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April 29, 2006Your Portal To Candidate/Lawmaker Interviews
This entry is bumped to the top of the blog every time new interview links are added. Click to the extended entry for the latest links, including one to a good interview with former House Speaker Tom Foley.
Jonathan Singer of MyDD has published his latest candidate interview, this one with Rep. Ben Cardin, one of the Democratic Senate challengers in Maryland.
Singer has conducted a handful of similar interviews in recent months. His past subjects have included:
-- California gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly;
-- Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown;
-- Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland;
-- And Rhode Island Senate candidates Matt Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse.
Other bloggers also are gaining fairly regular access to candidates and lawmakers, and posting text and audio transcripts. Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, for instance, posted a podcast of his interview with Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., a few weeks ago. And Larry Handlin of ArchPundit posted a series of entries that summarized his interview with Tammy Duckworth, one of the Democratic candidates in Illinois' 6th District.
The trend is one worth tracking. I will try to keep a running list of links here for political junkies who want to keep tabs on what candidates and government officials are saying in the blogosphere.
UPDATE, 4/29: MyDD has posted an interview with Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic Senate candidate in Maryland.
UPDATE, 4/12: Ankle Biting Pundits posted a series of video clips of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., from his recent trip to New Hampshire. The clips cover budgetary "pork," immigration and McCain's "laugh lines" in the interview.
Instapundit also has a podcast with Rep. Harold Ford, R-Tenn.
UPDATE, 4/6: Instapundit has another podcast with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, this one on immigration and the PorkBusters movement. (The first installment with Frist is linked in the 3/17 update.)
MyDD, meanwhile, recently interviewed U.S. Senate candidates Harris Miller of Virginia and Jack Carter (son of former President Jimmy Carter) of Nevada, as well as state Senate candidate Jesse Cornett of Oregon. All are Democrats.
UPDATE, 3/27: Lincoln Logs, a blog in Ohio, has posted the transcript of an interview with Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio. The latest MyDD candidate interview also is online. The subject: James Webb, a Democratic Senate candidate in Virginia.
UPDATE, 3/17: I failed to include a link in my original to the Feb. 15 podcast that Instapundit Glenn Reynolds and his wife, Helen Smith, conducted with Frist.
UPDATE, 3/16: MyDD interview with Democratic Senate candidate Pete Ashdown in Utah.
UPDATE, 3/10: MyDD interview with Democratic Senate candidate Ford Bell in Minnesota.
UPDATE, 3/1: MyDD interview with Democratic Senate candidate Jon Tester in Montana. MyDD also recently posted an interview with former House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash. That's a good "get" for a blog. Among other topics, Foley talks about how the 2006 campaign dynamics compare with the 1994 election that toppled him and the Democratic Party from congressional power.
UPDATE, 2/23: MyDD interview with Democratic Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota.
Posted by at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
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Friday Festival Of Blog Bits
Blogads released its annual survey of blog readership this week, and the results reaffirmed the conclusion of previous surveys in 2005 and 2004: Blog readers are among the most politically active Americans.
The survey is by no means scientific, as company founder Henry Copeland acknowledged in his recap of the results. This year's results also are somewhat politically skewed toward the Democratic Party, Copeland said, because some of the most influential Republican bloggers did not invite their readers to participate. "But, even without our white labcoats on," he said, "the results are important and fascinating. The blogs that participated ... are leaders in their fields."
Some highlights: Far more blog readers are male than female; the largest segment of the population is in the 41-50 age range, and they earn $60,000-$90,000 a year; 39 percent are college graduate, and an almost identical amount have advanced degrees; 30 percent contributed to a campaign in the last six months; 75 percent have contacted politicians in the last year; and 76 percent have signed a petition.
Chris Bowers at MyDD examined the survey results in detail. The Blogometer has a list of other blog entries about the survey.
The rest of this week's blog bits:
-- Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, blogged about his recent trip to Iraq.
-- The U.S. Public Interest Research Group used its blog to draw attention to a couple of pet legislative interests: a House telecom bill and a measure to implement free, electronic tax filings.
-- The Club For Growth noted that President Bush issued a veto threat over excess spending in an emergency appropriations bill now before Congress. But based on past experience, club blogger Andy Roth has his doubts that Bush will follow through with the threat. Roth also conducted another blog marathon yesterday, this time on pork-barrel spending.
-- Both MyDD and RedState tried to direct money and/or attention to two political candidates: Marcy Winograd, a Democrat who is challenging "pro-war incumbent Jane Harman" in California's Democratic primary; and Iraq war veteran Van Taylor, a Republican candidate in Texas. RedState raised $10,000 from 183 donors for Taylor in three days.
-- Swing State Project urged readers to tell the political action committee of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., which two House candidates -- one incumbent and one challenger -- that she should support financially. The online poll closes May 12. The effort is reminiscent of a similar poll taken by Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., in December.
-- Speaking of Feingold, Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarter's labeled him "a lame comedian and a worse politician" over a new "parody" advertisement aired on television by the senator's PAC.
-- Hotline On Call reported that Sen. George Allen, R-Va., is advertisting his re-election effort on Instapundit.
-- The Stakeholder, the blog of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, chastised Republican aides on Capitol Hill for withdrawing their teams from a congressional softball league. The entry was in response to a Wall Street Journal article on the once-bipartisan league.
-- Michelle Malkin unveiled Hot Air, the conservative Internet broadcasting network she is heading.
Posted by at 09:54 AM
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Comments Temporarily Closed
I just wanted to let Beltway Blogroll readers that this site has been swarmed with comment and trackback spam this week. The level of the spam reached the point that I felt compelled to close comments as we look for a solution to the problem.
We will reopen the comments as soon as possible. If anyone has any ideas on how to address the problems with comment and trackback spam in a Movable Type blog, please e-mail me at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by at 01:00 PM
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House Passes Bill To Protect Phone Numbers
The House yesterday passed a bill designed to protect the privacy of telephone numbers -- legislation that was introduced early this year after publicity generated in part by a blogger.
The measure, H.R. 4709, would make it illegal for online brokers to buy and sell individuals' monthly phone records. It would empower both the FCC and FTC to enforce new rules banning "pretexting," the practice of obtaining customers' personal information under false pretenses.
The House passed the legislation on a 409-0 vote. Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said on the floor that the bill "provides consumers with important new protections for the confidentiality of their calling records without compromising the legitimate lawful interests of law enforcement, emergency services and cellular telephone service providers" who might need access to the records.
As reported in my Feb. 14 column, the push to protect phone records had languished until early this year. After John Aravosis of Americablog read an article about the issue, he decided to make cell-phone privacy a pet cause.
Aravosis first bought his own records to prove a point, then he bought the records of someone who mattered: 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark. That ploy generated lots of publicity and jumpstarted the issue in Congress.
Three House bills and two Senate measures were introduced within days. House Judiciary approved H.R. 4709 by voice vote on March 2, and Senate Judiciary approved a similar measure, S. 2178, by voice vote the same day.
Posted by at 12:47 PM | Comments (1)
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Milbloggers With Attitude
Bloggers can be a critical bunch. When they don't like what they see or hear in the world around them, they let everyone within click range of their piece of the Web know it. And when they get together at a blog conference, then the rhetoric can really get harsh.
That's what happened Saturday at the first annual Milblog Conference in Washington. About 200 soldiers, veterans, family members and assorted others who gathered to celebrate the military blogging community spent much of their time chastising the media, denouncing peace activists and lamenting the military's lukewarm response to the blogosphere.
The panelists and attendees directed their firepower first and foremost at the media. Novelist and military commentator Austin Bay set the stage as master of ceremonies. He said the nonstop television news cycle "does to war, natural disaster, crime and celebrity trials what pornography does to sex," adding that the milblog community exists "to get the story [of war] right."
The gripes against the "mainstream media" amplified from there:
-- Matt, who left the military in 2001 and now blogs at Blackfive, blasted Newsweek for not telling the story of a friend killed in combat -- an episode that moved him to start blogging.-- Author and panel moderator Robert (Buzz) Patterson ranked the media among a "fifth column" in America that aids and abets terrorist enemies.
