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The Los Angeles Times has incurred the wrath of two dozen Democrats in Congress over the paper's decision earlier this month to fire liberal columnist Robert Scheer.

The lawmakers sent a letter of complaint to the Times, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, put the text of the letter online at The Huffington Post, where he is an occasional contributor.

"On Nov. 11, the L.A. Times reported this dismissal along with other staff cuts," the lawmakers wrote. "According to the article, a conservative contributing editor to the National Review has been hired to write for the op-ed pages. In effect the L.A. Times has hired a Bush administration cheerleader to replace a leading critic of the administration."

The lawmakers' call for the newspaper to reconsider its decision to fire Scheer was unusual enough for media watcher and blogger Jeff Jarvis to criticize it at both his own blog, BuzzMachine, and at The Huffington Post.

Jarvis defended the lawmakers' right to voice their opinion on Scheer's firing as readers but questioned their decision to register their complaint in their official capacity as elected officials. "The last thing we need is for more public officials to act as if they can or should throw their weight around with the press, the media and our speech," he said.

Readers at The Huffington Post divided fairly evenly over the merits of Jarvis' point. "Much as I agree with their position, they went about it the wrong way," one reader said. "And it may turn out to be counterproductive."

But another argued that the letter actually defends the principle of a free press, as lawmakers should: "They wrote a letter. They did not summon [Times officials] to testify in front of a committee. That it was from members of Congress underscores the seriousness of the matter. A newspaper fired an employee of 30 years because he did not agree with the administration. That is un-American."

Posted by at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)

Freshman Rep. Jean Schmidt has been the focus of an all-out blog swarm from the left since a House floor speech last week that her critics took as a personal assault on Rep. John Murtha.

Schmidt, R-Ohio, appeared to call Pennsylvania Democrat Murtha, a former Marine, a "coward" for advocating a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. She quickly clarified that she did not mean to characterize any particular person that way, and she later told the press that she sent a personal letter of apology to Murtha. But Democratic bloggers will not let the issue alone.

Joshua Micah Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo has offered a steady drumbeat of criticism aimed at Schmidt, who is known as "Mean Jean" in her district. He dubbed his first entry on the topic "Jean Schmidt-Piece 'O Work Watch -- Installment #1" and has posted two more entries since then.

The latest one focuses on Schmidt's first floor speech in the House. It occurred Sept. 6, just weeks after Schmidt won an unexpectedly tight special election in Ohio's 2nd District.

The part of the speech that has captured the attention of Marshall and so many other bloggers, including BluegrassReport, Daily Kos and Delusions of Grandeur, involves Schmidt's pledge to be "honorable" in any of her disagreements with colleagues and not to engage in name-calling or character attacks. They see her comments on the floor last week as inconsistent with the vow she made less than three months earlier. Taegan Goddard of Political Wire highlighted one snippet from the speech as his quote of the day.

These words of Schmidt's in particular appear to have been somewhat prophetic: "It is easy to quickly sink to the lowest form of political debate."

The full speech is reprinted in the extended entry, with the key section in bold.

I stand here today in the same shoes, though with a slightly higher heel, as thousands of members who have taken the same oath before me. I am mindful of what is expected of me both by this hallowed institution and the hundreds of thousands of Americans I am blessed to represent. I am the lowest-ranking member of this body, the very bottom rung of the ladder; and I am privileged to hold that title.

This House has much work to do. On that we can all agree. We will not always agree on the details of that work. Honorable people can certainly agree to disagree. However, here today I accept a second oath. I pledge to walk in the shoes of my colleagues and refrain from name-calling or the questioning of character. It is easy to quickly sink to the lowest form of political debate. Harsh words often lead to headlines, but walking this path is not a victimless crime. This great House pays the price.

So at this moment, I begin my tenure in this chamber, uncertain of what history will say of my tenure here. I come here green with only a desire to make our great country even greater. We have much work to do. In that spirit, I pledge to each of you that any disagreements we may have are just that and no more.

Walking in each other's shoes takes effort and pause; however, it is my sincere hope that I never lose the patience to view each of you as human beings first, God's creatures, and foremost. I deeply appreciate this opportunity to serve with each of you. I very much look forward to getting to know you better, and I humbly thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to address this humble body.

