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September 29, 2005Not One Dime More For Pork
At the urging of Heritage Foundation blogger Mark Tapscott, Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters has added his influential voice to the blogosphere's fight against "pork" in the federal budget.
Morrissey's targets: the Democratic and Republican campaign committees for House lawmakers. He is urging people to withhold funds from the National Republican Congressional Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee until lawmakers quit funneling federal money to special-interest projects in their districts.
"For those representatives who refuse to pare the pork," Morrissey wrote, "we need to cut off their political oxygen until they turn blue and their campaign chests grow cold. Tell your congressperson that while they protect the pork we discover, while they continue to vote for budgets with these useless and wasteful projects when the funding could defray the hurricane relief efforts, we will send Not One Dime to their efforts to re-elect their incumbents. ... We mean to end the pork wagon now."
But Jesse Taylor at Pandagon said the PorkBusters effort is never going to work. "The only things that will get cut are the things that will either get the cutters political points or the ones that nobody cares about. Local money to your districts fit neither of those criteria. Fantasize about the power of the blogosphere all you want - when push comes to shove, they're not going to follow Truth Laid Bear's edicts on the shape of the federal budget."
Posted by at 07:47 PM | Comments (1)
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The debate about how to cover the costs of rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina prompted Rep. Marsha Blackburn to share her thoughts at RedState. Her post sought to draw attention to "Operation Offset," a Republican effort to fund post-hurricane reconstruction by cutting the money spent on other programs.
Blackburn, R-Tenn., used her foray into the blogosphere to highlight her call for changes to the earned-income tax credit, which aims to ease the tax burden on low-income Americans. The Internal Revenue Service contends that many taxpayers who claim the credit do not qualify, and Operation Offset assumes that a change to eliminate such claims could save $85 billion over 10 years.
Blackburn's blog entry mostly reiterated the information already available in the Operation Offset report. At least one reader was not impressed with her contribution: "I was surprised by the representative's lack of 'beef' in her posting."
UPDATE: Blackburn followed up with another post yesterday to tell RedState readers about her new call for across-the-board spending cuts of anywhere from 1 percent to 5 percent. She also responded to readers bothered by her proposal on the earned-income tax credit.
"Thanks for being here," RedState founder Mike Krempasky wrote in the comments section of her post. "You're far ahead of your Republican colleagues in your willingness to engage. Kudos to you."
Hat tip to The Hotline's Blogometer.
Posted by at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)
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A Beltway Blogroll reader just alerted me to the fact that Sen. Barack Obama is blogging. In fact, the Illinois Democrat has had a blog on his Senate site since early April, so I'm a bit behind the curve on adding it to the blogroll.
The move is not surprising, considering how popular the freshman Obama is in the Democratic blogosphere. Along with now-Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Obama spoke at a breakfast for credentialed bloggers at last year's Democratic National Convention.
One important change has occurred since then: Obama writes the entries for his congressional site. He took some heat from the bloggers at the convention when he praised blogging but confessed that aides were responsible for the content on his campaign blog.
Obama is not exactly a prolific blogger, having posted only 11 entries since April. But he has shown far more initiative in using technology to connect with his constituents than most of his colleagues. That initiative includes podcasting -- and he has been a bit more consistent in offering those digital audio downloads.
Obama's first podcast, about the response to Hurricane Katrina, went online Sept. 8, and he has offered three others since then. The topics have included the hurricane, energy policy, poverty, voting regulations and the nomination of Judge John Roberts to be the Supreme Court's chief justice. (Obama was one of 22 Democrats who voted against Roberts today, but the judge was confirmed on a 78-22 vote.)
Posted by at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)
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Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid unveiled a new Web site this week that is designed to rally Democrats as the party tries to regain Senate control in the 2006 election.
The new site, Give 'Em Hell Harry, was inspired by the 1948 campaign of President Harry Truman, but it has one campaign tool that Truman didn't have in his arsenal: a blog.
Not surprising considering Reid's status, the blog already has a significant following. The Nevada Democrat posted entries Tuesday and yesterday, and each has sparked about 50 comments.
Reid held a conference call with Democratic bloggers this week, and Seeing the Forest and Swing State Project already have spread the word about the new site.
Posted by at 07:15 AM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: Rep. Harman's Middle East Jaunt
Rep. Jane Harman headed to the Middle East yesterday for a tour of four countries in 96 hours, and the California Democrat will be blogging about the junket at TPMCafe this week.
Her first post, filed hours before her departure, set the stage for what she will be trying to accomplish, both on the trip and on the blog. She listed three goals for the trip: thank U.S. troops who are located in the region; engage U.S. allies there in some "tough talk" about what America expects of the nations it supports; and "search for 'ground truth' about whether our policies are working."
The latter "is always the hardest part because the organized briefings are polished and well-rehearsed," Harman wrote, "but the ground truth often doesn't come out until the informal chat with the lieutenant colonel, the walk back to the car with the ambassador, or the whisper in your ear from the veteran intel officer."
She closed with a note about what her Internet audience can expect in terms of field reporting from the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee: "For security reasons, I won't always be able to tell you the real names of some of the folks we'll see or the details of where we're heading next. But I'll always try to share with you the ground truth as I learn it."
Posted by at 07:19 AM | Comments (0)
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After Katrina: A Budgetary Blog Swarm
The push by President Bush for the federal government to spend $200 billion to recover from Hurricane Katrina has sparked a firestorm of criticism from bloggers on the left and right.
Liberals see the reconstruction plan as an opportunity both to blast Republicans as budgetary hypocrites and to revive their longstanding complaints about Bush's policies on taxes, war and domestic spending. Fiscal conservatives see the plan as further evidence that Bush is not one of their own. And the two bloggers who spearheaded a successful fundraiser for hurricane relief now have refocused on finding "pork" in the federal budget to help fund the reconstruction.
Liberal bloggers are gleefully noting the irony of a GOP president who preaches fiscal restraint now proposing, with little forethought, a massive spending plan to benefit one small region. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of The Daily Kos called Bush "an LBJ-caliber spendthrift" in two separate posts.
Bush's liberal critics characterize his plan not as an anomaly but as part of a pattern of fiscal irresponsibility. "As Democrats know and Republicans try to forget," wrote Neil Sinhababu of The Ethical Werewolf, "this administration has turned the record budget surpluses of the late 1990s into unprecedented budget deficits. We've gone from a surplus of $236 billion in 2000 to a $412 billion deficit in 2004."
They also see a political element to the Katrina relief -- one that Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo said is sure to benefit the same types of Bush cronies as the equally misguided spending on the war in Iraq.
"What's driving this budgetary push is not a natural disaster but a political crisis, the president's political crisis," Marshall wrote. "The White House is trying to undo self-inflicted political damage on the national dime. ... This will be Iraq all over again, with the same fetid mix of graft, zeal and hubris. Cronyism like you wouldn't believe."
Liberal bloggers aren't opposed to spending federal money on post-hurricane reconstruction; they just want the government to pay for it by "ending tax cuts to the rich" and rebuilding America rather than Iraq.
They also are dead set against GOP proposals like "Operation Offset." Among other things, that plan targets the prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients as a way to pay for the work in the Gulf Coast. "[T]o expect the Americans most at need to foot the bill while refusing to ask the wealthy to give up their tax cuts is absolutely unconscionable," Scott Shields wrote at MyDD.
Although driven by different motives, conservative bloggers, meanwhile, clearly are just as aggravated with Bush -- but for them the issue is that the president proposed a $200 billion hurricane reconstruction plan without first explaining why that amount is needed and how it would be spent. A GOP Bloggers post headlined "The Era Of Big Government Being Over Is Over" best epitomized their frustration.
Later entries at the same blog indicate that GOP loyalists still have hope for budgetary leadership by their party. But doubts about the costs of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" and the Republican Party's commitment to true conservatism are still apparent.
"As much as it pains me to admit it," Trevor Bothwell wrote at Democracy Project, "we're witnessing the consequences of virtual one-party government. Politicians left to their devices are dangerous, and at the end of the day they're still politicians. It hardly matters which party they belong to. Without a responsible check on spending authority, this is what we'll see."
Similar thinking led Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and N.Z. Bear of The Truth Laid Bear to join forces again in a "PorkBusters" campaign. The mission: Mobilize the blogosphere to identify special-interest spending projects earmarked by politicians who can't help themselves, reverse that spending, and dedicate it instead to paying for hurricane reconstruction.
It's the kind of project that cynical Washington insiders -- and even some skeptical bloggers -- love to mock, and they already have good reason to doubt whether the campaign will work. A quick visit to the PorkBusters page at The Truth Laid Bear shows that "NO CUTS COMMITTED" to hurricane reconstruction and "No Response/Response Pending" or "Negative" response from contacted lawmakers are the dominant themes.
But there are also encouraging signs for Jokers to the Right, Punditeria, The Unalienable Right and the numerous other bloggers on pork patrol for "Glenn's army." A few lawmakers, for instance, have said they are open to the idea of forgoing transportation projects in their districts to cover post-hurricane work in the Gulf Coast -- and one of them is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
An aide to Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., even sent an unsolicited e-mail to one of the PorkBusters bloggers. "I can only assume that the good senator from Oklahoma and his staff have been paying attention to the PorkBuster efforts in the blogosphere, and that's how my name ended up on an e-mail list," blogger Nicholas Schweitzer wrote. "I find this very encouraging."
The bloggers also are not fighting the battle alone. Washington's conservative Heritage Foundation is a key contributor to PorkBusters. Though Instapundit gets the credit for starting the PorkBusters blog swarm, the idea actually originated months ago with Heritage blogger Mark Tapscott, who was inspired by a similar proposal from Heritage President Ed Feulner. Tapscott revisited the issue again in August, just before Katrina hit. Heritage also launched a separate blog called Pork Reports.