-- Steve Schippert of ThreatsWatch reached into the past to condemn Walter Cronkite for what Schippert called biased reporting about the Tet Offensive. He said such reporting turned people against the Vietnam War but argued that it "can never, ever happen again -- not ever -- because of milbloggers."
-- Chuck Ziegenfuss, who was injured in Iraq last year and blogs at From My Position ... On The Way, mistrusts journalists so much that he regularly searches the Internet for their articles before granting interviews. "You kind of have to control them as much as they're trying to control you," he said.
The subject even arose in the mid-morning panel discussion dubbed "Milblogging Family Style." "We can't have a milblog conference without mainstream media discussions," said Andi, an Army wife and organizer of the event who blogs at Andi's World.
Carla of Some Soldier's Mom displayed a recent copy of her local newspaper, The Daily Courier in Arizona, and complained that it contained "not one word" about U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "And then they wonder why there are milblogs and why we need additional sources of information," she said.
The criticism was not limited to the conference room at the Academy for Educational Development, either. Milbloggers unable to attend the event took their jabs at the media in a Web chat that was projected onto a screen throughout the conference.
As disgusted with the media as milbloggers are -- one said reporters are "stigmatized" in the eyes of many military people and called them "the enemy" -- they were even more hostile toward anti-war protestors. They are known as "moonbats" in milblog parlance.
At least twice, panelists called attention to "Concrete Bob," an active member of Free Republic who was in the audience. He played a key role early this year in forcing the group Code Pink Women for Peace to relocate its protests outside Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The protests prompted the milblog community to swarm both virtually and physically. Concrete Bob received a rousing round of applause when Andi praised him for "kicking Code Pink to the curb".
"The people who are in that hospital are not the policymakers," said Ziegenfuss, who spent time at Walter Reed recovering from his injuries. "They are the policy enforcers. ... There's a time and a place for everything, and outside a hospital is not the place."
The milbloggers' rap against the Pentagon was more respectful and subdued but no less assertive. They think the military brass are blowing it big time when it comes to the blogosphere, both by failing to embrace bloggers and by pondering potentially onerous rules for blogging by soldiers.
The military certainly has taken note of the blogosphere. At least one official from U.S. Central Command, for instance, attended the conference. That is just one example of attempts at blog outreach that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned in a February speech.
The Defense Department research wing that created the Internet also is looking to cull information from foreign-language blogs. And just last week, the department's press service announced that the Defense Science Board this summer will study the military impact of blogs.
But bloggers see room for improvement. John Donovan of Argghhh, a milblogger at the event, said in an interview that the Pentagon right now is just sending "obvious pieces of recruiting propaganda" that milbloggers are rejecting. "They're frankly clumsy about it because they still don't understand blogs," he said.
Bill Roggio of The Counterterrorism Blog and The Fourth Rail offered this message to the Pentagon public affairs team: "Accept us like you accept the media. ... Allow your people to talk. The risk you take with [operational security] is miniscule compared with the benefits you can get from engaging the milbloggers."
Engaging them is only half the equation, though; the other half is not quashing them. Panelists repeatedly urged milbloggers to remember one key principle before posting content to a blog: that their words can be read by enemies like al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. That means milbloggers need to write responsibly.
Missteps may well come, the panelists said, but the military should not respond by regulating blogs. "If the Army restricts bloggers," said Matt of Blackfive, "all you will have are ... dissident bloggers who are willing to take a risk."
John Noonan of OPFOR offered another idea instead: "We will help you and do it in a less abrasive way."
Posted by at 07:09 AM | Comments (0)
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Blog Fight On Capitol Hill
How deep is the partisan rancor in Congress? So deep that aides are bickering over who knows more about blogs.
The spat broke out in the House on Friday between spokesmen for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Georgia Republican Jack Kingston, who has earned good press for his outreach to conservative bloggers. Kingston's press office started the verbal fight with a blog post (and subsequent e-mail to select bloggers) that proves even flacks can excel at "gotcha" journalism.
The entry noted that Pelosi, who recently generated some mixed coverage for her efforts in the blogosphere, had on her congressional site a tip sheet for wannabe congressional bloggers. The gotcha part of the story: Of the seven blogs recognized in the "Blogging 101" document generated by Pelosi's office, five of them were Republican.
GOP Bloggers and Suitably Flip were among the conservative blogs to note the development. "Maybe [Pelosi will] even take her own advice and kick off a blog of her own," Philip (Flip) Pidot wrote at Suitably Flip, adding that "to date, she appears only in the maniacal pages of Daily Kos."
Pelosi's staff reacted to the unflattering yet largely insignificant partisan jabs in knee-jerk fashion and pulled the blog advice offline. But that decision just made the story newsworthy -- especially because Kingston's Web-wise staff had expected the move and had made a copy of the document, which is now on Kingston's blog.
That's when Raw Story jumped on the story, inviting the spokesmen for Pelosi and Kingston to explain what happened. Here's the back-and-forth from Brendan Daly of Pelosi's office and David All of Kingston's office:
-- Now that Rep. Kingston is spending so much time on our web site, perhaps he'll learn a thing or two from the Democrats about our real plans to make health care more affordable, decrease gas prices, and protect our homeland. Clearly, he won't get that by reading the Republican blogs. (Daly)-- It's strange that the minority leader's press shop would attack Republicans with angry, snarky rhetoric in a story about how their own 'blog tips' highlight the leadership of Republican blogs. Some folks just don't get it. (All)
Thankfully, lawmakers return from their Easter break this week, so we can hope that folks on Capitol Hill will hold their rhetorical fire for matters more substantive than which party is more in tune with the blogosphere.
Posted by at 12:31 PM | Comments (1)
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House Majority Whip Roy Blunt and his wife, Abigail, are the proud adoptive parents of a new son from Russia. The Blunts officially welcomed 18-month-old Alexander Charles to their family in a statement released Friday.
The directors of RedState seized on the announcement as an opportunity to appeal for adoption reform. "Having gone through the adoption process and knowing the cumbersome bureaucracy involved," the directors wrote, "it would be a good thing if Representative Blunt encouraged the president, who one time suggested fixes to the system, to actually engage on the topic."
My wife, Kimberly, and I have traversed the bureaucratic maze of international adoption three times to adopt our son and daughters from Guatemala, so I fully appreciate the renewed appeal for change. But today, after the Blunts have welcomed a son and my own family just celebrated the one-year mark of our youngest daughter's homecoming, I'd much rather talk about the joy of adoption.
I can think of no better way to do that than pointing Beltway Blogroll readers to Catie Come Home, the blog my father and I wrote a year ago while in Guatemala.
Readers interested in adoption also might want to read "Our Long Journey To Parenthood," the essay I wrote in 1999 after the adoption of our son, Anthony. The essay also explains where our first daughter, Eliana, got her name.
Posted by at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
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Congressman Helps Fund Blog Effort
Arizona Republican Rick Renzi apparently loves what he has seen at The Counterrorism Blog so much that he is willing to back that work from his own wallet.
Andrew Cochran, founder and co-editor of the blog, revealed yesterday that Renzi was one of the first contributors to the new Counterterrorism Foundation. That body accepts donations online to support the work done at the blog, including the embedding of writers like new blog co-editor Bill Roggio. He leaves for Afghanistan soon for another non-military stint with U.S. troops in that country.
"Rep. Renzi was inspired to run for Congress after personally witnessing the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, from his car as he was driving toward Washington," Cochran wrote. "He serves on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee and is the author of language included in the House-passed immigration bill [that] would use state-of-the-art technologies to protect our borders. We deeply appreciate Rep. Renzi's contribution and his support of the Counterterrorism Foundation."
Posted by at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)
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Last year about this time, Tennessee blogger Bill Hobbs had a grand idea in legislative blogging.
His vision prompted him to created a Web site called VolPols, a place where every member of his home state's legislature could blog for free. To sweeten the pot, Hobbs offered his services as a blog consultant on the side to train any takers.