Posted by at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

Rep. John Murtha has been the talk of the blogosphere for a week because of his call for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Now the Pennsylvania Democrat is doing some talking of his own on that topic in the blogosphere.

Murtha authored his first-ever blog entry at The Huffington Post yesterday. His message: It's time for the White House to invite people on both sides of the Iraqi war debate for a meeting designed to find a resolution.

"[I]t's obvious that the American people are thirsting for a solution in Iraq," Murtha wrote. "The American people are ahead of Congress in recognizing that we must give the Iraqis incentive to step up and seize their own destiny -- sooner rather than later -- so that our young men and women in uniform will not continue paying such a heavy price for an indefinite period."

The post has spurred 362 comments so far, most of them laudatory of Murtha's role in the debate.

Posted by at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

President Bush thinks Americans should be anxious about the possibility of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi taking control of Iraq. But Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, thinks Bush's recent string of warnings on that front are as misleading as his pre-war warnings about the nuclear stockpiles of Saddam Hussein.

"Like the exaggerated threats used before the war, the threat of a Zarqawi republic is unfounded," Kucinich wrote yesterday in his first blog entry at The Huffington Post. "Congress and the public need to see through the smokescreen, and not be distracted from the real question at hand: how to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq."

He stated four reasons why Bush's take on Zarqawi is not credible: 1) Zarqawi's group "is only a small player in the armed insurgency in Iraq;" 2) Zarqawi is not popular enough to be elected Iraq's leader; 3) he has alienated most Sunnis, the largest Islamic sect in Iraq; and 4) Zarqawi is from Jordan, not Iraq.

"All the facts point to the conclusion that Zarqawi cannot and will not realistically take over Iraq," Kucinich argued. "By making Zarqawi the face of the opposition, however, the White House is distracting us from the significant, real and widespread non-violent Iraqi opposition."

Posted by at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)

People who want to send a message to political insiders, and who appreciate the value of blogs to accomplish that goal, have a new forum to do just that: the Political Insiders Ad Network via Blogads.

Political Wire, one of the blogs in the network, announced the development in a post today.

"Millions of dollars are spent each year on advocacy ads trying to influence political insiders," Taegan Goddard wrote. "The network will include blogs most read by these people -- politicians and their staffs, campaign aides, political consultants, lobbyists and journalists. It's a bipartisan collection of the most thoughtful political sites across the ideological spectrum."

That collection includes serious sites like Political Wire and snarky but well-read ones like Wonkette. Other participating blogs include D.C.'s Political Report, MyDD, Mystery Pollster, PoliPundit, Political State Report and Swing State Project.

The weekly ad rates vary from $10 for space on the smallest blogs to $300 for a slot at Wonkette. Political Wire invited other blogs to join the network.

Posted by at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)

The spat over campaign strategy that divided the Democratic "netroots" and party establishment in Washington earlier this year may be subsiding. The makings of a detente emerged on two fronts this week.

First, a reader of Swing State Project launched a Web site aimed at recruiting bloggers to cover campaigns in all 435 House districts. The site, DistrictBlogs, reflects the bold, nontraditional strategy of the netroots. It currently lists active blogs in 21 districts covering 14 states and provides feeds from those blogs. The site also offers tools to create new blogs focused on other districts.

"The combination of these two features means that [DistrictBlogs] has the potential to become a very powerful district-level tool," Swing State Project noted.

Tim Tagaris, a former contributor at Swing State Project and now a blogger for the Democratic National Committee, also drew attention to DistrictBlogs in a post at the DNC blog. The DNC favors a "50-state strategy" for challenging Republican candidates in every state.

Tagaris also highlighted the second development that indicates common strategic ground among Democrats: a new page at the site of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that lists where Democrats hold House seats, and where the party currently has and lacks challengers. "In the races where Democrats have a candidate, a hyperlink connects you to some opposition-research-type information about the Republican incumbent," Tagaris said.

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, arguably the most influential Democratic blogger, praised the DCCC's move -- and he used his bully pulpit at Daily Kos to urge folks in the netroots to help the DCCC find more candidates.

