeda Jihad in Europe also claimed responsibility for the attack.
UPDATE: The rush to get news and commentary on the terrorist attacks generated an overwhelming amount of traffic for at least one policy blog today. "We're adding more server capacity," TPMCafe founder Joshua Micah Marshall told readers at the blog's sister site, Talking Points Memo.
Posted by dglover at 01:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Laboring Online For The Labor Movement
If labor policy is your niche, you might want to click on over to House of Labor, a group blog launched at TPMCafe this week. The aim is to gauge the future of the labor movement.
The contributors include: Bill Fletcher of TransAfrica Forum; Jim Grossfield of the Center for American Progress; Roberta Lynch of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Harold Myerson, a writer for The American Prospect; freelance writer Jo-Ann Mort; Nathan Newman, a lawyer, policy analyst and labor activist; and Hans Riemer of Rock the Vote.
Posted by dglover at 12:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bloggers Critique The Court Candidates
Numerous names have surfaced as potential candidates to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court (see lists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate and RealClearPolitics). Here is what bloggers are saying about some of those candidates:
Samuel Alito, judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
-- Alito is dubbed "Scalito" because of a conservative judicial philosophy that many observers see as resembling that of Justice Antonin Scalia, and Conservative Eyes concludes, "I think anyone who elicits comparisions to Antonin Scalia would make a fine justice."
Janice Rogers Brown, newly confirmed judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
-- China Ate My Blog: "Brown may not be as solid and consistent a conservative as some of the other candidates, but she is very smart, and is both very conservative and very outspoken on a number of issues -- including property rights, a current concern. And her character and personal history are inspiring."
-- The Supreme Tort: "In terms of qualifications, Judge Brown lacks none. In terms of political realities, Judge Brown still has momentum from her recent Senate confirmation. ... Judge Brown would also satisfy our society's hyper-sensitivities relating to gender and race. She is a black woman. ... She also offers a great deal for both judicial conservatives and political conservatives. All one needs to know is that she follows the jurisprudence of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas."
Emilio Garza, judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
-- Democracy Market: "Garza is compelling for three reasons: 1) He's reliably conservative; 2) he's Mexican-American; and 3) he has a military background. How perfect can it be?"
Alberto Gonzales, U.S. attorney general
-- Armando at Daily Kos: "[T]he condoning of torture marks Gonzales as morally reprehensible. But, even if one is only going to look at this cynically, Gonzales cannot be trusted. We THINK he is a moderate. We THINK he'll support the right to choose. We THINK he'll support affirmative action. But how do we know?"
-- Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos: "[W]e could go ballistic if Gonzales is the nominee, especially given his love of torture, but he's about as close a shot to another [David] Souter that we'll get under this administration. Precisely the reason the Far Right hates him is the reason I'd be willing to give him a pass. He's not perfect. He's a Republican, after all. But given the alternatives, he may be the best of a bad lot. "
-- The Baltimore Group: "As a major supporter of the USA PATRIOT Act, Gonzales is an enemy of civil liberties and a supporter of a police state. Instead, what the court needs is a good federalist."
-- Southern Appeal: "The president needs to know that it is time for him to turn the loyalty switch off in this instance and publicly or privately reassure conservatives that a Gonzales nomination isn't going to happen. ... Either y'all deliver on Bush's promise to appoint justices like Scalia and Thomas, or I and others will make you pay for it dearly come election time."
Edith Jones, judge on the 5th circuit
-- Ideoblog: "Among other things, a Justice Jones would provide real business expertise on a court sadly lacking in that area. I recognize that this isn't Bush's easiest pick. But after seeing the damage mediocrities like Souter can do, the fight would be worth it."
Michael McConnell, judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
-- Confirm Them: "Judge McConnell seems inclined toward an activist role for the courts in regulating social policy, such as marriage laws. It appears from the hearing report that he would strike down laws against polygamy, for example, as a violation of First Amendment religious freedom. This would overturn Supreme Court precedent going back to 1878."
-- ProfessorBainbridge.com: "McConnell's nomination to the 10th Circuit was supported by many social conservatives, such as the Traditional Values Coalition, while the leftist American Constitution Society's blog villified him as 'a leader of the anti-choice forces.' In sum, this is just one more reason to think McConnell would make an ideal compromise choice, precluding any risk of fissure within the movement."
Harvie Wilkinson, judge on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
-- Banned in America: "Wilkinson has supported denying people their civil and human rights, banning freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and destroying the protected role of minority businesses as they tried to function amid Virginia's racist environment. And these are just the less serious drawbacks."
Some other names not on the mainstream media's short lists of potential candidates have surfaced in the blogosphere, too. They include: Alice Batchelder, a judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and Miguel Estrada, who withdrew from contention for a federal appeals post in 2003.