Sadly, no one in the Volunteer State accepted the offer, so now Hobbs is halting the project, at least temporarily. "Although I made the offer repeatedly to all members of the legislature, and specifically asked several Democratic and Republican members to start blogs on the site," Hobbs lamented, "none did. Today, there are no more blogging Tennessee legislators than there were a year ago."
While Hobbs has not abandoned the project, his note about it sounds a bit defeatist. That might have something to do with the controversy that has swirled around Hobbs the past several days over an unflattering cartoon depicting the Islamic prophet Mohammed that Hobbs briefly put online.
His idea about a portal for legislative blogs is a good one, though, and I hope he finds a way to resurrect it -- and perhaps duplicate it in all 50 states.
Posted by at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)
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Sen. John Kerry on Saturday marked the 35th anniversary of his congressional testimony about the Vietnam War by urging readers of The Huffington Post to follow his example and challenge the Bush administration's actions in the war in Iraq.
Here's an excerpt from the Massachusetts Democrat's blog entry:
I felt compelled to speak out about what was happening in Vietnam, where the children of America were pulled from front porches and living rooms and plunged almost overnight into a world of sniper fire, ambushes, rockets, booby traps, body bags, explosions, sleeplessness, and the confusion created by an enemy who was sometimes invisible and firing at us, and sometimes right next to us and smiling. It was clear that thousands of Americans were losing their lives in Vietnam while politicians in Washington schemed to save their political reputations.Thirty-five years later, in another war gone off course, I see history repeating itself. It is both a right and an obligation for Americans today to disagree with a president who is wrong, a policy that is wrong, and a course in Iraq that weakens the nation. Again, we must refuse to sit quietly and watch our troops sacrificed for a policy that isn't working while Americans who dissent and ask tough questions are branded unpatriotic.
Kerry's entry sounds like the kind that could spark a rise out of conservative bloggers. But Kerry also made an appearance on ABC's "This Week that is giving bloggers like Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters plenty to say about Kerry.
Posted by at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
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Milbloggers In Washington
Soldiers, their family members and others who are part of the military blogging community (or fans of such "milbloggers") gathered in Washington today for the first annual Milblog Conference.
I was at the event and will provide a full report in my bi-weekly Beltway Blogroll column that goes online here Tuesday. I'll also post some other entries with insights that I cannot fit into the space constraints of the column. (That's one reason I love blogging instead!)
For now, here are some links to live-blog posts and other coverage of the event:
-- Argghhh
-- The Counterterrorism Blog
-- Crazy Politico's Rantings
-- Dadmanly
-- Euphoric Reality (separate entries for panels 1, 2 and 3)
-- The Gunn Nutt (panels 1, 2 and 3)
-- La Shawn Barber's Corner
-- Media Lies (here, here and here)
-- Milblogging
-- OPFOR
-- Pajamas Media
Posted by at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
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Friday Festival Of Blog Bits
The directors of RedState opened the week with a powerful endorsement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"Secretary Rumsfeld has been a solid and committed leader during a time of great trial," they wrote in one of their occasional attempts at playing the role of information age editorial board. "If irritated [Defense Department] professionals and former members of the Pentagon bureaucracy is all it takes to oust a Defense secretary -- with an assist from grandstanding journalists, peaceniks in the streets and ill-informed conservatives on the op-ed pages -- then Washington is truly gone haywire. Our armed forces deserve better, and Donald Rumsfeld deserves our support."
Two days later, President Bush reiterated his support for Rumsfeld. "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as secretary of Defense."
Other blog bits from this week:
-- Hugh Hewitt challenged bloggers to toss some financial support to the Minnesota Senate campaign of Republican Rep. Mark Kennedy. The Republican National Committee echoed the call, as did Captain's Quarters.
-- Hotline On Call noted that former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, placed a call to Iowa-based blogger Chris Woods (corrected per comment below), a contributor at MyDD. Warner reportedly took that step before contacting Iowa's well-known political writers. Fellow MyDD blogger Matt Stoller proclaimed Bowers a "kingmaker" for his newfound notoriety.
-- A Senate candidate has taken his campaign to the MySpace social-networking service. A mayoral candidate in New Orleans, meanwhile, found herself in trouble over a manufactured photo on her campaign site, according to 13th Floor.
-- Stoller took a half-dozen fellow Democrats to task for voting against what he considers strong language to ensure "network neutrality," a term that refers to equal treatment for content delivered over high-speed Internet services. Those six House members "took a sledgehammer to the Internet," Stoller said. It was the first of his two shots at people in his own party over the issue. The second one blasted former White House press secretary Mike McCurry. Are we seeing the makings of a blog swarm on net neutrality?
-- Michelle Malkin touted the "Send A Brick" to Congress campaign being run by a citizens' group that opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants. Add that to last week's blog bit about a blogger's delivery of "rubber stamps" to a senator, and I'd say lawmakers are getting some strange deliveries these days. I wonder how tough it is to get bricks and rubber stamps through the tighter security on Capitol Hill.
-- Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet was featured in another article and online chat about new campaign finance rules for the Internet. Neither Duncan Black of Eschaton nor Adam Bonin of Daily Kos were impressed. (I interviewed Darr for my column on the same topic about two weeks ago.)
-- Two House lawmakers who recently returned from a trip to Iraq reported on their journey in a blog call this week. Human Events Online, A Soldier's Perspective and Suitably Flip wrote entries after the call.
-- Steve Clemons of The Washington Note recapped a dinner session with John Bellinger, the lawyer for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
-- The Counterterrorism Blog has a new look and a new partner. Milblogger Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail is now a co-editor of the publication. Blog founder Andrew Cochran explained the changes this week.
-- The ever-entrepreneurial Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo has a new project in the works: a publication to provide thorough coverage of 30 to 40 congressional races "that seem genuinely in play." What will his fellow Democratic bloggers who believe every district should be considered competitive think about one of their own deeming just a handful of races worthy of attention?
-- Armando, a regular contributor at Daily Kos, doesn't walk in the same circles as Josh Trevino, one of the founders of RedState. But the two have decided to square off at a new blog called Swords Crossed. Armando shared his thoughts on the new venture.
-- The Washington Post published a critical look at liberal bloggers. Liberal bloggers reacted predictably, labeling it a "hit piece" and "payback" for liberal bloggers who criticized the paper.
-- The word from the latest "State Of The Blogosphere" report: There are now 35.3 million blogs, with the number still doubling about every six months.
Posted by at 07:15 AM | Comments (1)
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Judges Read Blogs, Too
If you want to know about the growing influence of legal blogs, third-year Ohio State University law student Ian Best is the man with the answers.
Late last week at his 3L Epiphany blog, he posted an entry that lists court decisions with blog citations. The list encompasses 23 cases from federal and state courts across the country. The states include California, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The earliest citation was in a 2003 case before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals; the rest occurred between 2004 and the present, with the latest being cases in Florida and Ohio this year.
"The blog with the most case citations is Sentencing Law and Policy, with 21 citations in 17 cases," Best wrote. He added that "three other well-known legal blogs" -- How Appealing, Legal Theory Blog and The Volokh Conspiracy -- merited citations, too.
Eugene Volokh praised Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy for getting so much attention from judges. "Many (likely most) law professors never get that many court citations for all their law review articles put together, much less for their blog posts," Volokh wrote.
Best followed his research on blog citations in court cases with insightful interviews about blogs with two judges: U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf in Nebraska and Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judith Lanzinger. Both shared their insights about blogs and their blog-reading habits (Kopf reads them every day, Lanzinger only "periodically").
Lanzinger offered this warning: "Assuming that legal blogs are now in their infancy, and that they will grow to have a long and fruitful life, I think that lawyers who ignore them altogether will do so at their peril."
Kopf also shared his thoughts on how technology might lead to other changes in the legal world. He noted in particular the potential impact of both video and audio technology.
