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The Democratic National Committee reportedly held a fundraiser for Rep. William Jefferson earlier this month, and MyDD blogger Matt Stoller is incredulous about that move by one of his own party's campaign committees.

The problem: Jefferson, D-La., is under investigation for bribery.

"As a rule of thumb, the DNC should not host fundraisers for members of Congress under investigation for bribery," Stoller wrote. "I mean if it's a sham investigation, OK, fine, but this isn't. Jefferson is bad news. He's one of [the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's] 13 most corrupt members of Congress."

Posted by at 12:22 PM | Comments (1)

The Club For Growth is no fan of moves to regulate so-called 527 groups under campaign finance regulation. To that end, the group will count senators' votes on that issue toward the rankings it compiles based on key votes.

Andy Roth explained the decision at the group's blog, focusing on one Senate bill in particular, S. 1053, that would impose new rules on political ads on television and radio. Current exempts political action committees from the rules, but the bill would apply them to 527s, which get their name from the section of the tax code that defines them.

"S. 1053 is an unprecedented proposal that would ban any such ads placed anywhere, at any time, in any kind of medium by a 527 group, unless sponsored by a highly regulated PAC," he wrote. "If passed, money currently donated to 527s will instead flow to other nonprofit groups and business associations, where it will be hidden from the public disclosure currently mandated for 527 groups."

Blog readers should expect to see more such key-vote alerts in the future. "Going forward, I'm posting all of our key-vote alerts on the club's blog so that more of our readers get a chance to see them and to more clearly understand our position on the issues," Roth wrote in a separate post. "We did it every once in a while in the past, but I want to do it regularly going forward."

That's a great use of the blogosphere, and it is one that more groups should imitate. Bloggers could do it, too, by starting their own key-vote systems to grade lawmakers and inform the grassroots.

Posted by at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

Blogs are having an impact all across the world -- from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq to China, Pakistan and even Kenya -- so it makes sense for the diplomats at the State Department to pay attention to the phenomenon.

They are. The department dedicated a four-day "rolling webchat" to the topic last week. A writer for State's Washington File news service recapped the chat in an article published yesterday. A transcript also is available.

The article leads with this quote from journalist David Kline of Blog Revolt, who was the guest for the chat: "Nothing I have witnessed is as potentially transformative of media and politics as the emergence of blogging -- or rather, the emergence of the 'voice of the people through blogging.'"

The State Department's Web site actually is a decent place for information on the democratic impact of blogs and other technologies abroad. A search for the word "blogs," for instance, yielded articles that mentioned "the use of blogs to maintain dialogue during and between elections" in developing democracies and repressive countries, and that noted the impact of blogs in China.

The Defense Department also has given keen attention to the blogosphere, as I noted in an entry last month about a speech by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Not long after that, Military.com published a piece on how the U.S. Central Command public affairs team is seeding the blogosphere with information about the war in Iraq.

And in December, suggestions by The Washington Post that the military is trying to make pawns of bloggers embedded with troops in Iraq sparked outrage among "milbloggers" and their allies.

Then there is the touchy subject of "data mining" -- the use of technology to cull information from databases and other sources. As reported both here at Beltway Blogroll in November and at The Christian Science Monitor, the federal government is directing some of its energy in that realm toward data freely available in the blogosphere, including information in other languages.

The bottom line: Whether as a democracy enabler, an information source or a propaganda tool, blogs are being taken seriously by official Washington. And I suspect we'll continue to see the evidence of that fact mount.

UPDATE: Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media wrote a piece on blogging for the State Department as part of the detailed package on innovative technologies on the department's Web site.

Posted by at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

The House has reversed its plan to consider a bill designed to exempt bloggers from campaign finance law. The move comes after the Federal Election Commission on Monday approved new rules for online political speech.

House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, just released the following statement to explain the decision:

Both Rep. Jeb Hensarling [the Texas Republican who sponsored the bill] and House Administration Committee Chairman Vernon Ehlers deserve great credit for bringing the issue of online freedom of speech to the forefront of public debate and for spurring the FEC to take what appears to be a hands-off approach to the Internet.

The recent action by the FEC, leaving virtually all political activity on the Internet free of regulation, ensures that those engaging in politics online can continue to do so safe in the knowledge that they will not run afoul of our campaign finance laws. In light of this good-faith effort by the FEC, and after discussions with the bill's sponsor, we have postponed floor action on the bill at this time.