Posted by dglover at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 06, 2005
Blog Rumblings In Congress
The July edition of Congress Online, an Internet newsletter of the Congressional Management Foundation, examines "the first stages of blogging on the Hill."
The newsletter breaks the activity into four categories: travel blogs to record lawmakers' journeys to other countries or within their districts; blogs that track legislative action and offer commentary; personal blogs to share lawmakers' views with constituents; and diaries on independent blogs like Daily Kos. The article also mentions the emergence of group blogs by state lawmakers and specifically mentions the one run by Oregon House Democrats.
The brevity of the piece mirrors the limited activity by lawmakers, yet the article offers some telling insights. It notes the benefits of third-party diaries, for instance.
"Besides eliminating the workload associated with producing a daily commentary," the newsletter says, "it gives members the ability to publish their thoughts without the responsibility of posting regularly. In addition, popular third-party forums allow them to reach an established, large audience of online readers."
Hat tip to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for directing me to the article.
Posted by dglover at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 03, 2005
Nomination Prognostication
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her resignation only two days ago, but both professional and amateur court watchers in the blogosphere already are making their predictions about who will replace her.
Lawyer Tom Goldstein, a founding partner of Goldstein & Howe and a contributor to The Supreme Court Nomination Blog, is garnering the most attention from other bloggers for his treatise on Judge Priscilla Owen. He is laying odds on Owen for these reasons: 1) She is a woman; 2) she is a "solid conservative"; 3) she is only 50; 4) President Bush has personal confidence in and admiration for her; 5) the Senate recently confirmed her to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and 6) she does not have a detailed, written record on divisive issues like abortion.
Law professor Stephen Bainbridge, meanwhile, said he is "reasonably certain" of two things: that Bush is not "dumb enough" to divide his base by nominating Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whom social conservatives dislike; and that "the nominee will be somebody both business and social conservatives can live with." He puts Judges Edith Jones and Michael McConnell in that category.
And the Curmudgeon Speaks offers two predictions, each based on perceived character traits in Bush. If Bush is driven by his penchant for loyalty, the curmudgeon said, he will pick Gonzales. If he is driven instead by his "unwavering belief in his own actions," he will nominate an "extreme conservative" -- specifically, either newly confirmed Circuit Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown or Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig.
Make your predictions in the comments section.
Posted by dglover at 10:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CapitolLink: Rep. Ted Poe From Guantanamo
Texas Republican Ted Poe uses The Huffington Post to recount his "weekend in the tropics", with 15 other lawmakers, to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The goal: dispel what he calls myths about the mistreatment of prisoners held in the war against terrorism.
If Poe's account is true, the circumstances at Gitmo are nothing like you might expect after hearing, say, a speech from Sen. Dick Durbin. Poe paints a picture of "guests" who have a varied and abundant menu, the opportunity for plenty of extracurricular activities, superior and free medical care, and the freedom to practice their religion without interference.
"Having been a felony court judge in Houston, Texas, for over 22 years prior to entering Congress," Poe wrote, "I have seen many prisons and penitentiaries including some in lands far away like China and the former Soviet Union. This is no gulag or concentration camp. ... This weekend, I was pleased to see for myself the situation and we all know that the allegations of atrocity and abuse at Guantanamo are simply unfounded."
Posted by dglover at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 01, 2005
Let The Supreme Court Blog War Begin
Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt predicted in his recent book about blogging that the next Supreme Court vacancy would trigger "the perfect interblog storm." The makings of that storm appeared on the political radar today, with the announcement that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring.
Early rumblings in the blogosphere come from:
Ed Morrisey of Captain's Quarters, who will be in Washington next week for a Heritage Foundation roundtable on blogging: "O'Connor's retirement puts more pressure on the Senate than a Rehnquist retirement would have done. Rehnquist has consistenly provided a conservative voice on the court, and replacing him with another conservative would probably not have concerned moderate Democrats, who want to keep their powder dry for selected battles. O'Connor, however, has voted more from the center, and replacing her with a staunch conservative might get some of those moderate Democrats to the firing lines in the political battle to come."
Daily Kos: "Who will Bush appoint? I'm not one to speculate (I'm a chemist, not a lawyer), but I'd say it's a safe bet that it'll be someone conservative, to say the least. ... Alberto 'the Inquisitor' Gonzales is a possibility ... what could possibly be worse?" The site also urges readers to take action and offers tips.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: "It now appears overwhelmingly likely that President Bush will get at least two Supreme Court nominations, possibly more. So game on. We're looking into setting up a limited duration Court battle group blog over at TPMCafe. More soon.
PoliPundit (via Michelle Malkin): "My choices to replace O'Connor are either Judge Janice Rogers Brown, or Judge Priscilla Owen. Both are sufficiently conservative, young, and female. And both were just confirmed by large margins by the US Senate. It would be very difficult for the 'Gang of 14' compromisers to filibuster either of them."