"[A]s video technology and the Net become interwoven," he said, "I see little reason to require witnesses to travel long distances to attend trials when they could as easily appear by interactive video. As another example, think about whether court reporters are needed given advances in digital audio recording. Digital audio recordings of trials can be provided over the Net, perhaps even in real time. Vendors located at any place in the world could access the digital audio over the Net and bid to provide transcriptions, presumably at very low prices."
(Hat tip to Concurring Opinions.)
Posted by at 09:04 AM | Comments (0)
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"The Rise Of Blogs," the article I wrote for National Journal magazine in January, made the point that bloggers are "influentials" among their peers. BlogAds founder Henry Copeland noted that "the blogosphere is crawling with certified, grade-A opinion makers.
New analysis from Jupiter Research, as reported by ElectricNews.Net and The Guardian, drives that point home. Although the article focuses on the influence of blogs in Europe, and particularly the media and business sectors there, the message that bloggers exert a "disproportionately large influence" on society holds true for the the American political realm, too.
The lead at ElectricNews.Net captures the essence of the research nicely: "Companies that ignore the opinions of bloggers and Internet commentators could create massive public relations disasters." Just change the word "companies" to "government officials," and the conclusion just as readily applies to Washington.
Posted by at 07:15 AM | Comments (0)
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Bloggers React To Pulitzer Announcement
This year's Pulitzer Prize winners were announced yesterday, and bloggers who love to hate the media wasted no time in reacting.
With few exceptions, the reactions are surprisingly muted. Power Line penned the harshest criticisms -- over the award to The New York Times ("The Pulitzer Prize For Treason") for breaking the news about secret domestic surveillance by the Bush administration, and over the award to Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan ("The Pulitzer Prize for Vapidity").
Firedoglake also lamented "what a sad waste of time the Pulitzers have become." But one writer at Daily Kos, which keeps company in the same part of the blogosphere as Firedoglake, had a different take: "This year's Pulitzers have been announced, featuring some outstanding work, and some not so outstanding work, but that happens."
America Abroad, Americablog and Michelle Malkin also commented. The Hotline's Blogometer has a roundup as well.
Posted by at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)
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Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, is making a concerted push to be an innovator in the realm of political technology.
Last week, the Tennessee Republican launched his own podcasts at the Web site for VOLPAC, his political action committee. "In these podcasts, I'll be giving unscripted and unfiltered updates from Washington, D.C., about legislation in the Senate and from across America as I campaign with conservative candidates," Frist wrote. "We already have five of these updates on the site now."
Frist also is one of Congress' early and more prolific bloggers, and he has granted exclusive podcasts to Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, who lives in Tennessee.
Today, Frist added another element to his tech forays: iFrist Volunteers. "If Republicans are going to continue to lead America forward," Frist wrote at his blog, "we need to do a better job communicating with the Republican grassroots. ... IFrist volunteers can sign petitions, complete surveys, endorse candidates, spread the word and help build support for the Republican agenda by encouraging their friends, family and co-workers to participate."
All of the activity prompted Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza to wonder aloud whether Frist is the "Howard Dean of the GOP" -- a reference to the Democratic presidential candidate who caused the biggest blogospheric and online stir in 2004. Cillizza said Frist "appears to be the candidate most closely copying the Internet blueprint of Dean."
Scott Shields of MyDD, one of the blogs that rose to prominence during the Dean campaign, scoffed at the notion that Frist is anything like Dean. In a fundamentally lazy statement, he stereotyped most journalists as being "fundamentally lazy," with Cillizza's "pretty much mindless piece" as the only evidence to support his sweeping generalization.
Shields' point about the differences between Frist and Dean is fair enough. "Dean established himself as a credible political figure as the governor of a small state and likely wouldn't have attained the level of national notoriety he did without the progressive netroots behind him," Shields wrote. "In contrast, Senator Frist is the majority leader of the United States Senate. He's already in the national spotlight."
But Shields' slap at journalists is both ridiculous and wrong. It's kind of like a certain journalist who infamously dismissed all bloggers as pajama-clad losers.
UPDATE: Shields apparently thinks he hurt my feelings with his comment about lazy journalists. That's just as ridiculous and wrong as his comment about journalists. Shields didn't call me lazy, so why would my feelings be hurt.
I've also known and worked with a few lazy journalists in my day and have no problem believing they exist. Plus I have criticized my journalistic colleagues for their shortcomings, especially their sweeping generalizations about bloggers, so I firmly believe that all of us, including me, can improve the work we do.
But Shields' attack on "most" journalists based on a single blog posting written by one of them -- and a blog posting that arguably offers some worthwhile insight -- is baseless. It was driven by his own affinity for Dean and his desire not to have his political hero associated with a leading Republican.
Shields may well be right that Bill Frist is no Howard Dean. He certainly supported that view with more evidence and insight than his potshot at journalists. But his take on journalists is quite wrong. As I said, most of us are no more lazy than most bloggers are pajama-clad losers.
UPDATE II: This response from Shields also is misleading: "Take all of the journalists in the world -- every small-town AM radio reporter, every local coupon-clipper stringer, etc. -- and I promise you will find that most are not doing Seymour Hersh-level journalism." He's probably right on that score. But his initial entry clearly stated that he was referring to journalists (like Cillizza) who do their work in the political arena.
UPDATE III: Daily Kos also reacted to Cillizza's comparison of Frist to Dean, minus the poke at journalists. The conclusion: "Where Dean ... and others use the Internet as a means of citizen empowerment, Frist and others use it as a means of retaining power themselves."
Posted by at 12:07 PM | Comments (7)
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Friday Festival Of Blog Bits
Rep. Jack Kingston held a conference call with a handful of conservative bloggers. The subjects ranged from Iraq and Iran to immigration reform and energy independence.
You can get full reports at Capitol Report, Captain's Quarters, HughHewitt.com, Right Wing News, The Right Angle and Wizbang.
Later in the week, The Washington Times mentioned the blog call in a story on Kingston's outreach to blogs.
The Hill covered the flip side of that coin: blog outreach by House Democrats, particularly Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, R-Calif. Capitol Report, GOP Bloggers and even the blog of the Republican National Committee highlighted the less-flattering aspects of the article.
The liberal Americablog, by contrast played up this quote from the story: "The liberal blogosphere is better developed than its conservative counterpart." And Matt Stoller of MyDD added that "it's good to see more recognition of the progressive blogosphere."
It's always amusing to see how the same story can spark such conflicting reactions.
More blog bits from this week:
-- Word that outgoing Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, might be chosen by President Bush to head the White House Office of Management and Budget sparked a flurry of commentary in the blogosphere. For views across the political spectrum, visit Capitol Report, Firedoglake, Power Line, The Stakeholder and TPM Muckraker.
-- Stoller played delivery man to the office of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., on behalf of the Rubber Stamp Republican Congress project of Firedoglake.
-- When Stoller caught some heat from his friends in the liberal blogosphere, meanwhile, he changed his mind about Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Illinois. And Chris Bowers of MyDD provided an update on the push to recruit Democrats for races in most House districts.
-- Pat Cleary of ShopFloor, the blog of the National Association of Manufacturers, praised his readers for bombarding the Interior Department with comments about the push for environmentally safe mineral exploration.
-- The Week magazine published its explanation of why it chose Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters as blogger of the year. For more evidence of why he won the award, check this bit of enterprising journalism about Iraq intelligence, as well as the response at both Barone Blog and RedState.
-- The Cincinnati Enquirer stopped publishing the "Grandma in Iraq" blog after bad press about the author of the blog, an Army public affairs officer.
-- Rick Hasen of Election Law concluded that new Federal Election Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky once wrote under the pseudonym "Publius."
-- CNN reported on complaints by two former staffers to Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., that he made them baby-sit, run errands and do political work. GOP Bloggers said it's about time someone covered the story. But what inquiring blogosphere minds really want to know is whether Conyers made the employees blog at ConyersBlog.
-- Andy Roth of The Club For Growth really wanted to find some useful information in "Crashing The Gates," the book by liberal bloggers Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. He didn't.
-- TalkLeft is being blocked at a public library in California.
-- Blogging by research universities: Blogspotting at BusinessWeek Online has a host of questions about the merits of the practice.