The House will closely monitor the implementation of the new rule to ensure it protects bloggers and others engaging in politics online. If the new rule does not offer the appropriate protection, or if there are efforts to expand its regulatory scope, the House will resume plans to consider the Hensarling bill in order to guarantee freedom of speech on the Internet.

Mike Krempasky of RedState, one of the leaders of the blog swarm that inspired the FEC action and the House bill, said that is the right move.

"[T]he House leadership has taken the prudent course: Pull the bill off the calendar and hold it in reserve," he wrote. "If the so-called 'reformers' sue -- pass the bill. If the 'reformers' try to chip away at the regulatory protections -- pass the bill. If the regulations turn out to be unworkable for any reason -- pass the bill. We've already seen a majority vote, and it would be wise for the 'reform community' to remember what sort of scenario they're living under."

Other reactions:

-- Daily Kos: "[I]t's one thing to support a broad exemption in the face of not knowing what the FEC might do; it's another to push for the bill after the FEC has acted strongly to protect online free speech, such that the primary practical effect would have been to deregulate paid political advertising online."

-- Eschaton: "H.R. 1606 will provide a weapon to use against zombie reform efforts, which will keep coming back to life."

UPDATE: Hensarling just issued this statement:

While I'm disappointed that H.R. 1606 will not pass the House this week, I am optimistic that a proven majority stands willing to defend free speech on the Internet.

Although I do not agree with the precedent set by the court or the FEC's ruling, I understand if the small but vocal minority opposed to H.R. 1606 had its way, these limited regulations could be far worse.

Should the forces of regulation choose to fight these modest rules or advance further restrictions on political speech over the Internet, I am confident the House will act decisively to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights.

UPDATE II: That first link to Daily Kos was to a post written by Adam Bonin, the lawyer who represented three liberal bloggers before the FEC last year. One of those bloggers, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, now has his own reaction to the latest news as well.

"People-powered politics has been legally validated," he wrote in a not-so-subtle reference to the subtitle of the book he is currently promoting.

UPDATE III: Ehlers, R-Mich., has issued a statement, too. Here is an excerpt:

Yesterday's ruling by the [FEC] seems to achieve most of what I and other supporters of H.R. 1606 wanted. The purpose of H.R. 1606 was to preserve the Internet as a free and open forum for the exchange of ideas. The application of a complicated and burdensome regulatory scheme to the Internet would stifle debate and discourage participation. This cannot be allowed.

The approach the FEC has taken seems designed to ensure that those engaging in politics online will be able to continue doing so, without having to worry about whether or not they are violating our complicated campaign finance laws.

UPDATE IV: Massachusetts Democrat Martin Meehan, a House campaign reform advocate, called the House leadership's decision an "effective defeat" of a bill that he deemed a bad idea.

"Defeating this bill was an enormous victory for campaign finance reform and for individual political speech," he said in a statement. "Under the guise of protecting bloggers' and individuals' rights on the Internet, the true purpose of H.R. 1606 was to seriously undermine the landmark campaign finance law we passed in 2002. Opponents of campaign finance reform have fallen short once again."

Posted by at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

In the days of Julius Caesar (as imagined by William Shakespeare), a soothsayer warned the Roman emperor to "beware the ides of March." Caesar dismissed that "dreamer," but his warning proved prophetic: Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C. on March 15 -- the ides of March.

In the days of Instapundit, the Blog Father and Kos, the leaders of the American republic have something else to beware: the blog books of March. There are two of them on the shelves now, and both paint scenarios that are unfriendly, if not downright hostile, toward the folks who run the government, the media and more.

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds got his book, "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths," on store shelves first. He was in Washington, D.C., earlier this month to promote it.

This week, "Crashing The Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics" is officially released, and it is openly billed as a "shot across the bow at the political establishment in Washington." The authors -- Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos and his blog father, Jerome Armstrong of MyDD -- were in the capital city yesterday to start a promotional tour.

Both books are about an ongoing information revolution that is being driven in part by bloggers, but each takes a different approach.

"An Army of Davids" is the more sweeping of the two. Reynolds covers everything from home-brewed beer and blogging (always a volatile mix) to nanotechnology and human settlement of Mars (the things you think about after consuming too many home-brewed beers).

His book also is both less political and defiant than "Crashing The Gate." Reynolds is not so much fomenting rebellion as he is reporting on the technologically enhanced changes well under way across society.

He provides plenty of evidence: retailers that offer a "third place" where people can work and play via their wireless Internet connections; tools that make it easier for individuals to publish their own commentary, record their own music or "podcast" their own news; and video games that can train the next generation of soldiers or even teach teenagers about the realities of life.