The Supreme Court Nomination Blog: Recaps cases where O'Connor served as the deciding fifth vote and provides links to potential replacements.
The National Abortion Rights Action League, meanwhile, will be posting news and insights at the Bush v. Choice blog. And RedState.org is running a collaborative blog called Confirm Them.
UPDATE: Ed Kilgore at TPMCafe thinks this is the moment of truth for the Republican Party and religious conservatives. "This appointment represents the giant balloon payment at the end of the mortgage the GOP signed with the Cultural Right at least 25 years ago," he wrote. "Social conservatives have agreed over and over again to missed payments, refinancings, and in their view, generous terms, but the balance is finally due, and if Bush doesn't pay up, they'll foreclose their entire alliance with the Republican Party."
Posted by dglover at 11:02 AM | Comments (9)
Blog Days In D.C.
The Federal Election Commission held public hearings this week on how to apply campaign-finance rules to the Internet, and bloggers had a prominent place at the witness table. But their role went beyond testifying; they also served as sources for other media, covered the story themselves on their blogs, and even fired a few verbal missiles at their enemies.
The bloggers who testified included: Michael Bassik of The Online Coalition; Duncan Black of Eschaton; Mike Krempasky of RedState; Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos; and Matt Stoller, a founder of The Blogging of the President and now a blogger for the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Jon Corzine.
Kristinn Taylor of FreeRepublic.com, a Web site with features similar to a blog but that bills itself as an electronic bulletin board, also spoke. And Jim Boulet and Karl Sandstrom represented two organizations that publish blogs: English First and OMB Watch.
You can read the written testimony of Krempasky and Moulitsas on their blogs. Those blogs also address some of the issues that arose at the hearing and beyond, such as a media exception for bloggers, blogging while at work (see here and here), and one company's proposal for a "blogger identity seal," which Krempasky called "the dumbest idea I've heard today."
In addition to testifying, The Online Coalition's Bassik covered parts of the hearings for Personal Democracy Forum (see here and here). Michael Cornfield, another PDF contributor, recapped the hearings in a concise, Q&A format, while PDF interim executive editor Chris Nolan warned that if government gets to define who qualifies as media, it also could take away those rights someday.
"The idea that the Federal Election Commission is going to set up exemptions for media, and that the body will decide who gets what, strikes me as uh, un-American," she wrote.
Eschaton's Black said he is "rather crazy" from the experience and frustrated that no one has yet answered these questions: "Why is somebody who prints up and mails out weekly vanity newsletter entitled to the media exemption but not me? Why is Michael Savage entitled to the media exemption but not me? Why is Salon.com entitled to the media exemption but not me?"
Following the example of The Talent Show, Black took a poke at the FEC by newly branding his site "an online magazine of news, commentary, and editorial" that would not be subject to campaign-finance regulation. Now he is no longer a blogger but a "publisher/editor/chief political correspondent/cat photographer/scifi critic/media critic/missing persons expert/blogger ethics expert/janitor for an exciting new online magazine."
Jerome Armstrong of MyDD, the "blogfather" of Daily Kos' Moulitsas, live-blogged the FEC hearings after a morning stint on C-Span with Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits. Hynes had kind words for Armstrong after the appearance, saying that he "struck me as a pretty cool and knowledgeable guy." But Hynes was not nearly as impressed with Black or Moulitsas a week earlier.
"Having these two buffoons testify before the FEC," Hynes wrote, "is rather like hiring Howard Dean to serve as greeter at your local Wal-Mart Superstore -- not exactly putting your best foot forward. They represent most of what is wrong with political communication, whether it is online or elsewhere."
Scott Ferguson of The Classless Society added that Black and Moulitsas "have had hugely incestuous relationships with special interests. It would be like George Steinbrenner and Marge Schott defending the baseball antitrust exemption -- their lack of cred and/or style could mess things up royally."
Black directed a barb of his own at a fellow FEC panelist. "I skipped out on the middle session because I really don't need to hear what Kristinn of the Free Republic has to say about anything," he wrote. And Moulitsas reserved his ire for Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.
The two have been at odds since early June, after Darr submitted written comments criticizing the idea of a media exemption from FEC rules for bloggers. Although Moulitsas said Darr softened her rhetoric somewhat in her prepared testimony to the FEC, he called her a "clueless embarrassment" to GWU.
"Carol Darr is supposed to be promoting democratic values in the online space," he wrote. "Instead she is attempting to muzzle bloggers. All in the name of protecting the special privileges and privileged status of traditional journalists."
With brutal talk like that, you'd think bloggers had spent a lifetime in Washington rather than just a couple of days.
Posted by dglover at 09:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