-- ABC News Washington correspondent Jake Tapper announced that he is taking a break from blogging at Down and Dirty "for a host of complicated reasons."
-- What makes a blog a blog? Asked and answered, in multiple ways, at Concurring Opinions.
Posted by at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
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Vlogs: The Cure For 'Gotcha' Journalism?
Yesterday's update to my ongoing list of links to candidate and lawmaker interviews included a series of pointers to video blog clips with Sen. John McCain at Ankle Biting Pundits.
That site has a new clip up today, this one with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The topic is the war in Iraq.
Gingrich is not technically a lawmaker or candidate, but that's not the reason for this separate blurb. Rather, my goal here is to draw attention to something profound that Patrick Hynes said about video blogs, or vlogs, in his blog entry to highlight the video.
"Blogs have already damaged the credibility of the MSM," he wrote. "I believe vlogging has the potential to kill off agenda-driven, gotcha journalism. Newsmakers can now go straight to the people with the facts, not run them through the filter of what Rush [Limbaugh] calls 'the drive-by media.'"
He's absolutely correct -- and that's why I expect to see more vlogging in both the political and policy arenas.
Posted by at 12:51 PM | Comments (5)
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Armchair political analysis and hopeful electoral spin are flying around the blogosphere in the wake of Tuesday's special election to fill a House seat in California.
The election was held in the Golden State's 50th District to replace Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, a Republican who left office last year after pleading guilty to bribery. The contest featured 18 candidates, including 14 Republicans.
Democrat Francine Busby won 44 percent of the vote. In 2004, when she and three other third-party candidates challenged Cunningham, Busby snagged just 37 percent of the vote, compared with Cunningham's 58 percent.
The top Republican vote-getter, former Rep. Brian Bilbray, barely outlasted fellow Republican and big-spending businessman Eric Roach. Bilbray now will meet Busby in a June 6 run-off election because no candidate in the all-party primary won more than 50 percent of the vote.
Chris Bowers of MyDD sees reason to be hopeful over Busby's showing in a Republican district, even though she now will have to go head-to-head with a former Republican congressman. "Busby is in command in this district, which is solid red. Or rather, it was solid red, but like a lot of districts nationwide, that isn't the case anymore. I like our chances in June. ... [V]ictory is now within sight."
But the poor turnout in the primary left Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos concerned. "The Democratic leadership thinks that the GOP implosion will ipso facto translate to Democratic victories in November," he warned. "But the electorate is universally disenchanted with politics."
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds linked to Moulitsas' analysis and added this thought: "The good news for each party is that they only have to run against the other and not against a competent one. The bad news for each party is that the same thing is true for their opposition. ... [I]t's like the Special Olympics of politics or something."
PoliPundit characterized the vote as a defeat for liberal bloggers: "This was yet another race where ultra-left, America-hating blogger Kos threw his support behind the losing Democrat candidate." He also resurrected the argument that lefty bloggers have "an incredible 18 losses and zero victories" in races where they have been active -- a "myth" that blogs like Swing State Project keep trying to kill.
Tim Tagaris, the blogger for the Democratic National Committee, joined some of his colleagues in playing up the margin of Busby's victory over the closest Republican, but that margin is relatively insignificant considering the number of GOP candidates in the race.
At Democracy Project, Bruce Kesler said Democrats have no reason gloat over the election results. But he also warned Republicans: "There's still no justification from here for Republicans elsewhere to think they can coast. This is a strongly Republican-leaning district."
Hotline On Call published more interpretations/spin, as well as a look ahead at the run-off battle.
Some voters in Texas also went to the polls Tuesday for run-off elections, and DavidNYC of Swing State Project saw some good news in the results, including the fact that "fighting Dem" Ted Ankrum prevailed.
Posted by at 07:10 AM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: Rep. Lantos And Human Rights
Rep. Tom Lantos is chastising the Bush administration for declining to seek a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council. Here is an excerpt from his entry at The Huffington Post:
How can we expect to work with the United Nations on issues such as reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions if we are not working with the United Nations on human rights and other issues. ... I call on President Bush to stop his administration's dangerous drift into self-defeating, ideologically based U.N. policy. We suffer from a self-inflicted wound at the United Nations; it is time to staunch the bleeding.
Posted by at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)
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Bloggers Beat The FEC, So Now What?
Bloggers won. That was the consensus two weeks ago, after a yearlong, off-and-on blog swarm that clearly shaped the thinking of the Federal Election Commission about campaign finance rules for the Internet.
That consensus is on the mark, too. Ordered by a federal court to write those rules, the FEC ultimately gave bloggers exactly what they wanted: a broad exemption from regulations that focus instead on political advertisements online.
Bloggers will not have to disclose election-related payments they receive, nor will they have to post disclaimers about such payments. In essence, the six federal election commissioners voted unanimously to preserve free speech online, at least to the extent the court would allow.
So now that the Internet campaign law of the land is settled, at least for the moment, what does it mean for the blogosphere in 2006, 2008 and beyond? The answer depends on whom you ask, so I asked four people who were central to the debate over the past year.
The first was Brad Smith, the former FEC member whose interview with News.com triggered the blog swarm. Smith left the agency last summer to return to teaching law in Ohio. Ironically, he also is now a blogger at RedState.
He is a harsh critic of campaign finance laws in general and never wanted to see any rules for the Internet. He often lamented that the FEC refused to keep fighting the courts and campaign finance advocates on that issue. But he is heartened by the rules the FEC crafted.
Smith is reluctant to play the role of prognosticator. "That's one reason I think it's important to leave the Web free to develop," he said in an e-mail interview. But he thinks the new rules could foster more blog activity. "My gut sense is that blogs will be a bit more organized ... in deciding to raise money for candidates, for example," he said. "Or we may see blogs and various Web fora more clearly setting up areas for supporters of preferred candidates to get together and post or chat."
What he said won't emerge -- or won't matter if they do -- are the kinds of abuses that motivated reform advocates to push for tougher rules: front blogs by corporations like Halliburton and party-funded "astroturf" blogs. "All this scare stuff is pure nonsense from people who simply cannot bear the thought that somewhere, someplace, they might not be in control of speech," Smith said.
Allison Hayward, a former FEC aide to Smith who blogs at Skeptic's Eye, expects more corporate- and union-funded blog activity "because they would have been the entities chilled by the legal uncertainty" had the FEC not acted. But that's fine, she said in an interview. "People on the receiving end will -- hopefully -- respond in kind and lead to more debate and a more engaging campaign."
Like Smith, Hayward anticipates more candidate blogs. But both doubt such blogs will have much impact. "Blogging works with snark and critical distance," Hayward said. "Those aren't elements of a campaign usually -- unless you're Eugene McCarthy."
Interestingly, Hayward thinks simple text blogging may have "topped out" as a political force, to be usurped by advances in audio and video technology. Parodies of candidate ads could become popular in short order, she said.
Depending on where that leads, new calls for reform could surface. "If we see some video take off and affect the debate -- something like JibJab meets the Swift Boat Veterans -- I would expect that there would be calls for expenditure thresholds," she noted. "Thresholds can have some bite with video, where basic blogging is very cheap."
John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a group whose compromise proposal on Web campaign rules became central to the debate in March, is convinced that bloggers will gain influence because of the FEC rules. They will question, challenge and rebut candidates at every step, he argued, and they might not have done so as aggressively without the rules.
"[T]he politically savvy bloggers would have spoken anyway," Morris said, "but I think the FEC rules will broaden the field to include bloggers that might well have been chilled from engaging in political debate."
CDT had argued for up-front disclosures of campaign or party payments to bloggers, and Morris still advocates that idea. But he does not foresee any major abuses without such disclosures. "If a state party or a campaign pays a blogger, that payment will become known, and the blogger will come to be known as a spokesperson for the campaign that is paying him or her."
Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, is less optimistic about the new rules. "Between the media exemption and the rules exempting most blog activities, there is plenty of room for online political mischief," she said, especially when combined with other perceived loopholes. "Think Swift Boats on steroids."