The sudden emergence of the World Wide Web into a dominant political and cultural force buttresses the thesis of the book. That the Internet is so flush with information in such a relatively short time, Reynolds says, is a tribute to "the power of millions of amateurs doing things because they wanted to do them, not because they were told to. It was an Army of Davids, doing what the Goliaths never could have managed."

By Reynolds' account, however, the revolution is far from complete, especially in the public sector. Government remains largely clueless to the power it could gain by embracing that army of citizens -- by thinking of them as a pack rather than as a herd that needs to be led. "Government wants to keep this sort of power to themselves," he wrote.

To hear Armstrong and Moulitsas tell it, the Democratic Party is just as willfully ignorant when it comes to the grassroots political army at its disposal. And as the leaders of that army, they say it's time for the peasants with pitchforks to crash the gate.

They never quite make clear whether they want to awaken the Democratic establishment or overthrow it, but readers may get the sense that they would be happy with either result -- so long as it means Republicans lose.

The authors' contempt for Republicans is obvious from the first sentence, which resurrects the charge that the GOP stole the 2000 presidential election. The opening chapter, furthermore, is dedicated to bashing every brand of conservatism, including the "theocons" of the religious right and the corporate "cons" who seek government subsidies and fight government regulation.

Amid all that animosity for Republican philosophy, though, Armstrong and Moulitsas offer an abundance of praise for Republican political strategy. They clearly hate Republican values, but they just as clearly envy how effectively Republicans have been at convincing voters that those values are best for America.

Their answer, in essence, is for Democrats to behave more like Republicans: Stop kowtowing to liberal groups that focus on single issues like abortion, gun control and the environment. Start funding think tanks and media outlets that work together and mentor young Democrats. Stop wasting money on political consultants with losing records and tired ideas of how to run campaigns. And start capitalizing on modern technology to target and persuade voters.

Neither an "Army of Davids" nor "Crashing The Gate" dedicates much space to blogging, yet the authors give their blogging brethren due praise. Reynolds sees "the blog phenomenon" as a serious threat to the power of Big Media. And Armstrong and Moulitsas note the impact bloggers have had in raising money for candidates ignored or spurned by the Democratic establishment.

The entrenched political powers of today do have one advantage over Julius Caesar: The Davids and gate-crashers of today are quite open about their mutiny against the powers that be. Now we'll just have to wait and see how this power play ends.

Posted by at 07:14 AM | Comments (7)

Bloggers are applauding a Federal Election Commission ruling to broadly extend a media exemption from campaign-finance law to the Internet, National Journal's Technology Daily reports.

On Monday, all six members of the commission unanimously voted to largely exempt blogs from regulation and instead to focus new rules on Internet political advertisements.

"The netroots have won," attorney Adam Bonin wrote at the blog Eschaton. The FEC's decision is "an official governmental recognition that what you all do is a valuable part of the democratic experiment and one which should not be thwarted by the incursion of the federal government."

Last year, Bonin represented Duncan Black, the author of Eschaton, as well as Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos and Matt Stoller of MyDD, before the FEC. About a year ago, after a blog swarm spearheaded by bloggers across the political spectrum, the agency abandoned tougher rules that would have broadly applied campaign-finance law to bloggers.

Conservative blogger Mike Krempasky of RedState gave "2.5 Cheers for the FEC" after the new rules were released late Friday and said they "aren't bad for the blogosphere."

Former Federal Election Commissioner Brad Smith, who triggered the blog swarm last March with comments made to News.com, is now, ironically, a blogger at RedState and recently commented on the new rules in a post there. Though Smith still complained about the principle set by the rules -- that "the Internet is now to be subject to regulation" -- he noted that a federal court forced the FEC to act. With that in mind, he concluded that the agency "hit a triple."

The regulations appear likely to stand. Proponents of tougher campaign rules who initiated the FEC action by suing over a previous blanket exemption for Internet political communications released a statement indicating that no further legal action is planned.

"The regulation makes clear that bloggers and other individuals communicating on their own Web sites are not covered by the campaign finance laws," the release said. "The regulation also makes clear that federal candidates and political parties buying campaign ads on the Internet to influence federal elections must comply with federal campaign finance laws and cannot use soft money to fund such ads. We believe the FEC regulation settles these issues."

FEC Chairman Michael Toner issued a statement on the new rules, as did Commissioners Hans von Spakovsky, Ellen Weintraub. Weintraub and FEC Vice Chairman Robert Lenhard also issued a joint background statement on the rulemaking.