Longtime pork foes like Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for Common Sense also are engaged in the fight, with CAGW urging lawmakers to sign a "Hurricane Katrina No Pork Pledge". And the mainstream media are publicizing, and even participating in, the PorkBusters campaign.
"To me, the point is to take a step --- a small one, granted --- toward a culture of greater fiscal responsibility in Washington," PorkBusters co-general Bear wrote in defense of the project. "If we can hold our representatives on Capitol Hill accountable for the small bits of pork, then perhaps that example will also make them think twice about the larger boondoggles that plague our government."
Posted by at 07:23 AM | Comments (1)
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In The Blog's-Eye: GOP Blogs Want Frist Out
Word that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a heart surgeon, is being investigated for the sale of hospital stocks has his conservative critics in the blogosphere looking for political blood.
RedState's Leon H called for the Tennessee Republican's resignation Friday, and Sean McConeghy at Republican Senate endorsed the idea the next day. "Conservatives will stick by leaders who stick by us, including with regard to ethical conduct," McConeghy wrote. "That is why we have rallied for House Majority Leader [Tom] DeLay. That is why there will be no such rallying around Bill Frist."
Noting that the case against Frist seems strong at first glance, Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters also said Frist's resignation from the Senate leadership is necessary to keep the GOP agenda from going adrift. He said George Allen, R-Va., would be a good choice to replace Frist.
The End Zone added: "I have instinctively sensed Senator Frist was just a bit too clever, and too unprincipled, for his own good. This is evidence that my instincts were not off base."
Posted by at 08:22 PM | Comments (2)
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Kos' Opinion About Opinion Makers
Here's something I bet you never thought you'd hear Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the liberal Daily Kos say about that right-wing rag on Wall Street: "The Wall Street Journal is not stupid. They're smart."
Or how about this take on that other venerable New York-based newspaper, one whose worldview is arguably much closer to Moulitsas' liking: "The New York Times, on the other hand, is the textbook definition of stupid."
The reason for his rant: The Times has just started charging a premium for readers to access its opinion columnists online, while the Journal has a separate, and free, site designed to give its opinion makers the widest possible influence in the public arena. "Heck, they have a guy e-mailing their content to bloggers," Kos added of the Journal's approach to shaping opinion.
"So the Wall Street Journal works hard to be a top influencer in the national debate," he said. "And The New York Times works hard to become a provincial paper. Wish granted."
Something tells me that Moulitsas is not going to be paying the $49.95 to access Times columns -- or even using his popular forum to give the paper's columnists much attention in the blogosphere.
Posted by at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: The Bush-bashing Brigade
Democrats in Congress have directed an unrelenting stream of criticism at President Bush ever since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Now The Huffington Post has become a favorite forum for the soldiers of that Bush-bashing brigade.
Several lawmakers have posted entries at the site since the storm, and the activity increased last week. Even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California authored what apparently is her first-ever blog item. She posted the entry Thursday, about a week after visiting Katrina evacuees in Houston and just hours before Bush addressed the nation about the hurricane response. (Houston now is being evacuated because Hurricane Rita is on the way.)
Pelosi used the blog to outline the "Marshall Plan for the Gulf states" that she unveiled earlier in the day. It calls for "a partnership with the people of the region" aimed at rebuilding homes, reviving farms, repairing infrastructure and constructing schools. She also touted legislation to punish energy companies that "gouge consumers on gasoline and home heating fuel." And she contrasted those ideas with one of the steps taken by Republicans so far.
"Democrats have a clear message to the people of the Gulf Coast," Pelosi wrote. "We stand with you and we are prepared to do whatever it takes to help to rebuild your communities. ... House Republicans voted against bringing up the House Democratic proposal to create an independent commission" to investigate the failures of the hurricane response.
That House Democrats are determined to make the policy response to Katrina a political issue is obvious from a link at the end of Pelosi's entry. It directs people to a page focused on the response -- a page that includes criticisms of GOP actions and even a section titled "House Democrats Hold the President Accountable."
Here is what Democrats in Congress have been saying in their hurricane-related blog postings:
-- Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts decried the Bush administration's plan to cover the multibillion-dollar cost of hurricane reconstruction via spending cuts in other federal programs. "Katrina recovery efforts should not be funded out of spending cuts in Medicaid, education, and veteran's programs," he wrote, "but by repealing tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations in the country."
-- Rep. George Miller of California blasted Bush for an executive order that will allow lower wages for laborers involved in hurricane-related reconstruction. "Hundreds of thousands of people have just lost everything they had. America has to put Gulf Coast workers back to work -- and at wages that can help them and their families get back on their feet. ... If the president wants to help storm victims, he should rescind his executive order immediately."
Miller criticized Bush over the issue again in a separate post at TPMCafe: "The president has proven once again that he's more interested in governing for the few than in governing for all of us. ... What the president has done is immoral.
-- Rep. Major Owens of New York tried to tie the racial aspects of the hurricane tragedy to Bush administration policies toward nations like Niger and Haiti. "For the New Orleans blacks, the misery has just begun," he wrote. "As dislocated evacuees of color, they will be forced to suffer through years of wandering in a hostile bureaucratic wilderness. Today's host organizations and governments will viciously evict the pitiful interlopers tomorrow."
-- Rep. Diane Watson of California critiqued Bush's speech to the nation, arguing that he offered little substance in the address. "The president's actions speak louder than his soaring rhetoric," she wrote. "That's why we see in the immediate aftermath of Katrina that it's really business as usual. Old cronies ... are queuing up along the levee banks ready to line their pockets even before the flood waters recede."
-- Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana did not directly criticize Bush or the Republicans who now run the government, but he lamented that government had failed its people. "Many of us never thought we would live to see the day when tens of thousands of our fellow citizens would be left for nearly a week to fend for themselves without food, without water, and stranded on rooftops," he wrote. "This is a moment where we have to step back and revisit the idea of what America is really all about."
On the Republican side, Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois has posted two entries at the blog on his House site since the hurricane hit, but both were about relief efforts, not policy. The blog of Indiana Rep. Mike Pence repeatedly has noted the need for fiscal discipline in the wake of the hurricane, but Pence's press shop has done most of the writing. Pence's only post on the subject consists solely of links.
There have been no other sightings of GOP lawmakers in the blogosphere since the hurricane hit.
Posted by at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)
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You would think that after the infamous Holocaust reference by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., back in June, liberals might wait a few more months before airing another such analogy. But Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes apparently missed the memo.
GOP Bloggers, Michelle Malkin and NewsBusters note that Rhodes compared the ongoing evacuation for Hurricane Rita to the scenes of "cattle cars" from the Holocaust.
"Think about it this way," she said. "People were taken one place; their children were taken another place. This is so much like the Holocaust. ... And here you have people being loaded onto transportation vehicles, not being told where they're going, and their children are being taken someplace else."
Liberals clearly are not alone when it comes to off-the-wall Nazi comparisons. But NewsBusters doubts, probably accurately, that the mainstream media will notice Rhodes' comments or express the kind of outrage they would if, say, conservative radio talker Sean Hannity said something similar.
Posted by at 12:25 PM | Comments (2)
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If you want to know what conservative blogger Mike Krempasky is going to tell the House Administration Committee about regulating bloggers, you need not wait until tomorrow's hearing. Krempasky stole a bit of the panel's thunder by posting his written testimony at RedState a day before the main event.
The subject of the hearing is a bill that would pre-empt the Federal Election Commission from applying campaign-finance law to bloggers. Krempasky, who testified before the FEC in June and helped found The Online Coalition to lobby against such FEC regulation, is all for the legislation.
He has no tolerance for blog regulation, as evident in the testimony. "Make no mistake: There can be no effective political regulation of the blogosphere without destroying the freedom that makes this medium great. In fact, the only reason we're here today is that while ordered by a federal court to create rules to govern political activity on the Internet, the regulators at the Federal Election Commission have been unable to do so."
Krempasky revived his argument that bloggers are part of the new media and thus should be exempt from campaign law under the rules that apply to other media. He cited the blogosphere's response to Hurricane Katrina to bolster that view.
"Minutes after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, bloggers were collecting, sharing and distributing firsthand reports of the devastation, hosting documentary video footage, and lending help to the relief efforts," he wrote. "Lousiana bloggers who could maintain connections continued to post updates on the areas around them in greatest need -- some direct from the heart of New Orleans. In a news cycle measured in tiny increments, bloggers were hours ahead of their mainstream counterparts. And in reaction to tragic devastation and humanitarian need, they were willing and ready to lend their voices, time and effort to help."
Click on the link above to read the complete testimony.
UPDATE: Bloglines waited until yesterday, the day of the hearing to post its testimony on the subject. "Linking to campaign Web sites, quoting from or republishing campaign materials, and even providing a link for donations to a candidate, if done without compensation, should not result in a blog being deemed to have made a contribution to a campaign or trigger reporting requirements," Bloglines founder Mark Fletcher wrote.
Duncan Black, meanwhile, has not yet posted his testimony at Eschaton, but he described his "Day in DC" and later shared his thinking on disclosure rules in response to AP coverage of the hearing.
His thinking on the topic as of yesterday: "Judging from the testimony of the FEC commisioners who were there, I'm much more optimistic than I was back during the summer when I testified [to the FEC]. They seem to 'get it' much more than they did before, and even a worst-case scenario from the FEC would probably be nothing to get upset about. ... Overall, I'm not too worried about this issue at the moment. One way or another I predict a decent outcome for the whole process."