Darr, who was vilified by leading bloggers and their readers during the FEC debate, also made a reference to JibJab. "I expect to see lots of funny/mean JibJab-style political videos, lots of micro-targeted e-mails, and undisclosed payments to bloggers made by third parties, not candidates, in order to escape disclosure."
She warned that abuses of the new rules are likely to start immediately -- and to escape notice. "Exemptions and loopholes never go unexploited for long," Darr said, "but if you have a good lawyer, the funding of many of these activities can escape public disclosure."
Posted by at 07:00 AM | Comments (3)
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This week's Beltway Blogroll column looks ahead at what might happen now that bloggers have won a broad campaign-finance exemption.
The column is based on interviews with four key participants in the debate that occurred over the past year. Here is the full text of my e-mail interview with former Federal Election Commissioner Brad Smith, now a blogger at RedState:
BB: What do you expect to see this election season in terms of blogs? How will blogs and bloggers influence the election? How, if at all, will they behave differently under the new rules than if the issue had
remained unsettled?
BS: I can't claim any great prognosticating ability here. That's one reason I think it important to leave the web free to develop. My gut sense is that blogs will be a bit more organized, that is to say, a bit more purposive in deciding to raise money for candidates, for example; or we may see blogs and various web fora more clearly setting up areas for supporters of preferred candidates to get together and post or chat.
From a candidate standpoint, I think in the last election most candidates didn't know what to make of blogs. What did a blog swarm mean? How many people did it represent? How many could it persuade? I think there is slowly growing an awaremeness that it is pretty easy to determine how many people are reading most blogs; perhaps a sense that highly opinionated blogs tend to talk to the true believers who must usually take affirmative steps to seek them out.
Many candidates have set up their own campaign blogs, but these are not usually very successful. They don't attract uncommited voters; committed voters are best reached by targeted e-mail, not blogs. All this is to say I see independent blogs behaving in a slightly more institutional fashion but still quite apart from the campaigns and outside of campaign control; I think there influence on campaign issues will level off a bit, but their influence in raising funds will grow. To the extent blogs find the occasional Dan Rather issue, obviously, they will remain a very strong force.
I don't know that the new rules will lead to much change because in the last campaign, blogs were outside much FEC regulation through the exemption from "public communication" that H.R. 1606 sought to preserve. Blogs were regulated elsewhere, but frankly, I don't think that dawned on either bloggers or those who might normally file complaints.
With the FEC's new rules, which are quite protective of Web activity (while nonetheless establishing the principle of regulation), I'm not sure much will change. However, had the rules not been passed, I think we would have seen more of a chill because of the awareness of regulation on the part of both bloggers and campaigns and others who might have wanted to file complaints.
BB: What potential for abuse, if any, is there under the new rules?
BS: In my view, none.
BB: Astroturf blogs? The kind of Halliburton-type blogs that became a subject of debate in the FEC process? Other?
BS: The spectre of the "Halliblogger" was and is pure nonsense. What people forget, first, is that Halliburton already has the "press exemption." It can buy a 10-watt radio station, run nothing but "Dick Cheney Today" "Rush Limbaugh," and big oil editorials, and make its signal available over the Web, any time it wants, and always could -- unless you don't think the Web activities of The New York Times or Washington Post or ABC News are protected. More narrowly, who is going to go rushing to the Halliburton blog for information?
Astroturf blogs? What are those? (rhetorical). To the extent a campaign puts money into it, how is it different from a campaign buying other forms of communication. Same if it's an interest group. The campaigns and interest groups retain -- and always have had -- a wide variety of reporting requirements and restrictions on the funds they can use. I reject this notion that merely because public opinion is influenced by people and groups (including campaigns), it is somehow not "authentic," it is "astroturf" rather than "grassroots." Any member of Congress who disregards public opinion on the grounds that it is the result of people hearing speech is making a big mistake.
An "astroturf" campaign is one like the Pew trusts funded to get McCain-Feingold passed -- setting up a bunch of well-funded organizations with no members to make Congress think there really is a grassroots swell of opinion. But when real people are involved, it doesn't matter they learn of things, or even if they've only heard one side of the issue. It's real, it's grassroots, it's people who actually vote and care. All this scare stuff is pure nonsense from people who simply cannot bear the thought that somewhere, some place, they might not be in control of speech.
BB: Do you expect more campaigns to pay bloggers as consultants? To hire bloggers outright? To start their own blogs?
BS: Yes, especially the first. As noted above, it doesn't seem to me that campaign blogs are too successful.
BB: What kinds of activities might trigger calls for stronger rules from the "reformers"? How quickly would you expect them to resurrect the issue again?
BS: I think the reformers know that this issue is a loser for them. They got a key concession: The Web, even if largely unregulated, will be largely unregulated as a matter of administrative grace, not constitutional or statutory law. Beyond that, I think they'll stay away from this for a while. They've got other things they want to do -- regulate "527s," start the drumbeat to regulate 501(c) organizations; limit grassroots "lobbying" (we used to call that "civic participation"), replace the FEC with a campaign tsar chosen from their ranks.
They've been singed by the Web. They fear it, they fear it is still too far beyond their control, but the next assault on the Web is a ways away. With one exception: They may call -- as Rick Hasen [of the Election Law blog] already does -- for added disclosure by bloggers paid by a campaign. There is no basis for this really. No other vendors are required to disclose; that burden has always fallen on the campaign. Nor is it clear what we would gain. Apparently, Rick Hasen is the only person in America who couldn't figure out that the famous bloggers in South Dakota were opposed to Tom Daschle's re-election.
BB: Some people already are arguing that the mere existence of rules of the subject of online campaigning opens the door to more regulation of the Internet. Is that true? How so? And what kind of regulation might come next?
BS: Yes, I think that is right. For example, the rule extends the press exemption to bloggers. This is clearly intended to be quite broad. But it is an exemption from regulation, not a lack of regulation. As Commissioners [Scott] Thomas and [Danny] McDonald argued in their concurrence in the Fired Up advisory opinion request, they beleive that the press exemption does not automatically accrue to any entity informing the public. That will be one line of attack.
Another will be to seek changes in the rule. For example, first you get Hasen's pet disclosure passed. I mean, who objects to disclosure, right? Then you can file complaints, alleging someone was paid. This is now a fact investigation, very expensive and intimidating to bloggers. The spectre of the "Halliblogger" remains. Many blogs are very sharp in their opinions. An attack will be made on this negativity. Surely some regulation is needed. What if people are spending "big money" on blogs? Is that fair? Let's resuscitate the CDT approach, with a variety of spending thresholds. That will allow almost all activity, so it seems reasonable. Once thresholds are in place, however, it is again fodder for a fact-intensive investigation as to whether or not they have been complied with.
Remember this: Most of the current assaults on free speech -- grassroots "lobbying" reform, 527 regulation, etc. -- are not concerned with money causing corruption. They're concerned with silencing speech that people do not like. As I noted above, I think the assault on the Web will be moved to the back burner for a while. But an important regulatory principle has been established.
BB: On another but related subject: Could you give me some insight into how bloggers managed to change the mindset of the FEC? How did the commissioners first react to the blog swarm that started a year ago? What were they saying about blogs and bloggers behind the scenes? How did their impressions change over time, and why? Would the same regulations have been drafted and adopted without the new commissioners in place? How might they have differed?
BS: Last year, RedState got hold of and published an early draft of proposed rules from the FEC's Office of General Counsel. I doubt that a proposal that regulatory would ever have passed the Commission. But it is very important to remember that such a draft does reflect the thinking in the counsel's office, which is very important in shaping the law, interpreting it in enforcement actions and advisory opinions, and the like.
I do think that the blogs warm kicked off by my C-Net interview in March of 2005 got commissioners focused. Prior to that time, the commission was drifting on the issue, providing no real guidance to the Office of General Counsel as to what it wanted. Absent the blog swarm, while I think the regs would not have been as bad as in the early draft, I think they would have been much worse than what finally came out.