"The DCCC can do a lot, but we in the netroots number millions," Moulitsas wrote. "We know lots of people who would never register on the DCCC's radar. I'm not talking lawyers or career politicians -- we've got more than enough of those -- but teachers, firefighters, farmers, vets, etc. Real people that could be persuaded to make a run to help build [a] clean house in D.C. and take power away from those utterly corrupted by it."

Posted by at 10:58 PM | Comments (1)

Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo has made a name for himself by calling attention to the sins of Republican officials, and one of his favorite topics trying to piece together what he sees as their culture of corruption.

But with his own blog and the TPMCafe service he is building, Marshall doesn't have as much time as he would like to make sense of the story for his readers. That's why he has put out the call for TPMCafe's first full-time reporter.

"That's a site I'd like to read because I'm never able to keep up with all of it myself," Marshall wrote last week. "So we're going to try to create it. I don't imagine it will be easy. But it will be an experiment with a new sort of journalism."

Marshall gave a hint at the content to come in a post on Thursday, after House Republicans stripped from a budget bill language to open the Artic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration. "Today's an example of one of the reasons I'm eager to have a blog-reporter not just literally up on Capitol Hill but more generally following all of the ins and outs of what's going on up there," he wrote.

Journalists like me already are blogging, and now bloggers like Marshall are plunging headlong into journalistic ventures. So begins the merger of old media and new. I can't wait to see who Marshall hires, whether that reporter becomes the first blogger to get credentials to cover Congress, and what direction the new publication takes. It should be an interesting journey.

UPDATE: The New York Sun reported on Marshall's plan today and noted that he is now looking for two muckraking reporters, one senior and one junior.

Posted by at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

Thanks to a snide sound bite from an uppity mainstream journalist, many people no doubt imagine bloggers doing their best work in pajamas. That perception may not have been far from reality at the tail end of last week, as Congress finished its pre-Thanksgiving legislative dash in the wee hours, and citizen journalists followed the action as dutifully as any credentialed reporters.

Bloggers touched on an array of issues. They vented about budget decisions, reported on a last-minute congressional pay raise, covered the latest campaign finance news, called attention to new legislation, and even highlighted obscure provisions tucked into larger bills.

But they reserved most of their commentary for Friday evening's impromptu and vitriolic debate about the Iraqi war, a debate spurred by the sudden call for a U.S. troop withdrawal from defense hawk John Murtha, D-Pa.

The debate came on a nonbinding resolution urging the troop withdrawal. Republicans oppose that idea but forced the issue to the floor in an attempt to get Democrats on the record for the move. Democrats did not oblige. The vote was 403-3, with six other lawmakers voting "present."

Several blogs opined on the House antics as the battle unfolded on C-SPAN. The live-blogging included the likes of Captain's Quarters, Michelle Malkin and PoliPundit on the right, and AMERICAblog, Daily Kos and Seeing the Forest on the left. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., also shared her views in a post at RedState.

When Murtha took to the floor, John Aravosis of AMERICAblog encouraged other bloggers to join the fun. "He's on C-SPAN now," Aravosis wrote. "Blog it!"

At PoliPundit, the topic was so hot that when one entry spurred more than 300 comments, Lorie Byrd reignited the discussion with a new post. It promptly generated more than 400 additional comments.

Blogs are not the place for objective analysis, though, so accounts of the winners and losers in the debate largely depended on the political leanings of the blogs themselves.

To hear Armando tell it at Daily Kos, "now Murtha is a 'giant' of the House. And now, an honorable debate seems to have ensued." But PoliPundit dubbed the whole debate "Murtha Madness" -- madness that he predicted will cost the Democratic Party the 2006 election.

From a political perspective, the debate rallied both the Republican and Democratic bases in the blogosphere, much as recent speeches on the war by President Bush have done. "Good move, elephants!" Malkin cheered in a post that linked to bloggers who saw the debate as evidence of long-sought GOP backbone. "It's go time," GOP Bloggers added.

On the left, Aravosis compared House Democrats' reaction to the debate with Senate Democrats' recent decision to force that chamber into a closed session on pre-war intelligence in Iraq. "What happened tonight was impressive," he wrote. " ... For those that watched it, Republicans looked scared. They were in disarray."