More coverage and commentary are available from:
-- Bob Bauer;

-- Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog;

-- Former FEC staffer Allison Hayward, who now blogs at Skeptic's Eye (multiple posts that pick apart the rulemaking topic by topic, covering everything from the press exemption to threshold for ads to incorporated blogs, disclaimers and spam.

-- And media outlets like AP, News.com, UPI and The Washington Post.

The Hill moves the story another step forward by examining bills now before Congress in relation to the FEC rulemaking.

Posted by at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)

That's how long Ben Domenech lasted as a conservative blogger at The Washington Post. He just resigned amid a fast-developing plagiarism scandal.

Here is an excerpt from the note posted by Jim Brady, the executive editor of washingtonpost.com:

Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times.

We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations. Despite the turn this has taken, we believe this event, among other things, testifies to the positive and powerful role that the Internet can play in the the practice of journalism.

More later.

UPDATE: Domenech's demise is the story in the blogosphere right now. His name has remained the top search item at Technorati for hours, and bloggers across the political spectrum are reacting to the news they helped make.

Domenech himself was defensive at first, both in a post of his own at RedState and in comments to The Right Angle (follow-up post here). In Bill Clinton-like fashion -- the kind conservatives like Domenech never really accepted from the former president -- Domenech later voiced contrition for using other people's work " inappropriately and without attribution," and for his "obfuscation."

Domenech's RedState co-founder, Mike Krempasky, posted "On Behalf Of RedState." Krempasky both scolded and praised Domenech; he apologized on behalf of RedState for initially failing to believe the plagiarism charges despite the strong evidence; and he condemned as "the lowest of the low" those who went after Domenech for purely political reasons.

"[F]or his failing, his career is in ruins, and his public reputation is in tatters," Krempasky wrote. "It is a long road back for Ben Domenech. And he's going to pay a steep price to regain lost trust among colleagues, readers, and friends." And those who targeted Domenech with threats, obscene commentary and rumors? "Loathesome, vile and disgusting -- their contempt for civil behavior surpassed only by the emptiness of their own souls."

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media are happily covering a story that makes bloggers look bad. The Post, AP, Editor & Publisher, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, all have stories. Even the Washington bureau of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tasked one of its reporters to cover the news rather than rely on wire copy.

The media columnist at the L.A. Times also added his thoughts, elitist cheap shots at home-schooling included. (Full disclosure: Our children are home-schooled -- and they learn far more manners and ethics at home than they would public school these days.)

My guess is that the MSM superiority complex will become increasingly evident as they tackle this topic and it's meaning for the blogosphere in coming days. Sadly, as Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters noted, bloggers of all types have provided plenty of ammunition.

Check the extended entry for excerpts from the blogosphere that struck me as the most insightful.

-- Eschaton: "The moral of box-turtle Ben. It's very simple. Stop trying to appease conservatives. You never will. Stop worrying about 'bias.' Continue worrying about doing good journalism. ... [I]f the Post had announced a 'Blue America' along with 'Red America,' Ben's plagiarism likely would've never been discovered. The outrage was over the fact that once again conservatives had succeeded in mau-mauing a mainstream media outlet into balancing reporters with conservatives."

Matt Stoller agreed at MyDD. And in a separate post, he concluded: "We're now seeing the rot from the inside. The conservative movement is nearly totally bereft of ethical standards. Torn between loyalty and integrity, they pick neither, a lukewarm mixture of contempt for those who point out ethical violations, a reflexive angry defensiveness, and a melancholy regognition that supreme self-righteousness might not be the most appropriate attitude in every instance."

-- Jeff Jarvis: "[W]hy do you feel as if you have to buy, rent, lease or own a blogger? There are tons of good bloggers out there from the right, left and libertarian persuasions. Quote them. Link to them. Blogroll them. Aggregate them. Sell ads on them. You don't have to hire them anymore. This is the distributed age, remember?"

-- The Moderate Voice: "Newspapers should take into account (as if they haven't noticed) that if they have what is effectively a blog on the left, people on the right will then clamor for a blog on the right, which will then upset people on the left, etc. One solution is that, perhaps in their rush to get bloggers, newspapers could try to get some of the more thoughtful and less polarizing writers on the left and right (more ideas and less adjective-hurling)."

-- PressThink: "I hope Jim Brady will do the right thing, the creative thing. ... An open competition on the Web to be the next political blogger at post.com, but instead of hiring one "red state" person and leaving it at that (a strategic error in my opinion), Brady should say that three slots will be filled over the coming year: one from column right, one from column left, and a third voice that is definitely neither of those, which could mean libertarian -- or not."