Whether that same outcome would have been achieved without the involvement of bloggers over the past few months is another issue.
On a lighther note, Black mentioned the presence of conservative blog nemesis Krempasky at the congressional hearing. "They put some space between us so we didn't kill each other," Black joked. Or maybe he wasn't joking.
UPDATE II: Paul Mirengoff of Power Line raised the issue of blog regulation with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., at a dinner yesterday. Mirengoff said McCain "reaffirmed that there should be absolutely no regulation of the Internet in the name of McCain-Feingold or campaign finance reform."
That response prompted Patterico's Pontifications to wonder aloud either whether Mirengoff misunderstood McCain or McCain even knows "what his own law is doing." Mirengoff responded to Patterico, and the two now have a strange debate going about whether McCain is a "space cadet."
You have to love Fridays in the blogosphere.
On a more serious note, the House Administration Committee already has a transcript of the hearing, and there is a link to a webcast of it on the panel's home page.
Posted by at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
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Blogging On Broadband, Religion And Democracy
I have added three blogs to the roll on the left but wanted to call attention to them here as well:
-- Broadband Blog. The motto is, "Give me high speed, or give me death," and the blog covers telecommunications policy issues from the states to the Supreme Court. Georgia-based attorney Erick Erickson, a blogger at RedState, is the brains behind the blog.
-- Christian Coalition. The religious right is blogging now. Just to give you a sense of what to expect, a post from yesterday praised former Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., as "the greatest conservative leader during the past half-century besides President Ronald Reagan."
-- Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The blog reflects the priorities of the group with the same name: fighting terrorism, and promoting freedom and human rights. The bloggers include: Richard Carlson, a former U.S. ambassador and director of the Voice of America; Women for a Free Iraq co-founder Eleana Gordon; and Cliff May, a former journalist and communications director for the Republican National Committee.
Posted by at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
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Hurricane Job Hunter: An Appeal For Your Help
Since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, I have wanted to do something to help the victims of the storm but something more personal than just donating to charity. After several days of contemplation, it hit me: I write, therefore I am. So write I will.
With the help of Devin Hedge, a friend of mine and Webmaster extraordinaire, I have launched a site called Hurricane Job Hunter as a forum for volunteering my writing and editing services. I also have recruited some of my journalistic colleagues to help. The site will enable people left jobless by the hurricane to contact us so we can write cover letters, resumes or other materials they need as they try to recover from the storm.
That is the easy part. The hard part is finding the people who need the help, especially when we are nowhere near the hurricane's path or the key evacuee areas, and when many of the storm's victims are homeless, computer-less or never had computers or Internet access before the hurricane hit.
But as the managing editor of National Journal's Technology Daily and the author of Beltway Blogroll, I believe in the power of the Web to connect people and make things happen. After the hurricane hit, I watched with amazement as hundreds of bloggers marshaled their resources to raise more than $1 million in just a few days. The same kind of energy was apparent after the tsunami of last December.
This post is my attempt to start the same kind of charitable blog swarm. I am not asking for your money; I am asking for your help. If you have connections to people left jobless by Hurricane Katrina, either direct or indirect, please tell them about Hurricane Job Hunter. If they do not have computer access, act as their mediators and contact us through the site so we can try to open employment doors to them.
You can volunteer, too. If this appeal works as I hope it will, the few folks currently working for Hurricane Job Hunter will be overwhelmed with requests for help. Go to the site now and let us know what you can do to ease the burden. Whether you are a whiz at creating catchy cover letters and resumes, or a technology expert who has better ideas about using the Web to accomplish the goals of the site, we could use your help.
Posted by at 04:39 PM | Comments (1)
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President Bush has had a rough few days since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and with his poll numbers steadily sinking, Bush's foes see an opportunity to inflict a mortal political wound. He is not the first president to face such a hurricane-induced outcry, though.
Seventy years ago, the strongest recorded hurricane in U.S. history hit the Florida Keys and killed numerous World War I veterans who were there to work on a federal highway construction project. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the veterans there, and when the leaders of the federal work camps failed to order an evacuation until it was too late, FDR's political foes tried to pin the blame on his administration.
"I blame no one person, but a number" of people, said Republican Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, "and I hold this government directly responsible for the death and injury of those veterans." Rep. Harry Sauthoff, a Wisconsin Progressive, added: "It must be remembered that the government put them there. The government had a responsibility and a duty."
That is just one tidbit from "Policy Storms of the Century," an essay I wrote last week for National Journal magazine about the policy impact of hurricanes and other natural disasters. You can read the rest below the fold.
Meteorologically speaking, the hurricane that slammed into the Gulf Coast on August 29 died days later in the northern part of the continent. Politically speaking, Katrina is very much alive, and its eye has settled over Washington for the foreseeable future.
Shortly after the storm, Congress cleared two emergency spending bills totaling more than $60 billion. And lawmakers, as is typical, are also trying to make sure that their pet policy ideas ride the hurricane-induced legislative wave moving through the capital. But the real test of Katrina's staying power will be whether the storm spawns substantive changes in federal disaster mitigation, just as its most infamous atmospheric siblings have done in the past.
Throughout history, hurricanes have captured the attention of government leaders, and President William McKinley was chief among them. Raymond Arsenault, a historian at the University of South Florida, recently noted on the History News Network that the near-annihilation of Cedar Key, Fla., and the deaths of more than 100 people in an 1896 hurricane made a lasting impression on McKinley -- one that eventually influenced his military strategy."
I am more afraid of West Indian hurricanes than I am of the entire Spanish navy," McKinley said at the start of the Spanish-American War some two years later. That fear inspired the president to order the creation of a hurricane warning system designed to protect vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
Congress, for its part, has long been responding to hurricanes and other disasters by providing monetary relief. In a 1950 document printed in the Congressional Record, Rep. Harold Hagen, R-Minn., charted such federal aid back to 1803. Lawmakers have provided aid in the wake of everything from "Indian depredations" in the mid-1800s, to "grasshopper ravages" in the 1870s, to the kinds of disasters more familiar today: tornadoes, droughts, earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, and hurricanes.
The earliest hurricane-related federal spending that Hagen recorded came in 1928, after a September storm hit Puerto Rico. Congress provided $8.1 million to rehabilitate agriculture and schoolhouses and to purchase seeds. Two years later, lawmakers allocated $1 million to cover repair work by the Puerto Rican Hurricane Relief Commission, and they gave the commission loan breaks in 1935. Another $5 million went toward forest rehabilitation in New England after a hurricane struck there in September 1938.
Not every disaster has been what Claire Rubin, a disaster research consultant and the co-author of the Disaster Time Line on the Internet, calls a "defining event." In fact, no defining events occurred until well into the 20th century.
Even the Category 4 hurricane that swamped Galveston Island off Texas in 1900, killing at least 6,000 people, failed to push the federal government into the disaster-mitigation business. Although Congress did react to that tragedy, according to Casey Greene, the head of special collections at Galveston's Rosenberg Library, lawmakers merely funded extensions of the seawall, in part to protect federal military reservations. Funding for the extensions was authorized in installments from 1904 through 1950, Greene said in an e-mail exchange with National Journal.
Other major hurricanes, including Category 4 storms in 1909, 1915, and 1928, made landfall in the early decades of the century. Yet not until the massive flooding of the Mississippi River in 1927 did lawmakers start thinking they could do more to protect Americans from "acts of God." They passed the 1928 Flood Control Act, which gave the federal government authority over flood control on the Mississippi and moved from a levee-only system to one based on dams and reservoirs.
The New Deal changed the public's attitudes about a social safety net, amplifying the move toward more federal involvement. "The public's willingness to bear a portion of disaster losses dates back to the early 1930s," the General Accounting Office wrote in a 1980 report on the history of flood control, crop insurance, and federal reimbursement for property losses.
But the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 showed that even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the father of the New Deal, could dodge responsibility for natural disasters. The Category 5 storm was the strongest ever to hit the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and it hit a politically significant population: veterans of World War I whom FDR had sent to the Florida Keys to work on a New Deal highway project.
More than 400 people died in the hurricane. The supervisors of the veterans' camps failed to heed hurricane warnings or send for a train to evacuate the area until it was too late. The hurricane's 18-foot storm surge overturned the train before the veterans and other residents could board.
Republican lawmakers, led by Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, tried to pin the blame on FDR during congressional hearings. But Rep. John Rankin, D-Miss., a Roosevelt ally, chaired the hearings and managed them in a way that largely shielded the president from criticism. Rankin dismissed Rogers's attacks as "silly efforts ... to play politics."
Rogers nevertheless made a final stand on the House floor when the chamber considered a bill to compensate the families of hurricane victims. "I blame no one person, but a number" of people, she said, "and I hold this government directly responsible for the death and injury of those veterans." Rep. Harry Sauthoff, a Wisconsin Progressive, added: "It must be remembered that the government put them there. The government had a responsibility and a duty." But after the aid to the families became law, the hurricane was eventually forgotten.
Congress pushed the government further into the disaster arena in 1950 with passage of the first Federal Disaster Relief Act, the measure that Hagen advocated when he outlined his 147-year history of aid. "It simply establishes a fund to enable the government to give direct relief to these disaster areas when disasters arise, rather than having to come to Congress in each instance," Rep. Edward Cox, D-Ga., said during floor debate.
A year earlier, Congress had created the Farmers Home Administration, and in 1953, it created the Small Business Administration. Loans from these two programs, and from the Federal Crop Insurance Corp., became the foundation of federal disaster assistance. Neither the 1950 law nor the three agencies were created in direct response to hurricanes, but all were in place in time for three major hurricanes in 1954: Carol, Edna, and Hazel.