Daily Kos and other Democratic blogs were quick to note the differences between what Murtha had proposed and what Republicans offered. "They've completely gutted and rewritten it," Scott Shields wrote at MyDD.

On that score, John Hinderaker of the conservative Power Line offered a rare nonpartisan insight into the debate. "The House leadership had a golden opportunity to make the Democrats put up or shut up tonight," he wrote, "and I'm afraid they blew it" by offering a resolution for immediate withdrawal rather than one using the language Murtha offered. "So nothing was accomplished. And the debate, needless to say, was less than edifying."

Hinderaker noted that the reporting about the seemingly superficial but arguably substantive differences between the two resolutions "has been abysmal" -- but people who get their news from left-leaning blogs would have reason to disagree.

The debate over the resolution, meanwhile, served as a painful learning opportunity for freshman GOP Rep. Jean Schmidt, a frequent target of the Democratic "netroots" earlier this year during her special election in Ohio.

Lawmakers sometimes cross the oratorical line during heated debates, and when they do, they can have their words removed from the official Congressional Record. It doesn't work that way in the unvarnished public record of the blogosphere.

Schmidt crossed the line when she appeared to suggest, via the recitation of a call from a Marine in Ohio, that Murtha was a "coward" for urging troop withdrawal. Although PoliPundit called her speech a "magnificent performance," Schmidt eventually sought and received permission to withdraw those remarks.

Bloggers weren't as forgiving. Her comments were featured prominently at Democratic sites like The Stakeholder, the blog of House Democrats' campaign arm. Some blogs also posted video. At Political Wire, Taegan Goddard characterized Schmidt's speech as "potentially career-ending" and added, "Expect [the video] in campaign ads next year."

Schmidt's speech stirred such anger that one blogger, Max Blumenthal at The Huffington Post, went so far as to report details on the Marine she quoted, Col. Danny Bubp. And readers at AMERICAblog posted contact information for Schmidt's congressional offices -- including the ZIP codes necessary for non-Ohio residents to bypass e-mail filters.

Alas, Congress has adjourned until mid-December, and the policy adrenalin no longer is coursing through the blogosphere as strongly as it was.

At 1:52 a.m. Saturday, AMERICAblog's Aravosis signed off with this thought: "I'm off to bed. I can't believe I stayed up to watch C-SPAN."

About 21 hours later, AMERICAblog's Rob in Baltimore told his readers: "Step away from the C-SPAN, and turn off that TV. Three nights in a row will make you an addict! Go out and be merry; it's been a fun week!"

Posted by at 09:58 PM | Comments (1)

House Republicans started the "blog row" trend by inviting select bloggers to visit Capitol Hill almost a month ago to the day. Not to be outdone, Senate Republicans held their own session yesterday.

William Beutler of The Blogometer here at National Journal Group was among those to attend, and he has a recap of his own, plus links to other bloggers at the session.

Pat Cleary of the Manufacturers' Blog was among those to live-blog the event, with separate entries summarizing what each senator had to say to the bloggers. Cleary also offered his final thoughts in a separate post that included links to others' coverage of the event.

He concluded with this point: "We hope you enjoyed it, we expect there will be more opportunities like this, and we celebrate democracy, where common bloggers can thrust and parry with senators and leave it all out there for you to see."

Posted by at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

Congressional opponents of the 2001 anti-terrorism law known as the USA PATRIOT Act are using the blogosphere to fight an extension and expansion of the statute.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., posted an entry on the topic earlier this week at ConyersBlog, and today Sen. Russell Feingold posted a diary entry at Daily Kos.

Feingold, D-Wis., was the only senator to vote against the law when it was enacted soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Now he is part of a bipartisan coalition of senators threatening to block action on a bill to reauthorize the law unless changes are made in the final version.

"The conference committee has met about reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act, and what we are hearing is not good," he wrote. "I plan to fight hard to try to stop a bad bill from becoming law." Read the entire post for details on the senators' objections to the legislation.

Congressional leaders hope to clear the measure to President Bush before lawmakers adjourn for the Thanksgiving Day break.