-- Public Eye: "Let's say another conservative is hired to take over for Domenech. Is the Web site obligated to launch a 'Blue State' blog? Most editorial pages contain a mixture of voices, some conservative, some liberal some sort of moderate. But is there any obligation to operate under some formula? ... On the one hand, it seems preferable to give space to a wide variety of opinions. On the other, this obsessive attention to 'balance' inevitably leads to 'Crossfire'-type discussions."

-- Ragged Thots: "[F]orget about the 'liberal attack machine.' As with all such public falls from grace, the 'other side' can't oust someone. The final push always comes from within. Which is what happened early Friday when Michelle Malkin and other conservatives felt that -- whatever the reason -- the evidence of plagiarism was too strong to ignore."

-- Spot-On: "In the spleen against Domenech, home-schooling is invoked as a perjorative again and again and again. ... It's not Domenech -- he's pretext. It's home-schooling. And how they hate it. If you're a parent wedded to the antique idea that you might control your child's upbringing, look and know who will fight you on that."

-- Don Surber: "Hiring Ben Domenech was a joke. The Post needs to go in-house this time. I suggested Frank Ahrens [Note: Ahrens once worked with Surber at the Charleston Daily Mail in West Virginia, as did I.]. I am sure the Post has others. No right-wing bloggers. They blew it. Domenech was their man. The Post should not trust them for a long while.

-- Some bloggers see a potential impact for bloggers and campaign finance law.

Tapped: "I believe this episode with Domenech clearly shows why members of the press, for their own good, need to understand, support, and strengthen the distinction between journalism and online partisan activism."

Daily Kos: "This week revealed yet again that the best response to "bad speech" is more speech, and we don't need the Sheriff (in the form of the Federal Election Commission) to clean things up. We're doing just fine on our own."

-- Wizbang seized on the controversy as an opportunity to bash a new federal law against anonymous online speech: "What is interesting is that in the Domenech case the anonymity of the comment section at Eschaton and the hidden identities of diarists at Daily Kos made many of those who pursued him (often profanely and scurrilously) potential lawbreakers. ... Imagine the chaos in the blogosphere that would ensue if a federal prosecutor decided to look into those anonymous publishers."

Posted by at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

Ben Domenech has been on the blog beat at The Washington Post only a few days, and already there are calls for his resignation -- by fellow conservative bloggers like Michelle Malkin, whose book was edited by Domenech. Ouch!

The issue: plagiarism. Domenech stands accused of it by liberal bloggers who clearly have been out to get him from the start. But even conservatives who make their money off words (or want to) don't appear eager to back Domenech in light of the evidence unearthed by their liberal counterparts.

"As someone who has worked in daily journalism for 14 years," Malkin wrote, "I have a lot of experience related to this horrible situation: I've had my work plagiarized by shameless word and idea thiefs many times over the years. I've also been baselessly accused of plagiarism by some of the same leftists now attacking Ben. The bottom line is: I know it when I see it. And, painfully, Domenech's detractors, are right. He should own up to it and step down."

Other tidbits from the blogosphere:
-- Tim Tagaris, a blogger at the Democratic National Committee, has been compiling a list of campaign blogs, other blogs and more news sources. He calls it "the ultimate RSS reader" -- though with a Democratic tilt. The running list is available at both Daily Kos and the DNC blog.

-- Matt Stoller of MyDD explained why he lost interest in the hard-fought Illinois 6th District race this week -- and some of his netroots colleagues bear part of the blame.

-- The American Civil Liberties Union helped successfully defend a blogger's right to parody the anti-gay billboard of a religious group.

-- Do bloggers "take public positions more extreme, less nuanced, easier to stereotype, than they would over beer with friends?" Marty Kaplan tackled that question at The Huffington Post.

-- Virginia politics and the blogosphere seem to be a match made for mischief this year.

-- Jeff Jarvis chastised New York Times executive editor Bill Keller for his decision to stop reading blogs. "Well, I'd say that Keller thus forfeits the right to complain about or mock people -- starting with the president -- who say they don't read newspapers, especially his."

-- PoliPundit was among the conservative blogs that recently hinted at a conspiracy by Blogger.com against said blogs (cue the black helicopters). D.J. Drummond shared a response from Blogger.

-- A condo project in Taiwan called BLOG -- a sure sign that blogging in general has hit the fad stage, despite the great work being done out there by people who take the format more seriously.

-- And here's a clever fable about "The Grasshopper, the Ants and the Blogger."

Posted by at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

How irrelevant is the print medium in the information age?