There are several reasons for this. First, commissioners do respond to public opinion. The swarm heartened those commissioners inclined to a light regulatory approach, and I think frustrated a couple commissioners who clearly would have liked more regulation, especially, I believe, then-Chairman Thomas.
It forced the so-called "reform" community on the defensive, and their rhetoric changed from the hostile language of their legal briefs to praising the Web generally as a valuable force, swearing their fealty to free speech, and limiting their focus to "paid ads." (Which frankly, were regulated anyway). Their comments to the agency also changed, from arguing that the Web should be treated like any other type of communication to much less regulatory proposals. As the agency has to justify its actions in response to public comments, this was very helpful to getting a good reg.
I will note that at least one commissioner was very angry with me for the C-Net interview. Commissioners aren't that different than congressmen or the "reform" community -- they don't like to be criticized.
Additionally, the involvement of the blogger community helped as a substantive matter. Really, none of the commissioners, including me, were particularly up to date on the evolving technology on the Web, and the ways in which the Web might be used, and how it might then be suffocated by regulation. So substantively, it was very helpful to get good comments from bloggers.
The new commissioners almost certainly helped, as the two new Democratic commissioners replaced two of the commissioners most in favor, historically, of heavier regulation. The third new commissioner, my replacement, Commissioner [Hans] Von Spakovsky, I think largely shared my views on the issue and appears to have been a strong voice for a light-handed approach down the stretch.
I think that absent the uproar, we would have gotten regs much more like those in the [Center for Democracy and Technology] proposal but probably worse. The CDT proposal isn't bad, but as I noted above, the main problem with the CDT proposal is that all the monetary thresholds provide excuses for fact-intensive, expensive investigations that can really choke off activity. But speculating here is probably not worthwhile.
Posted by at 06:45 AM | Comments (0)
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This week's Beltway Blogroll column looks ahead at what might happen now that bloggers have won a broad campaign-finance exemption.
The column is based on interviews with four key participants in the debate that occurred over the past year. Here is the full text of my e-mail interview with Allison Hayward, a former aide to ex-Federal Election Commissioner Brad Smith and now a blogger at Skeptic's Eye:
BB: Now that the rules are in place, what will that mean for the political blogosphere in 2006, 2008 and beyond? Will bloggers gain more influence in elections, and if so, how specifically will that be manifested?
AH: I think Internet political activity will continue to increase in volume and relevance. I'm not sure it will be in the form of "blogging." I suspect "blogging" may actually have topped out. I would expect more audio and video, as more people have access to powerful home computers, editing software (and rudimentary editing skill) and fast connections.
YouTube has just exploded, as have podcasts. My guess is that parodies of candidate advertising will be popular, using video from other sources, a la the series of Brokeback Mountain shorts. I wish campaign songs were still a big deal. I'd love the mash-ups.
BB: Do the rules empower them to speak more freely? How will they use that power? How will candidates, parties, etc., react to their displays of that power? Do you expect more campaigns to pay bloggers as consultants? To hire bloggers outright? To start their own blogs?
AH: "More freely" than what? Than now? Than if a different rule had been enacted?
I think bloggers have been pretty comfy saying what they want. My guess is that more political "blog" activity will be funded by unions and corporations (because they would have been the entities chilled by the legal uncertainty). Which is fine. People on the receiving end will -- hopefully -- respond in kind and lead to more debate and a more engaging campaign. They'll probably also respond legally, trying to assert that activity is really a "paid advertisement" or an unreported expenditure of a political committee via some kind of agent theory.
I expect campaign will have blogs, and consultants will branch into this specialization. Consultants are good at that. Some might even be
bloggers, but I'll bet a lot of others won't be. I am not sure campaign blogs do much for a candidate, actually. They need to be very well done to be engaging at all, and most aren't. Blogging works with snark and critical distance. Those aren't elements of a campaign usually -- unless you're Eugene McCarthy.
BB: Had the issue remained unsettled, would bloggers, who have a reputation for saying what's on their minds regardless of any rules or norms, really have had their speech chilled, as some suggested?
AH: The pugnacious rebels would have probably soldiered on, but I am sure some more moderate voices would have chosen different forms of activity. If people are concerned about polarization, well, there you go.
BB: What potential for abuse, if any, is there under the new rules?Astroturf blogs? The kind of Halliburton-type blogs that became a subject of debate in the FEC process? Other? What kinds of activities might trigger calls for stronger rules from the "reformers"? How quickly would you expect them to resurrect the issue again?
AH: I don't agree that those are "abuses." As I've observed, if Halliburton spends gadzookles of dollars on a blog, it helps not at all unless people read it. And they don't need to spend gadzookles to get traffic. Think "Ishtar." If Halliburton spends gadzookles on a site that is interesting and engaging, saying stuff people find useful and relevant, how is that a bad thing? If Duncan Black [of the Eschaton blog] doesn't like what Halliburton is saying, he has ample resources to make his opinion known, too.
If we see some video take off and affect the debate -- something like
"JibJab meets the Swift Boat Veterans" -- I would expect that there would be calls for expenditure thresholds. Thresholds can have some bite with video, where basic blogging is very cheap.
Posted by at 06:25 AM | Comments (0)
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This week's Beltway Blogroll column looks ahead at what might happen now that bloggers have won a broad campaign-finance exemption.
The column is based on interviews with four key participants in the debate that occurred over the past year. Here is the full text of my e-mail interview with John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology:
BB: In light of the rules, what do you expect to see this election season in terms of blogs? How will blogs and bloggers influence the
election?
JM: I think we will see a continuation and expansion of the broad impact that bloggers had last election cycle, broadening the public's participation in political debate. Blogs will continue to be engines for fundraising, and will continue to bring great scrutiny to bear on the claims made by candidates of all stripes.
BB: What potential for abuse is there under the new rules? Astroturf blogs? The kind of Halliburton-type blogs that became a subject of debate in the FEC process? Other?
JM: I don't see a great likelihood of abuse. In the 2004 election cycle, there were a few reports of issues or concerns, but by and large the blogging community was somewhat self-regulating -- in that if a blogger was paid by a candidate but did not disclose that fact, his or her credibility would be weakened. If a corporation tries to drive a blog, I suspect it will eventually be revealed.
BB: Do you expect more campaigns to pay bloggers as consultants? To hire bloggers outright? To start their own blogs?
JM: All of the above. Obviously relating to the blogging world will be an increasingly important goal of most candidates, and so it makes sense to hire people who can help the candidates out with that goal. Although I am sure that there will be instances where the payments are not immediately disclosed to the blogging world, I think that candidates will find that this kind of effort can backfire. Payments to bloggers will be disclosed eventually, and when that happens a candidate will suffer if it turns out that a particular blogger was a stealth=paid advocate.
BB: How long before we see abuses? Will it happen in 2006? 2008? Or are the FEC rules solid enough to prevent abuses? What kinds of abuses might trigger calls for stronger rules?
JM: I do not think we saw significant abuses in 2004, and I do not expect to see significant abuses in the future. I am not, frankly, sure of what kinds of abuses you assume will happen. At this point, I would be surprised if there are significant problems that warrant new rules by the FEC to restrict blogging.
To the contrary, I think we will find that some of the campaign finance rules will continue to restrict or discourage political speech that we think should be encouraged. So I expect that future pushes for rule changes will be aimed at further reducing rules applicable to bloggers and individual speakers on the Internet.
There may well be abuses by state parties or other big money interests on the Interests, but I doubt they will happen in the form of bloggers or speech by individuals. But until we see actual problems, I do not think there is a need to try to anticipate the problems.
BB: How would the CDT proposal deter abuses, and will CDT continue to push the idea? What role, if any, will your group play in tracking what blogs are doing this campaign season?
JM: Again, I do not understand your focus on abuses. The CDT proposal would have protected the free speech of bloggers and individuals more thoroughly and more simply than the FEC was able to do, but the FEC did a good job given the statutory constraints. We will watch to see whether the campaign finance rules inappropriately burden speech by bloggers and other citizen speakers, and if they do we will push for more protections.