Posted by at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

The Federal Election Commission today unanimously voted to give a political Web log a media exemption from the law on reporting campaign finance activity, National Journal's Technology Daily reports.

The decision for Fired Up -- a Missouri-based company that runs pro-Democratic Web sites in Maryland, Missouri and Washington -- is a major victory for bloggers and puts the commission firmly in favor of a broad media exemption for online news sites.

FEC Chairman Scott Thomas said his review of Fired Up found that its Web sites "fall within the legitimate press function." His only concern is whether such sites could change in the future to become political committees.

"Where would a group like this cross the major-purpose line?" Thomas asked. "This is not a totally clean bill of health that anything that appears on a blog is exempt."

Tech Daily subscribers can get the full story here.

Blogs also are happily, albeit sometimes cautiously, reporting the news. "The current FEC commissioners apparently understand that any rational understanding of how the media exception has been applied means that generally blogs and similar [online publications] would be covered under it," noted Duncan Black of Eschaton, who testified before the FEC in the summer. "Though that's no guarantee that a future set of commissioners would feel the same."

In addition to Fired Up, other blogs that are reacting to the news include Comm Law Blog, Daily Kos and RedState.

Posted by at 04:38 PM | Comments (1)

The criticism President Bush has lobbed at Democrats the past couple of days over their comments on the run-up to the Iraqi war is proving to be a proverbial two-edged sword.

While Bush's bold defense of his policy decisions has rallied conservative bloggers back to the president's side, it also has emboldened his critics. And if Reed Hundt has his way, liberal bloggers will rally just as strongly against the president.

Hundt, a former FCC chairman who now blogs at TPMCafe, compared the White House's efforts to "write the history of the invasion of Iraq" with its assault on the Social Security system. Earlier this year, he argued that bloggers successfully countered Bush's distortions on that issue, and he urged them to do the same in the debate about the war.

"Like the attack on Social Security, a resolute defense and an effective counter attack will be necessary for lovers of the truth, including, one hopes, the party out of power," Hundt wrote. "The blog world was heroic in battling against the utterly deceptive assault on defined benefits. No less of an effort should be provided now."

Republicans are just as determined to fight. The Republican National Committee has yet another conference call scheduled with bloggers this afternoon. The purpose, according to an e-mail, is to showcase a new RNC online video titled "Democrats: Dishonest on Iraq," and to criticize Democrats who voted for the war but "who are now attempting to rewrite history."

UPDATE: Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, blogged about the latest outcry against the Iraqi week after also addressing the topic in a House floor speech. Here's an excerpt from the blog entry:

Attempts to distort these facts [about the circumstances that led to the war] are an attempt to revise history. Doing so only undercuts the efforts of our troops overseas and politicizes our national security. This cause is far too important [for] me to stand by and watch the facts be distorted the way they have been.

Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits, meanwhile, reported on the RNC conference call with bloggers, including what he characterized as "a terse and aggressive rebuke" of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Posted by at 01:16 PM | Comments (0)

Rep. Jack Kingston will testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee later this afternoon, but you don't have to wait to hear what the Republican has to say about immigration in his home state of Georgia. You can read it at RedState, where Kingston has posted his written testimony in advance.

Now that's a novel use of the blogosphere -- and one that is probably going to get Kingston's views on the subject more attention than if he buried the testimony on his congressional Web site.

Posted by at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)

During my youth in West Virginia, I loved watching my friends chase the greased pig at the county fair. Most of them grew frustrated and weary long before the pig, and the few who managed to get their hands on the swine usually couldn't keep their grasp for long.

These days, I love watching bloggers chase "pork" in the federal budget, a creature that is as greasy and elusive as any pig in the county fair.

Some bloggers apparently think they have the beast by the ankle or maybe it's curly tail today. But others are not so sure.

Andy Roth has the scoop at The Club for Growth, including a link to commentary from Radley Balko at The Agitator.

"This is smoke and mirrors," Balko wrote of a decision not to fund the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska that has become the bloggers' rallying point. "It's a cheap stunt by the GOP to deflect public criticism that doesn't really change much of anything.