Here's your answer: Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., sent a letter to the editor of The Washington Post yesterday, but the letter spread across the blogosphere long before the Post could decide whether to publish it.

The letter took the paper to task for what Stark called the "conservative tilt" of its editorial board and its decision, presumably in response to charges of liberal bias, to hire conservative blogger Ben Domenech as the author of the new Red America blog. "For years, the right has worked to undermine media objectivity and bias coverage in conservatives' favor," Stark wrote. "The Post's new blog is the latest evidence that the Republican effort is working."

Eschaton was the first blog to publish the letter, and other liberal blogs pointed their readers to that posting. (It certainly helped that Stark's office sent an e-mail touting the letter.) Even more interesting, RedState responded to Eschaton's publication of the letter.

I hadn't seen the letter in the paper yet, and it didn't show up in an online search, so I asked Yoni Cohen, Stark's press secretary, if the Post had published it. "Not to our knowledge -- yet," he wrote. "We sent the letter yesterday afternoon -- and hope to have it published in the coming days."

Of course it will be old news by then. Such is the life of the ink-stained wretch in the era of blogging.

Posted by at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)

Right Wing News posted the blog reading lists of several Republican lawmakers a couple of weeks ago, and that entry inspired me to open Beltway Blogroll for the lists of other lawmakers.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was the first to respond. According to the list provided by Santorum's campaign staff, he reads a baker's dozen of blogs on a regular basis -- four Pennsylvania political blogs and nine national blogs. The senator "also reads aggregated posts that mention him, the issues he's working on, his Senate race, etc.," said Mindy Finn, his director of new media and political technology.

Santorum's national list reads mostly like a who's who of the conservative blogosphere, with one noteworthy exception: Eschaton. But that liberal blog is authored by Philadelphia-based writer Duncan Black, who writes under the pen name Atrios, and has a huge following, so it makes sense for Santorum to be reading it regularly.

The other blogs on Santorum's list are:
-- Capitol Report
-- The Corner
-- GrassrootsPA
-- Pajamas Media
-- PennPatriot Online
-- PolitcsPA (not a blog in my book, but it's on the list)
-- Power Line
-- RealClearPolitics
-- RedState
-- Right Wing News
-- And Santorum Blog (an unoffical, pro-Santorum blog)

I'd love to see the blog reading lists of more members of Congress. I want the lists of blogs read regularly by the lawmakers themselves, but I'd like to hear about the presumably broader lists read by congressional and campaign staffers, too. Send your lists to dglover@nationaljournal.com, and I'll post them as I get them.

Posted by at 08:37 PM | Comments (2)

Of all the party campaign committees in Washington, the National Republican Congressional Committee is the least in tune with the blogosphere.

That much was obvious when I interviewed NRCC Communications Director Carl Forti for my magazine story, "The Rise Of Blogs." Here's what he had to say late last year in admitting that the NRCC mostly ignores blogs: "A lot of times," he said, "you just don't know how reliable the information on these things is. ... Ninety percent of the time, we know more than they do."

Imagine my surprise, then, to get an e-mail from the NRCC today that consists entirely of an entry from the liberal blog MyDD, under the e-mail subject header "Liberal Bloggers Worried about 2006 Elections." What to make of that?

Has the NRCC taken a sudden interest in the blogosphere -- and one so comprehensive that is even absorbing the political analysis of enemy bloggers? Does Forti now believe that the information at MyDD is reliable?

Or is the e-mail just a case of the NRCC trying to score a cheap political point at the expense of a blogger surprised by the election results in Illinois' 6th District and determined to wake up the Democratic establishment in Washington before November?

UPDATE: It's a trend. Another GOP entity, which shall remain nameless by request, just issued a similar e-mail directing people to the MyDD post. And as with the NRCC e-mail, the latest one also leaps to the illogical conclusion that one blogger's opinion is representative of a deep-seated strain of worry among all liberal bloggers.

I wonder if the GOP will pay as much attention to what DavidNYC of Swing State Project said in response to the MyDD post: "I consider any 'blowout' talk to have been mostly bluster -- was any of it even on the record? -- and I always expected [the 6th District race] to be relatively close."

Or I wonder if they will mention that Chris Bowers, who wrote the post in question at MyDD, also suggested that the winning candidate in Illinois, Tammy Duckworth, pay for a recount as a show of good faith to the loser and netroots hero, Christine Cegelis. In a post at Political Wire, guest contributor Dan Conley called that "the wackiest political idea of the day."