Like Katrina, the next two hurricanes to demand lawmakers' attention hit the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Betsy came first, in 1965, followed by Hurricane Camille four years later. Both triggered significant changes in disaster law.
After Betsy, Congress quickly enacted the 1965 Southeast Hurricane Disaster Relief Act. The statute provided aid to flood victims and ordered a study on flood insurance. President Lyndon B. Johnson noted upon signing the bill that disaster aid had been broadened six times during "the unusually severe succession of disasters" over the previous 18 months, but he added that all of those steps had occurred "on an emergency basis." Johnson advocated a permanent system of flood insurance, and the study ordered under the law eventually led to just that: the 1968 National Flood Insurance Act.
A year later, Camille battered the Gulf Coast again, and then caused flash floods in Virginia after moving inland. More than 100 people died not far from the seat of the federal government. President Richard Nixon responded in 1970 with an appeal for a new law to address the "gaps and overlaps" in the existing "complex program" of disaster relief.
"The last presidential message on the subject of disaster assistance was written 18 years ago," Nixon said. "Since that time, this program has grown in a piecemeal and often haphazard manner, involving 50 separate congressional enactments and executive actions."
Among other things, Nixon proposed a law that offered two extra years of unemployment benefits to hurricane victims, low-interest loans to local governments that lost property-tax revenue because of disasters, and the repair or replacement of public facilities. He also favored steps to simplify and speed debris removal from private property. Congress largely endorsed his proposal in passing the 1970 Federal Disaster Relief Act. Rubin said it is "the basic enabling act for the kinds of things [that the Federal Emergency Management Agency] does" today.
Hurricane Agnes hit next, in 1972, prompting Nixon to say this in a national radio address: "Confronted with so massive a disaster emergency, our response as a nation must also be massive. Conscience commands it; humanity impels it." Then, two years later, spurred in part by a tornado in Xenia, Ohio, Congress amended the 1970 law. Nixon said the action "truly brings the New Federalism to our disaster preparedness and assistance activities."
Policy makers have continued to follow that pattern ever since, with the intensity of each disaster dictating the intensity of the response. "There has been a tendency ... in response to large disasters to reshape and often expand the federal role," said Rutherford Platt, a professor at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He said that the trend has grown stronger during the past 25 years and suggested that "the era of hazard mitigation" really hit its stride in the Clinton administration.
"Every few years," added Rubin, "something comes along that causes them to change the system." Despite what she calls an unprecedented attempt to politicize Hurricane Katrina, she said that the latest disaster will be a defining event. "The partisan fury is temporary, I think, although I expect it to continue for the recovery planning phase," Rubin said. "Ultimately, even congressmen will come to grips with the need for a new approach to dealing with catastrophic events."
Posted by at 07:10 AM | Comments (0)
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'Netroots' Hero Schrader Abandons Race
In less than two months' time, Democrat Ginny Schrader has managed to lift and sink the spirits of the Democratic "netroots."
A hero of the blogosphere in 2004, Schrader caused a buzz in late July when she announced a rematch against Republican Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania's 8th District. But in a vague announcement last week, she withdrew from the race to follow "new roads [that] hold more of an allure to me than another year spent on the campaign trail."
Leading netroots blogs like Daily Kos and Swing State Project took note of the announcement. "We are sorry to see Ginny leave the race," blogger DavidNYC wrote at the latter site, "but I am sure it will still be an interesting one -- and regardless of who wins the primary, freshman Republican incumbent Mike Fitzpatrick is highly vulnerable."
The Liberal Doomsayer, a blogger in Bucks County, Pa., added, "I think she would have made a good rep, but after a couple of tries, I think it's plain that the voters don't want her there." The blog also noted that "Patrick Murphy is trying to make his case to the blogger community, and that will definitely help him."
Posted by at 07:08 AM | Comments (0)
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Bloggers Going Places
Testifying before the Federal Election Commission and Congress, and blogging at sites like Confirm Them, Personal Democracy Forum and RedState apparently is not enough to keep Mike Krempasky busy. He has taken a blog-related job at the Edelman public-relations firm.
Krempasky's first client, according to a post last week at RedState, is Wal-Mart. "I can't tell you what an experience it's been over the past two weeks -- watching this corporate giant lead the way in response to Hurricane Katrina and helping to tell that story," he wrote.
In an e-mail announcing the job last month, Krempasky described his new job like this: "I'll be joining Edelman as a vice president, working on corporate public affairs with a bit of an Internet twist. It's bound to be a tremendous challenge, but it's an exciting opportunity I couldn't pass up."
His work for Wal-Mart already has prompted reaction from other bloggers.
Krempasky's move is one of a few noteworthy developments in the blogosphere in recent weeks. Another one also occurred at RedState, and it was not nearly as exciting -- at least not for Josh Trevino, a RedState founder and board member who announced his departure as an editor over "differences of vision and purpose with the board and community."
Trevino announced his decision soon after he criticized President Bush for his response to Hurricane Katrina, and MyDD blogger Jerome Armstrong jumped to the conclusion that the two developments were related. "[T]hey can't even stand a bit for criticism of Bush, even when he's most obviously failed at leadership and execution in the face of a natural disaster," Armstrong wrote in describing what he sees as a key difference between liberal and conservative blogs.
But Trevino said that in Armstrong math, two plus two must equal five. "It's posts like this that leave me wondering why Armstrong garners the respect that he does," Trevino wrote in an e-mail to me. "I was not forced out for criticizing the president over his response to Katrina. I wasn't forced out at all. I chose to leave RedState for entirely different reasons."
Krempasky said this of Trevino's departure: "If Hollywood can cite 'creative differences,' I suppose that's about as close as it gets. Josh is extraordinarily talented, and he'll continue to do great things."
(A footnote to the story: Trevino inexplicably accused me of "left-wing ... fishing for a nonexistent scandal" simply because I asked him a question based on another blogger's comments. One of his readers kindly came to my defense.)
Armstrong is going places, too. Last month, he became the Internet director at Forward Together PAC. Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, is the honorary chairman.
"Where does Warner go next?" Armstrong wrote. "I dunno, stay tuned. Warner's said that he wants to be part of the national Democratic Party dialogue, with Forward Together, and I've been hired to facilitate that over the Internet."
Liberal blogger Ezra Klein also has a writing day job now. He starts work at The American Prospect on Monday. And Yahoo has hired blogger Kevin Sites to report from "hot zones" around the world.
Posted by at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)
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BillBlast: A Vote Against Hate Crimes
Rep. John Conyers, a blogger in his own right who also has diaries at Daily Kos and The Huffington Post, today added AMERICAblog to the list of online forums he has visited. The reason: to celebrate House passage of language targeting hate crimes.
"This historic event marks the first criminal law-based civil rights measure to pass in decades," the Michigan Democrat said. The vote was 223-199, and it came on an amendment to a bill that would address the registration of convicted sex offenders.
"This legislation will make it easier for federal authorities to prosecute bias crimes by loosening the unduly rigid jurisdictional requirements under federal law," Conyers wrote, adding that the bill would authorize Justice Department assistance for hate-crime prosecutions in the states.
UPDATE: Conyers may love the bill, but not all lefties do. TalkLeft criticized both the provisions on hate crimes and sex offenders.
On the right, PoliPundit took note of the House vote.
UPDATE II: The Tom Tancredo for President blog said the linkage of bill language on hate crimes and sex offenders is the result of "a stroke of evil-genius" by Conyers, a "scheming leftist." Conyers considers the mention "a backhanded compliment."
Posted by at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)
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Lawmakers regularly insert articles into the Congressional Record, and I have long had a wonky wish to write something so profound that some congressman will feel compelled to enshrine my words in the annals of American democracy. Alas, after 15 years of hard work in Washington's mainstream media, I am batting zero.
You might not think that blogging, the pastime of amateur, pajama-clad pundits, according to one infamous MSMer, would increase my odds. But, hey, it worked this week for Jim Lindgren of The Volokh Conspiracy.
His post about umpiring as a judicial philosophy didn't make it into the Record, but it did serve as the foundation of a question asked at the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of John Roberts.
Maybe there is hope for me yet.
Posted by at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)
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John Aravosis of AMERICAblog has redirected his ire over the response to Hurricane Katrina toward the 54 senators who yesterday voted against a bill related to investigating the hurricane.
He calls them the "54 GOP senators who hate America," and he is determined to have AMERICAblog readers hound the lawmakers for their votes against a bipartisan, independent commission on Katrina.
Aravosis is trying to make the lobbying as easy as possible by posting contact information for the senators in question. And he keeps bumping the entry to the top of the blog in order to remind readers of the cause.
"[P]lease call your senators today," he wrote. "Let's make this an issue."
They seem to be heeding his call to action, but they are just a bit cynical about the prospects of their grassroots movement having any impact.
The reaction of one Virginia reader who called his two senators, George Allen and John Warner, was typical. After the call to Allen's office, the reader wrote this in an open thread started at AMERICAblog to discuss the calls: "Basically same run around: 'What's your message? I'll make sure the senator gets it.' I'll hold my breath, too."
Makes you wonder why they're even bothering -- until you go back and read Aravosis' words. The real aim of the movement is to "fill their office voice mails with messages."
Posted by at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
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Bloggers made history earlier this summer when they testified before the Federal Election Commission about a plan to regulate blogs under campaign finance law. Now the issue will be the subject of a congressional hearing, and at least one blogger will have a seat at the witness table.
Mike Krempasky of RedState.org reported yesterday that he will be among the witnesses. "I'll be there," he wrote of the Sept. 22 hearing before the House Administration Committee. "In fact, I'll be testifying. Face it, the apocalypse is upon us."