"All the conference committee did was remove the earmark for the bridges. Alaska will still be getting the same obscene amount of money from the federal government. It's just that the state won't be required to use it to build those two particular bridges. It'll be up to the executive and the state legislature to decide how to spend it."

Posted by at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)

RedState blogger Erick-Woods Erickson soon will be leaving the politically friendly territory of conservative Georgia for good to work full time as a blogger inside the Beltway. The job: blog master at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

Erickson, 30, officially started the gig last week but has been dividing his time between Georgia and Washington until the blog launches in a few weeks. He left his job as an associate attorney at Sell & Melton in Macon, Ga., after five years of work on business transactions, asset protection and elections.

"I never really wanted to be lawyer but was working for Saxby Chambliss' congressional campaign back in 1998 and needed a summer job," Erickson explained in an e-mail. "I was fixing a computer for a friend of Saxby's who called up another friend and insisted that the guy hire me as a summer associate.

"After eight years of that -- five as a lawyer -- I got called at home before seven one morning by an obnoxious client, who was not even my client, and I remembered I never really had wanted to be a lawyer anyway."

The new blog will try to explain energy issues to consumers "without all the technical mumbo-jumbo that makes the average person's eyes glaze over," Erickson said. "We want to educate consumers in an informative and helpful way."

Although focused on the law for several years, Erickson is no stranger to the energy sector. His father worked for Conoco Petroleum for 30 years and his father-in-law now works for Southwire, a transmission cable manufacturer. More importantly for his current role at NRECA, Erickson's legal work exposed him to the electric industry.

"Part of my business-transactions practice involved working with development authorities and power companies attracting new businesses to the middle Georgia area," he said. "In doing that, I've learned a lot about rural electric cooperatives, dealing with them on a regular basis. I've also been a user of [electric membership corporations] and, as a result, an owner."

Washington is a different world than Georgia, but that doesn't bother Erickson, who proposed to his now-wife on the Capitol steps.

"I'm a huge Washington fan," Erickson said. "When we lived overseas [in the United Arab Emirates], I tried to convince my parents to take a vacation in D.C. I memorized the D.C. map and subway system to convince them that it was worth going to visit. It didn't work."

The moral of the story: Blogging is among the best routes to Washington these days.

Another conservative blogger also has a new job. Mary Katharine Ham, who has written for Townhall.com's C-Log and Wizbang, is now working for Salem Communications, which distributes the radio show of popular conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt.

Ham introduced herself in a post at Hewitt's blog, where Hewitt said she will be guest-blogging for several weeks.

Her full-time role is to help build what she called "a bloggy conservative activism Web site that will serve the great fan bases of all of Salem's conservative talkers, and be a great tool for bloggers, too." The site is called BeyondtheNews and is set to launch next year.

Posted by at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)

Bloggers on the right are swarming against Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia for his comments on a Sunday talk show about the intelligence that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Captain's Quarter's and Power Line are among those running transcripts of the interview with Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"He tried to parrot the [Democrats'] party line on Iraq intelligence in an interview with Chris Wallace this morning," John Hinderaker wrote at Power Line. "His inability to answer the most basic questions is embarrassing."

"How empty are the Democrats of ideas and long-term plans for national security?" Ed Morrissey added at Captain's Quarters. "Three years later, they're still lying about their own statements on national TV to smear George Bush -- even though he can't run for election again! Rockefeller shows how lame this meme has become."

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit also noted Rockefeller's statements, via Just One Minute. Tom Maguire wondered at that blog how Rockefeller can show his face after apparently conflicting comments he made on the same intelligence in 2002, and Reynolds answered: "Long political experience, and an unshakable faith in the press's short memory, is my guess."

Mark Kilmer of RedState focused on the fact that Rockefeller said he visited Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan in January 2002 and told leaders of those nations that he believed Bush already had decided to go to war in Iraq. He wrote: "This is major revelation. ... Here is a United States senator, four months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, traveling to the region, alone and under the cover of darkness, to warn various regional leaders that he was certain the president was really after Saddam Hussein. Why was Rockefeller undermining U.S. foreign policy in this manner before the initial shock of 9/11 had not yet worn off?"