UPDATE, 3/23: Today the NRCC sent another e-mail to showcase a Daily Kos straw poll that it says reflects poorly on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

"If Nancy Pelosi has lost the support of the liberal blogosphere, what else is left?" Forti said in the e-mail. (Maybe he's starting to read those untrustworthy blogs after all.)

Left unsaid by Forti is what Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos noted at the bottom of the poll about netroots support both for Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"A critic might say that Pelosi's numbers are suffering because of the beating she's taken on this site and the larger blogosphere the past week or two," Moulitsas wrote. "However, Reid is very much praised around these parts, yet he got a bare majority approval rating. People don't blindly follow and agree with what bloggers say and write."

Posted by at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

Democrat Tim Dunn has abandoned his quest to unseat Republican Rep. Robin Hayes in North Carolina's 8th District, AP reports.

Dunn was among the dozens of military veterans seeking seeks in Congress as Democrats. They call themselves the Band of Brothers (also "fighting Dems"), and they are getting lots of promotion from the left side of the blogosphere.

Dunn's departure is the latest setback for the group. Three other candidates, including Paul Hackett in the high-profile Ohio Senate race, also have ended their campaigns before any votes were cast. The other two are David Ashe in Virginia's 2nd District and Bryan Lentz in Pennsylvania's 7th District.

Posted by at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)

Christine Cegelis won the support of many netroots activists in her 2004 race against Rep. Henry Hyde. She won 44 percent of the vote against the long-time incumbent Republican from Illinois, and many liberal bloggers were thrilled when Cegelis announced her plans for a rematch in 2006.

Her future looked even brighter when Hyde said he would not seek re-election. But then Democratic campaign experts in Washington decided they wanted another candidate in the race: disabled Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth.

The move prompted plenty of soul-searching at blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD. Last week, Jonathan Tasini, a Senate candidate himself in New York, urged bloggers to stand up to the Beltway establishment and reject Duckworth in favor of Cegelis.

But not enough voters in the 6th District listened. When Cegelis and Duckworth squared off in a primary yesterday, Duckworth, one of the celebrated "fighting Dems," narrowly won.

Cegelis conceded defeat at her campaign Web site today, and now the netroots are looking to the future.

One diarist at Daily Kos wrote this to start the day: "Primary elections shape our party. And a candidate who lost yesterday is now more experienced and better vetted for future contests. Now that they're over, however, I intend to support every one of the winners of these races in November. And we all should pledge the same."

Posted by at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

Blogs are all about the individual. They are at their best when the personality or pet interests of the authors are on display.

My pet interest at Beltway Blogroll happens to be blogs themselves, and I don't often veer from that topic. But I am going to break with that theme today to tell you about the children's book I wrote under the pen name Mister Critter.

I wrote the book, "George Washington Beaver and the Cherry Tree," several years ago, after a trio of beavers toppled some of the prized cherry trees near Washington's Tidal Basin. The book combines the factual with the fictional and the historical with the mythical to convey an important message about truth-telling. It's also designed to encourage children to learn some of the great stories from American history.

The book is chock-full of intriguing characters and Beltway-like references that Washingtonian parents will appreciate, too. There is George Washington Beaver; Teddy Roosevelt Beaver, who talks softly but carries a big stick; J. Edgar Beaver, the notorious head of the FBBI; the evil weasels who impose a pondweed tax on the beavers; Dam Vernon and Capitol Dam; and the Select Committee on Beaver Intelligence.

Just this week -- in time for the National Cherry Blossom Festival that begins in a few days -- I re-launched my Web site, MisterCritter.com, to promote electronic versions of both the book and a companion coloring book. The site also has sample coloring pages for children to print and color as often as they want, and you can see a couple of thumbnails of images colored by my two older children, Anthony and Elli.

I hope you'll check out the site and let me know what you think. And thanks for bearing with me through this shameless plug.

Posted by at 07:03 AM | Comments (1)

When The Washington Post came under fire late last year for the "White House Briefing" blog/column written by Dan Froomkin, washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady responded by saying in part that his news operation already was looking for "a different voice altogether" to complement Froomkin.

The Post appears to have found that voice in Ben Domenech, a co-founder of the RedState blog and a book editor for conservative authors at Regnery Publishing. Washington's most famous MSM outlet just tapped Domenech to start a new blog called Red America.

Domenech's first post went online at 7 a.m. today, and he kicked it off with this message: "This is a blog for the majority of Americans."

Domenech immediately showed a willingness to bite the blog hand that feeds him with a poke at Post managers who "spent far too much time in sessions with markers and whiteboard, trying to settle on a name for the column." And he closed with this thought: "Red America's citizens are the political majority. They're here to stay. It's time to start paying attention to what they believe and why."