National Journal's Technology Daily, where I am the managing editor, also reported yesterday that the witnesses will include FEC Chairman Scott Thomas and Vice Chairman Michael Toner. Brad Smith, who just left his slot as a commissioner last month, also is expected to testify.
Smith sparked a blog swarm against the FEC in March when he suggested in an interview with News.com that a federal court had given the agency no choice but to regulate bloggers. Numerous bloggers and blog readers submitted comments to the FEC after it issued a proposed rulemaking, and Krempasky and other bloggers testified before the agency in June.
Smith is considered a hero in the blogosphere for sounding the warning about potentially heavy regulation to come. He will be back in Washington next week for a Cato Institute panel discussion on his FEC tenure and for a farewell reception in his honor. RedState and the Center for Individual Freedom are sponsoring the "half-roast, half-toast," and the host committee includes bloggers Michael Bassik, Allison Hayward and Mark Tapscott.
Posted by at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: Live-blogging By Sen. Leahy
While Patrick Leahy of Vermont is doing his part to grill Supreme Court nominee John Roberts in his role as the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, his staff is busy blogging the proceedings.
Leahy has been a presence in the blogosphere for a while now via the staff-authored More from the Floor feature on his Web site. Now he is the first lawmaker to attempt live-blogging congressional action.
Heard at the Hearing is a quasi-blog -- it has timed entries that lack separate links -- and it is just one of numerous blogs covering the Roberts hearings. But it is still a milestone. Only a handful of lawmakers blog, let alone attempt to give their constituents immediate insight into what they are doing.
A case in point: Leahy is a founder and co-chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus, so he should be expected to lead the way in adopting new technologies. But none of the other three co-chairmen -- Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont.; or Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., or Bob Goodlatte, D-Va. -- have blogs at their congressional sites.
It will be interesting to see whether Burns begins blogging anytime soon. He faces a tough re-election battle next year, and challenger, Jon Tester, a darling of the Democratic "netroots," has a blog called Tester Time at his campaign site.
Tester also is contributing to diaries at the popular blogs Daily Kos and MyDD, whose proprietors Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong, recently traveled to Montana to do research for a forthcoming book.
Posted by at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)
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ABC broke the news yesterday that Rep. William Jefferson had the National Guard transport him to his damaged home in New Orleans to collect personal belongings even as troops were rescuing his stranded neighbors.
Not surprisingly, the National Republican Congressional Committee jumped on the embarrassing story as a chance to bash the Louisiana Democrat. "Amid Katrina Chaos, Congressman Used National Guard to Visit Home," the NRCC blared in a special e-mail alert this morning. Instapundit also quickly spread the word in the conservative blogosphere.
But Jefferson, who earlier this summer had records from his home seized in an investigation of a technology firm, even managed to offend some Democratic bloggers. "William Jefferson, congressman in New Orleans, was hit with subpoenas about a week before Katrina," ArchPundit wrote. "He then used the National Guard as a personal limo service during the flooding. Primary please."
ABC's story has triggered a firestorm of anti-Jefferson criticism throughout the blogosphere under headlines like "Why People Hate Politicians" and "The Big Sleazy."
"The blame game gets a bad rap," FishBowlNY concluded, "but the badder rap should go to people like [Jefferson]."
Posted by at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
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Post-Katrina: Pointing Fingers And Proposing Policy
Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the policy tornadoes that she spawned continue to churn. In the background, bloggers are working hard to see that those twisters hit the right targets and that the demolished houses of government are rebuilt the way they envision.
Some of the conversation has been punctuated by petty, partisan jabs over issues like whose Web site responded more quickly and appropriately to the disaster or how much Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., paid for a home renovation. Duncan Black of Atrios could not even make a plug for charitable donations without also taking a potshot at "the government" (read: President Bush).
But sober, albeit pointed attempts at punditry and persuasion have been just as common. Whether the issue is national or local, macro or micro, bloggers have opinions, and they are pushing them into the public sphere.
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds is among them. He published a nine-point treatise on the lessons to be learned from Katrina, and his readers added to the list. The ideas include not building cities below sea level, ensuring the reliability of critical infrastructures like communications system, and putting somebody in charge.
Former FCC chief Reed Hundt, meanwhile, sketched 10 principles for reconstruction in a post at TPMCafe. They include giving hurricane victims some say in how they spend disaster relief, providing the details of reconstruction contracts online, and not managing the work from Washington.
Other bloggers have been more focused on how Katrina will, or should, impact specific subjects, be it the demands on displaced schoolchildren, the voting rights of Louisianans, the access victims have to health care, or the potential for environmental hazard from pumping the polluted waters out of New Orleans.
Here is a sampling of issues being bandied about the blogosphere in Katrina's wake:
Federal spending. Two emergency spending laws totaling more than $60 billion (H.R. 3646 and H.R. 3673) have been enacted since Katrina hit, and more are possible. GOP Bloggers warned of a potentially greater tragedy to come if the trend continues: "The reflexive urge to throw money in every direction will be far more destructive to the economy than the hurricane."
The hurricane also has cast a spotlight on pork-barrel spending. Power Line urged readers to demand that their lawmakers pledge not to use Katrina as an excuse for more pork. Mark Tapscott at the Heritage Foundation went further, calling on Congress to "take back the pork" earmarked in the new transportation law.
Bankruptcy. Harvard University law professor Elizabeth Warren found her blogging voice earlier this year at a Talking Points Memo section dedicated to bankruptcy law. She now heads the Warren Reports group blog at TPMCafe, and she has seized on Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to resurrect her criticisms of the bankruptcy law enacted earlier this year. At a minimum, she and other contributors to the blog have said Congress should clear newly introduced legislation to delay the implementation of the law for the benefit of hurricane victims.
At The Huffington Post, Russell Shaw also backed such a move, but as part of a broader nine-step "debtor relief act." Among other things, his plan calls for a ban on all home foreclosures, insurance cancellations and utility service interruptions for hurricane victims. Shaw also proposed a "do not call" registry that creditors and collection agencies would have to check.
Reconstruction wages. OpinionJournal.com columnist John Fund used The Huffington Post to advocate the suspension of a law requiring union wages on federally funded projects related to Katrina reconstruction. President Bush suspended that law soon after.
Emergency communications. American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein, one of Washington's most familiar talking heads, decried the continued failure to provide more space on the airwaves so emergency personnel can communicate across jurisdictions. "Congress, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security have let it slip," he wrote at The Huffington Post. "Actions, and inactions, have consequences. And they should have consequences for those responsible. "
The hurricane also has moved some bloggers to introspection. They are not just asking how government can better prepare for and respond to the next national emergency but also how they can improve their own role in such tragedies.
Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine is spearheading the effort, which he dubbed Recovery 2.0. "Let's be honest: The Web, too, was not fully prepared for the disaster of Katrina," he wrote. "If we'd truly learned the lessons of the tsunami and even 9/11, there was more we could have done to be ready to help."
The idea already has generated a wiki where bloggers and other Internet gurus can share their ideas online, and Recovery 2.0 will be the focus of a roundtable at the Web 2.0 conference next month. The goal, Jarvis said, "is to just to bring together smart people trying to do good things so we can do them better, not to create any giant organization and bureaucracy. (We already have FEMA, and we know how well that's working.)"
Posted by at 10:44 PM | Comments (1)
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Beltway Blogroll On The Air
Kevin Whalen and Gregg Jackson were kind enough to have me as their guest Sunday evening at Pundit Review Radio, a production of the Boston talk-radio station WRKO.
We talked about "The Power Of The Blog" to shape policy and influence elections. We also discussed the role of blogs in covering hot current events like "The Roberts Inquisition" and the policy aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I have addressed the latter issue in several recent posts and will examine it in more detail in Monday's installment of my column.
If you want to hear the interview on Pundit Review Radio, Kevin and Gregg have audio at the show's blog. The clip is of the whole show; Kevin said in an e-mail that the interview with me begins at about the 15-minute mark.
Posted by at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)
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More Blogger Action On The Supreme Court
President Bush has the chance to pick a second Supreme Court justice, and that gives the conservative blog Confirm Them a second chance to try to influence Bush's thinking from afar. Today the site encouraged participation in the debate in two ways: by polling Confirm Them readers and by inviting them to "Nominate A Nominee."
The poll lets readers pick favorite female candidates from eight choices, favorite male candidates from 15 options, and the most important factors for picking a nominee. The factors are gender, race, age, and judicial philosophy and temperament.
Readers who don't like any of the candidates mentioned in the poll can go with the second option and e-mail their own ideas. So far, three of them are judges, two of them are senators, one is a professor and one is a lawyer. No bloggers, though. Go figure.
Posted by at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)
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Bob Brigham, a Democratic blogger at Swing State Project and a leader in the "netroots" movement, is on the ground in the Gulf Coast to report on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Macon Phillips also is there. They are filing field reports at a new blog called Operation Flashlight. And they have access, too. Yesterday they were embedded with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a fellow Democrat.
Don't visit the site if you expect to find objective reporting, though. You are more likely to find posts laced with invective like this: "Of the two disasters, the unforgivable failure of the Republican administration caused far more damage than Hurricane Katrina. Unforgivable. If Bush were a decent human being, he would resign in shame."
Expect more of the same at AMERICAblog, which just sent Kyle Shank of AmIPatriotic to blog from the scene. AMERICAblog readers quickly donated enough money online to cover Shank's expenses. He is not taking a salary for the work.
"Why do this?" John Aravosis wrote in an entry explaining the move. "Because we cannot trust the Bush administration on anything they say about this hurricane. We are still seeing hourly horror stories about relief not making it, foreign offers of help being delayed, people on the ground not getting the support they need, military recruiters supposedly using the disaster as an opportunity to recruit, and more."