Michelle Malkin also is keeping tabs on the reaction not just to Rockefeller's comments but more broadly to the speech President Bush gave on Veterans' Day last week in defense of his decision-making on the Iraqi war.

With that one speech, Bush appears to have regained the affection of conservative bloggers, many of whom have been among his chief critics on various issues since late summer.

Posted by at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)

The Defense Department spending bill for fiscal 2006 has become the focal point for a debate about the rights of suspected terrorists, and bloggers on the left are urging the netroots to take a stand on the issue.

The battle came to a head last week, when the Senate adopted language that would strip "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of the right to challenge their detainments in court. The vote was 49-42.

This week, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., has proposed an amendment designed to alter that language by letting Guantanamo prisoners challenge their incarceration by petitioning civilian courts for writs of habeas corpus. The amendment could be offered as soon as today.

At least two contributors at Daily Kos are urging readers to contact their lawmakers to support Bingaman's amendment. TalkLeft posted a similar entreaty over the weekend, closing with this thought: "And remember, first it's no habeas for them, then it's no habeas for us."

Posted by at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)

The PorkBusters campaign is still going strong in the blogosphere, but the outcry against special-interest earmarks is not being heard within the halls of Congress. The evidence of Congress' institutional deaf ear is abundant in the fiscal 2006 spending measures addressed in recent days.

Congress cleared the Agriculture Department spending legislation earlier this month, and negotiators also have finalized language for some annual bills that tend to be heavy with "pork" -- those that fund the Commerce, Justice and State departments, and that fund energy and water programs. All of them are loaded with earmarks.

Take the bill to fund the Agriculture Department. The conference report for the measure is scattered with mind-numbing pages of text like this:

The conferees have agreed to fund budgeted increases for the following areas of research:

Emerging diseases of livestock/crops
Develop systems for rapid response to bioterrorism agents -- Laramie, WY, $250,000; Athens, GA, $175,000; vaccinology research for control and eradication of biological threat agents -- Ames, IA, $450,000; Plum Island, NY, (antigen delivery systems) $250,000; Plum Island, NY, (foot-and-mouth disease) $150,000; advance intervention strategies for emerging diseases of livestock and poultry -- Ames, IA, $300,000; develop diagnostics for rapid, practical, identification of pathogens -- Parlier, CA, $150,000; Ft. Pierce, FL, $150,000; Salinas, CA, $175,000; develop taxonomy, biology, and genetics of pathogens -- St. Paul, MN, Pullman, WA, others (wheat stripe initiative), $500,000; Pullman, WA (rust disease of wheat), $175,000; Ft. Pierce, FL, $300,000; develop science-based forecasting systems for each pathogen/crop combination -- Ft. Detrick, MD, $250,000; develop integrated disease management strategies and tools -- Stoneville, MS, $240,000; Ames, IA, $150,000; Raleigh, NC, $150,000; Urbana, IL, $150,000; Charleston, SC, $50,000; and, Tifton, GA, $50,000.

The same is true of the conference report for the Commerce, Justice and State departments. The earmarks for that measure are so abundant that the House Rules Committee has divided some of them into handy, topical charts for: Edward Byrne discretionary grants, methamphetamine and enforcement grants, law enforcement technology grants, juvenile justice grants, and ocean service grants.

The conference report to the energy and water bill, meanwhile, is rife with the kinds of Army Corps of Engineers earmarks that some experts say could have gone to more worthy projects, like bolstering levees around New Orleans.

The Senate still has to clear the latter two measures, and House leaders expect to vote on the four remaining spending bills for fiscal 2006 as soon as this week. The Senate also will need to address those measures. Two of the bills -- the ones that fund the Defense Department and the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education departments -- are the largest in the federal government and are frequent targets for pork projects.

Whether bloggers can break lawmakers of their pork habit for the long term remains to be seen. But the fight appears to have been lost for next year.

Posted by at 07:20 AM | Comments (0)

Rep. Henry Waxman wants Congress to investigate the role of Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi in leading the United States to attack Iraq, and Chalabi's visit to Washington last week gave Waxman the perfect peg to revisit the issue at The Huffington Post.