Conservative bloggers -- including A-listers like Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin, whose books Domenech has edited -- rejoiced at the news. But Malkin encouraged her readers to show Domenech "some love and support" because "the moonbats will go nuts. I promise you."

UPDATE: Editor & Publisher has a report on the firestorm of criticism from liberals upset by the decision to hire Domenech.

Posted by at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

The stats for Beltway Blogroll over the weekend showed a burst of activity from a nondescript blog, so I decided to check who had a sudden interest in my site and why. I found some pleasant, some enlightening, some humbling and some disturbing answers.

It turns out that my National Journal magazine piece from January, "The Rise Of Blogs," is required reading in a media short course offered electronically by the College of Saint Rose in Albany, N.Y. The course is billed as a way to "learn how to incorporate traditional forms of writing by utilizing blogs as a pedagogical tool and impacting an audience through community building."

That discovery was the pleasant part of my stats journey. I may be a rare bird in journalism, but I love it when educators recognize value in something I've written. That it happens rarely -- one other piece I wrote in 1998 on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson generated great interest -- makes those moments all the more sweet.

At the same time, I was enlightened by some of the reactions to my article by students in the class. The whole thesis of the piece, and of Beltway Blogroll, is that blogs are important. They have power in both media and government. None of the students seemed to have even an inkling of that power -- and some seemed genuinely bothered by the fact the bloggers matter at all. (Check the extended entry for quotes and links.) The reactions reminded me anew how disconnected those of us inside the Beltway can become from folks in the heartland.

The humbling part came in the form of critiques of my article. No writer ever likes to hear phrases like "it bored me" and "long and drawn out" about his work. I take no offense, though. I read many a book or article in college that produced yawn after unceasing yawn. Besides, I write about blogs because I'm fascinated by them and because more and more people in policy and political circles are, too. The college set is not my target audience.

And the disturbing part? Well, that's where I get to critique the students. Too much of the writing on their blogs is atrocious, plagued by typos, poor punctuation and juvenile grammatical errors. All students should be able to write better than too many of them are -- even on a free-wheeling blog -- by the time they reach college. The class appears to be within the English curriculum, so I sure hope a big part of the grading is based on the writing.

Here are some telling quotes from the student-authored blogs that are part of the class:

-- "The one point the author made that shocked me the most was the one about Dan Rather's resigning from the night news anchor on CBS. I figured he left because he was sick of reporting everything and was getting old so he wanted to retire, but according to the article, that is not the case."

-- "I wasn't aware that politics was such a large topic of interest in the blogging world. Was anyone aware of this? Although I have experience with blogging, I don't spend my time searching the Internet for blogs that are of [interest] to me."

-- "I guess I just assumed that blogs were simply Internet diaries of completely random people that like to rant with like-minded people. ... I honestly didn't realize that people's Internet diaries actually received notice from leaders and other decision-makers. Well, obviously it's not just one person here and there, but an organization of bloggers, but still, it's amazing!"

-- "Overall, I thought the article was informative and enlightening. It is probably not something that I would have given a second look at had it not been assigned, which explains why I knew so little about blogging."

-- "I just read the assigned article and, to be perfectly honest, it bored me. Maybe I didn't understand it correctly, but if the author was trying to say that blogs have a significant influence on society's political views, I think they are sadly mistaken. ... Blogs aren't going to get us a president who knows what he or, hopefully one day, she is doing. Blogs aren't going to stop this pointless war that we are in. Blogs aren't going to legalize gay marriage. Blogs aren't going to make any significant impact on our nation."

-- "When I think of blogs, I think of teenage girls who are writing about what happened in their life today, so I feel that blogs are not the first place people would look for political information. Also we have to bring in the concept of digital divide and that most people with access to blogs are the middle and upper class. Many political decisions affect those of the lower socio-economic class, those who may not have access to the Internet. Without people seeing these blogs, the blogs can not be as influential as Glover claims."

-- "Why are bloggers so much more superior than the average person? Just because they speak their mind about their thoughts and beliefs on a blog, why are they entitled to march down to Washington D.C. and cause a scene? I don't know about you, but I feel that that is wrong. Maybe it's just me, but why do they get to represent the American people?"

Posted by at 12:01 PM | Comments (2)

The clueless Canon City Daily Record in Colorado seized on some of the comments about blogs in the recent State of the Media 2006 as an excuse for bashing blogs.

The paper's editors chastised their jo