Posted by at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)
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The reactions of conservative and liberal bloggers to Hurricane Katrina have been starkly different, but they apparently agree on one point: Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, should be fired.
It comes as no surprise that liberals are leading the charge to get Brown. Since the depth of destruction from the hurricane became apparent, they have cast blame on just about everyone in the Bush administration for almost anything related to the storm.
John Aravosis of AMERICAblog said Brown "is either incompetent or a liar, and his only job seems to be giving non-stop interviews on TV when he should be coordinating hurricane relief. It's time for President Bush to appoint someone else who can handle the job, and give the guy 60,000 bucks to hire a spokesman."
But conservatives who generally have defended the Bush administration on many fronts are breaking ranks when it comes to Brown. Andrew Sullivan called him a "blithering idiot ... hired with no credentials to run a critical agency at a time of national peril." And Michelle Malkin said President Bush should stop praising Brown and fire him instead.
"This is not the time to give a weak performer the benefit of the doubt," she wrote. "The FEMA director's role in the ongoing recovery effort is too important to be entrusted to a clueless political hack with such poor judgment."
UPDATE: There is now a Fire Brown Now! blog (via Instapundit).
An open letter to the president that The Times-Picayune in New Orleans published at its blog also is getting lots of attention in the blogosphere, including at BuzzMachine. "Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially," the letter said.
UPDATE II: Right-leaning blogger Andrew Sullivan has a roundup of blogs across the political spectrum that are calling for Brown's resignation (hat tip to The Hotline's Blogometer).
Posted by at 09:20 AM | Comments (1)
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CapitolLink: Rep. Holt's Leading Ladies
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., began his stint as a TPMCafe guest blogger today with posts about two women in the news this summer -- well, one woman and one hurricane with a woman's name.
His first post was Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose unwanted public outing led the news for months. While the media largely have moved on to other subjects since then, Holt still wants to know "who leaked Valerie Plame's identity" to columnist Robert Novak, and he wants Congress to find the answers. "The reason Congress should deal with this matter ... is that we in Congress have a responsibility to see that those whom we ask to protect America have everything they need to do it," Holt wrote.
The issue will be back on the agenda in the House tomorrow thanks to Holt, who is pushing a "resolution of inquiry" that will force the House Armed Services Committee to consider the Plame-related allegations. Three other panels will have to weigh the resolution later. "The outing of Valerie Plame has damaged the efforts of all those serving America under cover, intelligence officers who from now on will never be sure that their government will not cut them adrift -- without even a peep of dismay from the White House," Holt said.
His second post, "Crisis in the Gulf," addressed the aftermath of the hurricane that devastated parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, including Louisiana. Holt said one lesson the federal government should learn is that cutting budgetary corners can be costly in the long run.
"For too long this government has tried to do more with less; it has tried to provide for our people on the cheap," he wrote. "But this week has reminded us that there are too many critical tasks and services that only government can provide and that we ensure that the federal government provides the essential funding that these services require."
Posted by at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)
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The fundraising blog swarm triggered by one of America's most severe weather storms officially ended yesterday with a tally of nearly $1.2 million, but the contribution total continued to climb today. As of late this afternoon, it stood at $1,220,310.
Conservative bloggers organized the effort. Another online relief fundraiser to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina is still under way at liberal blogs.
Conservatives seized on the idea for a coordinated fundraiser first and excelled in both organization and the amount of money they raised. The fundraiser initially was to be a one-day event, but it was expanded to cover the entire Labor Day weekend. The more than 1,800 bloggers from 35 countries who participated used their online journals to make recurring appeals for donations to various charitable groups.
Law professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame played a lead role in organizing the work and generated about $355,000 in contributions through his site alone. The donations were logged on the honor system and tallied at The Truth Laid Bear.
Liberals took a different approach, providing free advertising space for a fundraiser via the Liberal Blog Ad Network. The effort has not been nearly as successful -- generating only $163,000 contributions, according to the tracker at DropCash -- but now Reynolds is promoting that ongoing effort.
"This one seems to center mostly around lefty blogs, but that doesn't matter," he wrote Tuesday. "The money's all the same color, and it's all needed."
Posted by at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
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The Roberts Inquisition
Bloggers have spent the summer pontificating about the first Supreme Court nomination of the Internet age. Now with Senate confirmation hearings on tap -- and the stakes suddenly raised by the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist -- their rants, raves and assorted musings could help shape the questioning that awaits Judge John Roberts.
So far, much of the blog chatter on Roberts has been mere noise -- about his ties to the Federalist Society, his wife's beliefs on abortion, his children's adoption records and his sexual preference, for example. Even the groundbreaking search of Roberts-related documents by conservative bloggers yielded little substance.
As they often do, bloggers have tended to opine on the information unearthed by journalists rather than provide fresh material on Roberts. And with the paper trail on Roberts so thin, they have resorted to heated debates over his thinking on topics as obscure as eating French fries on the subway and protecting a "hapless toad."
The nature of the confirmation blogging to date may be the inevitable result of President Bush having chosen a nominee who, although arguably conservative, is not a firebrand. One thing is clear, though: The blog war predicted by conservative Hugh Hewitt has not materialized yet. Weeks after Roberts' nomination, Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine dubbed it "the unstory" and concluded: "I don't see the blogs going crazy. There isn't much to say."
Blogs may yet have an impact, however. Confirmation hearings are all about questions, and bloggers, especially those on the left, have been asking plenty of those.
Some have asked them indirectly, via interest groups. A blogger from North Carolina is among those touting a petition and the 30 questions of the gay rights group Lambda Legal, and Daily Kos pointed readers to 20 questions that People for the American Way said past nominees have answered.
A group of Democratic senators also solicited questions from the public. Although the Web site promised privacy for the participants, some of the 40,000-plus questions forwarded to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week undoubtedly came from bloggers, their readers or both because several blogs publicized the effort.
Armando at Daily Kos mentioned the "Ask Roberts" forum and then shared his two questions with readers. Both were on abortion. He answered his own questions a few days later, concluding that Roberts' nomination must be filibustered because of his views.
Bench Memos, a blog at the conservative National Review, agreed that Roberts should be asked about his views on abortion. "How can asking whether he has a view, and what it is, be improper?... And if the canons of judicial ethics exist to safeguard the impartiality of the courts before which litigants appear, then I don't see how that purpose is served by confirming the judge who has a private opinion and keeps mum."
While abortion is foremost on their minds, bloggers also are concerned about other issues. TalkLeft asked about capital punishment, and Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights said at TPMCafe that Roberts should be grilled about his stance on voting rights.
A press release from Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski, one of the senators behind the "Ask Roberts" effort, also noted that the questions submitted online covered everything from civil rights, property rights and anti-terrorism law to stem-cell research, education and immigration.
Bloggers also have debated the boundaries of legitimate questioning for judicial nominees. In arguing for more specific probing than Republicans might like, Harvard University law student Jason Spitalnick cited the precedents set by Democratic-appointed Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer in the 1990s.
"The nominees drew lines in the sand that preserved their ability to rule impartially in the future but opened windows into their personal approaches to judging and the law," he wrote at TPMCafe. "Without that information, senators cannot fulfill their constitutional responsibility to the American people."
Duncan Black of Eschaton voiced his frustration at calls for limited questioning in the satirical post, "Judge Roberts, What is Your Favorite Flavor of Ice Cream?"
"From what I can tell, that's the only question left which the Republicans think is appropriate for Democrats to ask in his confirmation hearing," Black said. "It's apparently unfair or obstructionist or illegal or something to know anything relevant about a guy who's about to be appointed to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court."
Roberts' critics say they simply want an intense inquisition. "We expect Democratic senators to aggressively seek honest and forthright answers and full disclosure of documents and information from Roberts, and the White House to allow the Senate to properly carry out its duty to advise and consent," Daily Kos noted.
But based on what Marshall Manson of the Center for Individual Freedom calls an "ever-growing list of red-herring attacks" on Roberts, the nominee's defenders expect a judicial witch-hunt.
"[T]he left and its puppets in the Senate demonstrate that they will stoop to any level, no matter how pathetic, to smear Judge Roberts," Manson wrote at Confirm Them. "Get ready. It's only going to get worse when the hearing starts."
Posted by at 07:00 PM | Comments (0)
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Senate Democrats have an action plan on how Congress should respond to Hurricane Katrina when lawmakers return to the capital tomorrow, and they are publicizing the plan through left-leaning blogs.
Among other things, the agenda includes: changes to Medicaid coverage for recipients impacted by the storm; emergency housing for those who are now homeless; transportation for people who are unable to get to family and friends; access to schools for displaced children; a toll-free telephone number and Web site for connecting people separated as a result of the storm; and cash assistance.
The Democrats also want to address policies related to student loans, small-business loans, income taxes, food stamps and jobs. And they want "accountability" from the president that would include "regular reports to the Congress on the status of recovery efforts, the number of victims who remain without decent housing, jobs, etc., and any additional resources or action needed to address the crisis."
Daily Kos, Eschaton and Raw Story have the details.
Posted by at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)
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Hurricane Katrina is headed toward the top of the charts in terms of the worst natural disasters in American history. It makes sense, then, to look at what happened after those disasters, and that is exactly what the History News Network is doing.
HNN has a page dedicated to Katrina. The resident historians also are discussing the the hurricane at HNN's blogs, including POTUS and Liberty & Power.
There is plenty of meaty historical perspective. An interview with Willie Drye, who wrote a book on the Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys 70 years ago today, is a good starting point. Drye also wrote an article on the subject for HNN.