The California Democrat wrote that instead of meeting with Chalabi privately, lawmakers should have forced him to testify under oath "so that we might ask him about his role in providing false intelligence to the United States government in the lead up to the Iraq war." The allegations date back a few years, and according to Waxman, now that Iraq is free of Saddam Hussein, Chalabi does not think his past statements are important.

Waxman disagrees. "There are many unanswered questions about why the Bush administration led the nation into war in Iraq," he wrote. "Why did the president and his top advisers make literally hundreds of misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq? Were these honest mistakes, as the president insists, or was the intelligence deliberately twisted, as mounting evidence would indicate? Mr. Chalabi may have answers to some of these questions."

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., also addressed Chalabi's visit in an entry at The Huffington Post. He was one of several Democrats who, before Chalabi's arrival, sent a letter requesting a meeting with the Iraqi leader.

"He needs to answer for his role in one of the most tragic scandals in American history," Conyers wrote of Chalabi.

Posted by at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)

You could almost hear the frustration, not to mention the Southern drawl, of Rep. Marsha Blackburn last week at RedState after House leaders decided to delay action on a deficit-reduction bill.

"Ya'll," she began her post. "The old adage that you never want to see sausage and law being made holds true. This turn of events stinks about as badly as it gets."

She put the blame on Democratic leaders, who she said are intent on dissuading any of their rank-and-file from voting for the GOP-crafted bill, and on the fiscally conservative Democrats who she argued have been "scared off or never meant what they'd been saying in the first place" about wanting to cut federal spending.

Blackburn also chastised the "few" House Republicans who she said will not support spending reductions. "I'm disappointed we've got some in our party who won't support this very, very slight reduction and that we've got an opposition party that won't even consider a reduction," she wrote.

Posted by at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)

The White House and Republican Party held another in a recent series of conference calls with bloggers yesterday. The agenda: answering the conflict-of-interest criticisms plaguing Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters participated in the call but was not impressed. "In my opinion, the conference call went long on invective and short on useful information," he wrote. "The organizers didn't give us much background on the cases themselves, nor did they tell us why Alito's participation did not constitute a conflict of interest. As a presentation, it lacked substance -- which is why most of the questions asked covered other subjects."

That said, Morrissey isn't buying the criticisms against Alito: "The bottom line for me is whether Alito has a pattern of operating from a conflict of interest and if any evidence shows that these skew his court rulings. Clearly in this instance, as his rulings were upheld after his later recusal, this conflict did not."

ProfessorBainbridge live-blogged the call and also lamented its lack of effectiveness. "The Democrats' new line is not that Alito had a legal obligation to recuse himself, but that he broke a promise to the Senate to do so. ... The White House did not offer an effective response to that charge on this call. They need a better set of talking points."

Other blogs that commented on the call and the controversy: Tim Chapman's Capitol Report at the conservative Townhall.com, Decision '08, Right Wing News and Suitably Flip.

The first such call with bloggers, to defend the since-withdrawn Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, also fell flat.

While conservative bloggers clearly appreciate the attention they are receiving from the GOP powers-that-be in Washington, they are demanding substance and clarity -- albeit with a political twist -- and they are setting the bar for these sessions high. They are not just taking what their party feeds them without question or complaint. Good for them. They are setting an excellent example for other citizen journalists, no matter their political leanings.

Posted by at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

"Who really wants to hear a blow by blow of what goes on in my office or in the House of Representatives?"

That's the rhetorical question freshman Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, asked in his virgin blog entry this week. And the answer, based on feedback he has received during trips home to the Lonestar State, is quite a few.

"Every time I went back to the district someone would comment on the Conaway Chronicle (my weekly newsletter)," he wrote. "This blog will allow me to expand on what the chronicle does with a more personal account of what goes on in my office."

Conaway said he will post entries to the blog as much as he can, but staffers will provide more of the content. The blog has a .com address and is separate from the congressional site, but there is a link to the blog from the official site.

Oddly, Conaway invited readers to send e-mail, but the link to the impersonal e-mail form is buried at the bottom of the page and was broken as of this morning.

For now, though, readers can get Conaway's take on the latest setback for the bid to allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The House leadership this week pulled from a budget bill language that would have allowed such drilling.

Posted by at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)