John Barry also looked at what happened after the 1927 flood of the Mississippi River, which he called "the most terrible American disaster" until now. "In one obvious way, it eerily foreshadowed today's [tragedy]," he wrote. "For one thing, New Orleans officials loudly warned that a disaster was waiting to happen, and condemned Washington for ignoring them, just as last week's devastation was widely predicted.
Posted by at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)
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I wrote a piece in the current issue of National Journal magazine on the legacy of Federal Election Commissioner Brad Smith, who has returned to his academic job in Ohio. I thought the story might be of interest to the bloggers who rallied earlier this year when Smith warned that the FEC might move to regulate bloggers under campaign finance law, so I received permission to reprint the article here at Beltway Blogroll.
On a related note, RedState blogger Mike Krempasky, who testified before the FEC about regulating bloggers, is organizing a Washington reception for Smith later this month. He mentioned the reception in a broader post about Smith and the FEC.
Here is my National Journal article:
Brad Smith Departs to Cheers and Jeers
In a January 2004 speech before the American Conference Institute, then-Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley A. Smith delivered a scathing critique of McConnell v. FEC, a Supreme Court ruling from the previous month that had upheld campaign finance reforms as constitutional. "Now and then," he said, "the Supreme Court issues a decision that cries out to the public, 'We don't know what we're doing!' McConnell is such a decision."
That was just a warm-up jab. A passionate defender of unfettered political speech, Smith then used what has since become a favorite comparison of his: "If it was unclear before, it is now a fact that our Court gives less constitutional protection to the right to criticize the voting record of an incumbent congressman close to an election than it does to virtual child pornography, cross-burning, sexually explicit cable television programming, topless dancing, tobacco advertising, flag-burning, defamation, and the dissemination of illegally acquired information."
Such pointed rhetoric, a hallmark of Smith's five-plus years at the FEC, explains why self-styled campaign reformers are celebrating Smith's departure from the commission last month. But it just as clearly reveals why free-speech advocates are lamenting the loss of a man they see as a principled, fearless, and eloquent champion of the First Amendment.
"It seems that what the 'reform industry' wants is a puppet, and if [a commissioner] isn't their puppet, then they run to the media and whine about how awful that person is," said Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer at Foley & Lardner who practices before the FEC. "So, Brad Smith isn't and wasn't their puppet. Good for him."
Then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, the senator whose challenge of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law eventually went to the Supreme Court, suggested Smith for the slot on the FEC back in February 2000. Smith's nomination quickly became controversial because of his criticisms of campaign finance law during his time as a law professor at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, a post that he now has resumed.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., compared putting Smith on the FEC with "confirming a conscientious objector to be secretary of Defense." McCain's allies in the advocacy community agreed. "The full Senate should reject Bradley Smith to serve on the FEC because of his fundamental disagreement with the law he would be sworn to enforce," said then-Common Cause President Scott Harshbarger in a March 2000 statement.
Smith won confirmation as part of an agreement under which the Senate also confirmed 16 of President Clinton's judicial nominees. But Smith's tenure at the election agency was marked by repeated clashes with reform-oriented lawmakers and advocates.
Two noteworthy episodes showcased that tension. First, in April 2002, McCain and three other lawmakers most associated with the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act urged Smith to recuse himself from rule-makings required by the law, which had been enacted weeks earlier. They accused him of "inappropriate and ill-advised intervention into the congressional debate" and of other "public attacks" on the measure.
In a detailed letter back to the lawmakers, Smith dismissed their concerns. "Our disagreements over tactics and the effects of regulation ought not to blind you to the fact that our goals and purposes are the same," he concluded. "We can all wear white hats. We are all 'reformers.'"
The second episode came during last year's presidential campaign, when the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21, and the Center for Responsive Politics jointly asked the FEC to disqualify Smith from "any participation" in their complaint against Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The veterans' group had questioned the military service record of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, and campaign reformers said that the group's actions violated election law. The three reform organizations accused Smith of making public comments that prejudged the outcome of the complaint. Smith did not recuse himself, and the case is still pending before the FEC.
The underlying current of both complaints embodies the predominant criticism of Smith: that, for an FEC commissioner, he spoke a bit too freely about free speech and thus let his personal views influence his work. "Brad is a very bright, able person, which makes his term at the FEC all the more disappointing," said Trevor Potter, president and general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center and also a former FEC commissioner. "I don't think he was able to differentiate between the anti-regulation ideology ... [and] the responsibilities of enforcing the law."
Don Simon, the counsel to Democracy 21, echoed that view. He said that Smith "has worked for the last six years, often with great success, to ensure that the FEC did not uphold the law." And Larry Noble of the Center for Responsive Politics, who once served as a general counsel to the FEC, contended that Smith "helped steer the agency to the position where it's a lot less aggressive than it used to be."
Simon cited the FEC's decision last year not to regulate so-called "527" organizations such as the Democratic-allied America Coming Together and the Republican-allied Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The FEC saw that such groups were illegally raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the 2004 election, he said, but "at the urging of Brad Smith, it ended up doing nothing at all" to stop it.
In an interview during his last week on the job, Smith challenged the accusation that he worked to undermine the law; he said he had tried diligently to see that the agency adhered strictly to the statute and to the Constitution. But he agreed with his critics' contention that he had tried "to pull the agency back a bit," because for years, it "had been pursuing an aggressive mode of enforcement, which frankly was trampling on people's rights."
Smith put the blame squarely on Potter, Noble, and others who had served on or worked at the FEC during the time that Smith said it became a "rogue agency," regularly losing court cases because it had exceeded its authority. He also insisted that the FEC made the right call on 527s. "'Reform' does not necessarily mean what Fred Wertheimer and a handful of other reformers say it means," he said in a reference to the president and CEO of Democracy 21.
Indeed, the criticism that Smith could not be trusted to enforce the law looks suspect when compared with the commission's record in 2004, the year he served as chairman. For the second consecutive year, the FEC imposed civil penalties of more than $2 million, which Smith's annual report called a first, and the median penalty jumped 45 percent, to $45,000.
Smith has plenty of fans eager to defend his tenure at the FEC. After the June announcement of his departure, The New York Sun lauded Smith for being "a man of principle who openly questioned the wisdom of the very regulations he was charged with enforcing." Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, said that Smith was "an independent freethinker and will be remembered for ferociously protecting" political speech. And Ohio State University's law school editorialized in its election-law newsletter: "There likely will be no speeches in Washington thanking him for his contribution to the democratic system we hold so dear. But he deserves those thanks nonetheless."
Former Smith aide Allison Hayward said that one of Smith's greatest contributions was in helping average Americans who unwittingly got ensnared in the campaign finance morass -- by not including disclaimers on homemade signs in support of candidates, for instance. Smith always tried to remember that the agency can "really scare people," she said. "Ordinary people think it's a big deal when you get a letter from the government saying you did something wrong."
FEC Commissioner Michael Toner, who was appointed by President Bush, added that Smith pushed successfully for "safe harbors" to protect certain conduct and for "clear rules, bright-line standards" aimed at benefiting "people who aren't in Washington, D.C., who do not have access to K Street lawyers." Toner noted the uproar that Smith helped to set off earlier this year by hinting that the FEC might apply campaign finance law to "bloggers," the authors of online journals, who became a political phenomenon in 2004. "Brad put that issue front and center" by criticizing the idea of regulating blogs before it was ever officially proposed, Toner said, "and it was a very important thing to do."
Both Smith's champions and his detractors are now focused on the process for replacing him and, potentially, three other commissioners whose terms have expired: Republican David Mason and Democrats Danny McDonald and Scott Thomas, the current chairman.
Noble, of the Center for Responsive Politics, said that the bellwether will be what happens with Thomas. "There are those who are trying to get him off the commission," Noble said, and if they succeed, that will indicate the future direction of the FEC. In a July 20 letter, leading campaign finance reformers in Congress urged President Bush to reappoint Thomas.
In filling Smith's seat, Hayward suspects that the Bush White House will seek a commissioner who is less independent and more "predictable, because it values loyalty above all else." She added that Smith's successor is sure to be "a little less colorful, a lot less quotable." Asked if there will ever be another commissioner like Smith, she said with a laugh: "Oh, no. No, they broke the mold."
Posted by at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)
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BillBlast: Price Gouging, Bankruptcy After Katrina
Rep. John Conyers of Michigan is as aggravated as the next Democrat about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, and in a post at ConyersBlog, he blamed the Bush administration for just about everything -- underfunded flood protection, unprepared emergency responders, and a "slow and unimaginative" response to the tragedy.
But he said the top priority right now "is alleviating the ongoing hardship we see every day," and in his mind, that means quick action from Congress. He touted two ideas in particular that he plans to draft into legislative form when lawmakers return to work this week: 1) the authority for national investigations of price gouging; and 2) a change to the new bankruptcy law so it does not further hurt people whose lives were upended by the storm.
Conyers elaborated on the bankruptcy measure in another entry at his Daily Kos diary. "[T]he bankruptcy bill recently passed by Congress makes matters far worse for these families. ... Under the new law," he wrote, "these families would be subject to a rigid and unjust means test that would arbitrarily deny many the relief they deserve."
Conyers included in the post a letter that he and other lawmakers wrote to the FTC to request an investigation into "apparent price gouging" on gasoline prices. "At first blush, it would seem that these increases go far beyond anything justified or relating to the market disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina," the letter said.
Warren Reports, a section of TPMCafe first unveiled at Talking Points Memo earlier this year specifically to fight the bankruptcy bill, also addressed the bankruptcy issue. But Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy and commercial law professor at Harvard University, said Congress should delay the law across the board.
"Bankruptcy is a safety net for the middle class," she wrote. "At the moment when people and small businesses may need it more than ever, Congress is ripping new holes -- all in the name of reform. If Congress really wants to help, delay the enactment date by a year and give families everywhere a chance to pull themselves back to financial safety."
The Raw Story reported that Democrats tried unsuccessfully to insert similar language into the bankruptcy measure earlier this year. Armando at Daily Kos contrasted the move on bankruptcy by Democrats with the push by Republicans to repeal the estate tax. And Eschaton republished a press release on the bankruptcy legislation, with the admonition that every Democrat "had better line up to support this."
The Huffington Post commented on the fortcoming bankruptcy legislation, too. All of the activity shows that although bloggers were relatively silent about the bankruptcy law until it was nearly a done deal, they are rallying against it now.
Right-leaning bloggers like Instapundit and RedState also opposed the bankruptcy statute earlier this year, and Instapundit has taken a lead role in raising relief funds for hurricane victims. But neither blog has yet commented on the follow-up bankruptcy bill proposed by Democrats.
Posted by at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
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The chaos in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina "stems from a chronic and intentional diversion of resources for which the Bush administration must accept responsibility," Rep. Jan Schakowsky argued in an entry at The Huffington Post.
The post rehashes one of the most frequent criticisms of President Bush over the past week: that he ignored the warnings of a hurricane catastrophe in New Orleans unless the federal government spent more money to guard against such a disaster.
Schakowsky, D-Ill., said the situation in New Orleans "represents a failure of the federal government to meet its most basic function of effectively and promptly providing safety and security for the American people." And she added that the administration must "show the leadership necessary to save lives, restore security and initiate recovery efforts on the gulf coast."
Posted by at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)
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Much of the mainstream media coverage of Hurricane Katrina has focused on New Orleans, but blogger Michelle Malkin provided a roundup of news from other areas devastated by the storm.
Malkin's readers requested the news feed, which indicates just how broad the devastation is -- and thus how much attention it is likely to garner in Congress and throughout the federal government. Katrina directed her wrath at folks far from the Beltway, but she is sure to be the talk of Washington for months to come.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters also noted the destruction in Mississippi and chastised the mainstream media for making the tragedy predominantly about New Orleans. "So why doesn't the media give coverage to the wider devastation of Katrina?" he wrote. "For one thing, they have the same problem in Mississippi that the rescuers have -- a lack of access for their reporters. However, by narrowing the scope of the disaster recovery facing the states and federal emergency responders, it makes it easier to blame them for a poor response, when in fact the turnaround time for assistance on Katrina has historically been one of the best for hurricane disasters."
Posted by at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: Rep. McDermott On The Other America
Rep. Jim McDermott used The Huffington Post this week as his bully pulpit to revive a familiar liberal complaint against President Bush: that his policies favor the rich and hurt average Americans.
McDermott, D-Wash., began the post with a snide remark about Bush's "five weeks of paid vacation" during August and then blamed the president for more poverty, less health insurance, lower median and family incomes, and a stagnant minimum wage. He closed with a diatribe about soaring gasoline prices.
"Put simply, the rich are getting a lot richer under this president, and the other 80 percent of America is getting gouged at the pump," McDermott said. "The president is turning America into a two-country nation, one where the rich can afford $3-a-gallon gas because they own the pump and one where the vast majority of Americans can't work enough hours or enough jobs to make ends meet."
UPDATE: Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., also revived the "Two Americas" theme of his 2004 presidential campaign in a TPMCafe post about Hurricane Katrina. "We have missed opportunities to make certain that all Americans would be more than huddled masses. We have been too slow to act in the face in the misery of our brothers and sisters," he wrote. "This is an ugly and horrifying wake-up call to America. Let us pray we answer this call."
Posted by at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)
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When President Bush returned early from vacation to focus on the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the liberal bloggers who had ridiculed him all month for his extended break turned their attention instead to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Her sin: She continued to vacation in the Big Apple while the Big Easy became the Big Nightmare.
Coverage of Rice's luxury shoe-shopping in New York by Gawker fueled the outrage. "The disconnect is beyond belief," wrote Hughes For America.
Well, the grousing in the blogosphere may have had an impact. Now AMERICAblog and others are touting a New York Times article that suggests Rice cut her vacation short because of the stir it created. She was among the many officials who answered questions from the presss today.
Posted by at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)
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In The Blog's-Eye: A RedState Rant Against Bush
The liberal rants against President Bush resonating through the blogosphere arguably have a political element to them and thus are not likely to catch many ears at the White House. But Bush might want to take note of the recent rhetorical grenade lobbed from the normally friendly quarters at RedState.org.
Josh Trevino is responsible for the pointed post. He decried both the president's "lackluster address" yesterday about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the "truly disastrous" follow-up interview today, and he argued that both performances raise questions about the president's ability to lead during a crisis.
"[M]odern democracy demands that an elected representative involve himself in the great events of the day," Trevino wrote. "At a bare minimum, he must appear informed and active, lest the perception of leaderlessness engender its own reality. President Bush is failing to meet this minimum."
The leadership (or lack of it) that Bush demonstrates in coming days could impact his second-term agenda, Trevino warned ominously. "That he seems disengaged, and that at the moment those purported preparations seem ephemeral indeed, together may well represent a ripping-away of the facade of the president-as-protector that won him re-election. ... [T]he president needs to get on the ball."
The post is a noteworthy departure from most of the other Katrina-related fare in the conservative blogosphere.
Posted by at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)
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The long-feared levee breach that flooded much of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit this week has both bloggers and policymakers wondering aloud whether the below-sea-level city should be rebuilt.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., put that issue front and center in an interview with the Daily Herald, an Illinois newspaper. "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," he said, according to an AP account.
Hastert's comments triggered a blog swarm of criticism at liberal sites like Daily Kos and TPMCafe. And although Hastert later issued a clarification that said he was "not advocating that the city be abandoned or relocated," some people argued that the point he raised is a legitimate one.
Democratic blogger Larry Handlin was among them. "I'm not sure saying all of New Orleans should be abandoned [is right]," he wrote at ArchPundit, "but certainly the foot print should be more manageable and the Parshishes below it should not be rebuilt."
John Hawkins of Right Wing News shares that opinion. "Do we really want to rebuild what amounts to a major city in a saucer? A city that's below sea level, that's probably going to be vulnerable to big hurricanes no matter what we do?" he wrote. "Maybe this sounds outrageous to some people, but I question whether we should be sinking [$30 billion to $50 billion]into a city that's probably always going to be one hurricane away from total ruination."
The issue also sparked a spirited debate at BuzzMachine. Proprietor Jeff Jarvis added his own thoughts: "The question of rebuilding New Orleans -- whether and how -- is not just an understandably emotional decision and certainly an economic one but it is also an ethical issue. We knew this was going to happen and we were not prepared."
But Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters said the debate about whether to rebuild New Orleans is all about American grit. His take: "Americans don't do pessimism, not as policy and not as part of our national character. ... Believe me, some of those who plan our destruction have cheered the scenes shown on television around the world of Katrina's devastation in New Orleans, and they're watching to see what we do. And so New Orleans must be rebuilt, in some manner, right where it is now. No leader will get up and say, 'We give up. Katrina beat us. Let's move on.'"
Posted by at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)
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Two bloggers from the conservative Power Line are in Washington this week to speak at roundtables hosted by the American Political Science Association. The first events were today.
Paul Mirengoff spoke this morning at a panel discussion about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Scott Johnson will speak tomorrow about liberalism and former President Woodrow Wilson.
The main event as far as bloggers are concerned, however, will be tomorrow morning at 10:15 a.m. Both Johnson and Mirengoff will participate in a discussion dubbed "Bloggers and the Future of American Politics." The details are here.
Posted by at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)
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Gen. Wesley Clark, a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, is guest blogging at TPMCafe this week, and his first post earlier this week addressed the war in Iraq.
"Not only do I disagree with the premise by which this administration started the war in Iraq, I also disagree with their current strategy of urging American 'resolve' and fighting in Iraq in an open-ended manner," Clark wrote. "Simply 'staying the course' is not an option, and neither is cutting and running. Too much is at stake."
Clark also responded to readers in the comment section of the post, addressing issues such as America's dependence on Middle East oil and the anti-war protest of Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in combat in Iraq. The first entry alone generated nearly 200 comments.
In another post, Clark touted a bill of rights for soldiers. It calls for enhanced healthcare benefits, college money and job training for veterans. "Since April," he wrote, "there has been legislation pending in Congress to accomplish all of these worthy goals -- but it is up to the president to show leadership and insist that this legislation move from the committee room to his desk as quickly as possible. And it is up to the Republicans in Congress to make it happen."
Posted by at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
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Fans of Duncan Black, the man known as "Atrios" at the Eschaton blog, will gather in Philadelphia over the weekend to brainstorm about "progressive" blogging and the 2006 election. The conference, dubbed EschaCon 2005, will feature bloggers, Democratic campaign professionals and at least one House lawmaker.
The substantive part of the conference occurs Saturday, beginning with a two-hour morning session on progressive blogging. The panelists will include Black and Bob Fertik of Democrats.com and AfterDowningStreet.org.
Speakers at the afternoon session on the 2006 election will include officials from two campaign organizations in Washington: the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The latter group has been a frequent target of criticism from some Democratic bloggers.
Rep. Louise Slaughter of Connecticut, who blogs at her campaign site, also will address the conference Saturday. "The sheer volume of positive political energy represented by the readers and commenters of this blog serve as a uniquely valuable resource in contemporary American politics," Slaughter's staff wrote in a post promoting the event.
Posted by at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
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