BB:The aim of my column is to explore what the FEC rules will mean for the impact that bloggers will have in 2006, 2008 and beyond. In other words, now that the issue is settled, what can we expect? I focused my first round of questions too much on the negative. ... Could you answer these questions: Now that the rules are in place, what will that mean for the political blogosphere in 2006, 2008 and beyond? Will bloggers gain more influence in elections, and if so, how specifically will that be manifested?
JM: What the FEC rules do is to give a very clear green light to bloggers, rather than an yellow light that says "go talk to a lawyer." So the vast majority of bloggers will be able to
concentrate on their political discussions and debate rather than
wondering whether they are complying with rules that were not really
meant for them.
I think bloggers will indeed gain more influence in
elections because bloggers will keep both campaigns and mainstream
media from "setting the agenda" too narrowly. Moreover, a great
contribution that bloggers make is that almost everything any candidate says will get questioned, challenged and rebutted by some blog out there, and that should make the political debate more open and ultimately more honest.
BB: Do the rules empower them to speak more freely?
JM: The rules make clear that either through the media exemption, or the exclusion of Internet expenses from the definitions of "expenditures", the vast majority of blogging activity will not be regulated. I do think that some bloggers will speak more freely and robustly because of the new rules.
BB: How will they use that power? How will candidates, parties, etc., react to their displays of that power?
JM: Had the issue remained unsettled, would bloggers, who have a reputation for saying what's on their minds regardless of any rules or norms, really have had their speech chilled, as some suggested? I think that many bloggers would have simply ignored burdensome rules or would have disregarded uncertainty about the rules. So for some -- especially bloggers who are somewhat politically savvy -- the chill might not have been as great.
But what the FEC rules do is to remove the disincentive that less aggressive or less self-confident citizens might see as an obstacle to blogging. So I think the politically savvy bloggers would have spoken anyway, but I think the FEC rules will broaden the field to include bloggers that might well have been chilled from engaging in political debate.
Posted by at 06:10 AM | Comments (0)
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This week's Beltway Blogroll column looks ahead at what might happen now that bloggers have won a broad campaign-finance exemption.
The column is based on interviews with four key participants in the debate that occurred over the past year. Here is the full text of my e-mail interview with Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.
BB: What do you expect to see this election season in terms of blogs? How will blogs and bloggers influence the election?
CD: Between the media exemption and the rules exempting most blog activities, there is plenty of room for online political mischief. These changes, combined with the potential offered by 527s and 501(c)4's, will open up a new era in unrestrained and undisclosed political money. Think Swift Boats on steroids.
BB: What potential for abuse is there under the new rules? Astroturf blogs? The kind of Halliburton-type blogs that became a subject of debate in the FEC process? Other?
CD: The potential is for large amounts of undisclosed money from foreign governments and individuals, and of course from deep pocketed American individuals, corporations and unions. Many of these potential abuses are not the result of the FEC's new Internet regs but are more attributable to larger changes in the media and in technology, and in the increasing polarization of U.S. politics, in which the meaner attacks are outsourced to third parties, who are less accountable.
I expect to see lots of funny/mean JibJab-style political videos, lots of micro-targeted e=mails, and undisclosed payments to bloggers made by third parties, not candidates, in order to escape disclosure.
BB: Do you expect more campaigns to pay bloggers as consultants? To hire bloggers outright? To start their own blogs?
CD: Yes to all three.
BB: How long before we see abuses? Will it happen in 2006? 2008? Or are the FEC rules solid enough to prevent abuses?
CD: Just because abuses happen, doesn't mean the public will necessarily be aware of them. I expect the activities to start immediately. Exemptions and loopholes never go unexploited for long, but if you have a good lawyer, the funding of many of these activities can escape public disclosure.
BB: What kinds of abuses might trigger calls for stronger rules?
CD: The presence of large amounts of foreign money that, not carefully conceived or executed, finds itself subject to public disclosure (either by the FEC or the IRS), or that investigative journalists are able to uncover. Much of this money, however, will probably not be disclosed or disclosed in a timely fashion. The public will just see political messages -- e-mailed videos, commentary on blogs or other online publications and in some instances online ads -- without knowing who paid for them.
BB: Some people already are arguing that the mere existence of rules of the subject of online campaigning opens the door to more regulation of the Internet. Is that true? If so, is it a bad thing
CD: It's not so much the presence of rules that leads to more rules; it's the presence of abuses that leads to more rules.
Posted by at 06:00 AM | Comments (1)
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Blogger Weighs Challenge To Rep. McKinney
Rep. Cynthia McKinney has been the subject of unrestrained scorn from bloggers on both the right and left since she hit a Capitol Hill police officer. Now one blogger from her district is so fed up with her behavior in general that he is seriously considering an independent challenge to the Georgia Democrat.
The blogger's name is Will Hinton, according to an article last week at The Right Angle. He writes under the pseudonym Dignan both at his own blog and in a diary at RedState.
The "about" page at Hinton's blog now includes a defensive rant about why he is qualified to challenge McKinney. Here's a snippet:
I am an Atlanta native (fourth generation at least) and have lived in the district for over 30 years. ... I know the district. I know the people. I am a product of the district's school system. I have long been an active member of the community through involvement at my church, as a board member of a local community alliance and even as a coach of youth sports. I am a successful businessman.I'm not going to worry about whether I have the classic qualifications that the experts think I should have. Because at the end of the day, the biggest qualification is being willing and able to lead. And I am ready.
Hinton's potential candidacy has been plugged at Instapundit, and he was interviewed by an Atlanta radio station. In a post early this morning, Hinton said people already have e-mailed with pledges of financial support totaling thousands of dollars.
He now has a donation button on his blog, with this warning that would make the Federal Election Commission proud: "Donations from corporations are strictly prohibited." And Hinton vowed, "If these e-mails keep up, I will be filing for my candidacy soon."
Posted by at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)
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Washingtonpost.com enraged liberal bloggers and even a Democratic congressman last month when it hired a conservative to write a new blog dubbed Red America. The move became a public-relations nightmare almost immediately, and the blogger in question, RedState co-founder Ben Domenech resigned in shame amid revelations of plagiarism.
The Web affiliate of The Washington Post hasn't given up on the blogosphere, though. Raw Story broke the news yesterday that post.com is still determined to engage bloggers -- but this time, they're looking to hire one each of the red and blue variety.
"The paper doesn't plan on making any formal announcement," Raw Story noted, "but the news should be welcome to many critics on the left who felt that it was unfair to hire just a conservative blogger in the first place."
I haven't seen any reactions at major liberal blogs yet, but Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters praised the move by post.com. "I hope that the two bloggers they do select agree to occasionally square off on issues simultaneously, giving us a blogger version of Point/Counterpoint for the day," Morrissey wrote. "The comment sections should go wild for those debates."
Jon Henke at The QandO Blog also resurrected the idea of a third blogger, one with an indepedent/libertarian streak. He also offered his thoughts on the bloggers who could best fill each of the three slots.
Morrisey credited Raw Story with "an inside scoop from The Washington Post," but I'm not sure that's quite accurate. For those of us who keep tabs on JournalismJobs.com, it has been obvious since March 29 that washingtonpost.com still has its eyes on the blogosphere.
The site is not just looking for a couple of bloggers for freelance gigs; it's also looking to hire an "opinions and comments editor" who, among other things, "will manage and moderate user comments for a top 10 news and information site and contribute to a blog of outstanding comments and reviews."
The intersection between old and new media inside the Beltway is getting more interesting by the day.
UPDATE: Liberal bloggers don't expect post.com to hire one of their own, but Matt Stoller of MyDD seized on the news as an opportunity to boast.
"This move is an institutional recognition that genuinely progressive voices are not really included in public discourse," he wrote. "Jim Brady [the executive editor of post.com] might have learned something, or he might have just been pressured into it. Regardless, good job. Liberal blogs are making progress."
Posted by at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
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Tech Policy Pod: Telecom Reform Passes Test
The push for telecommunications reform passed its first test in the House this week when an Energy and Commerce subcommittee approved the bill that has dominated debate for two weeks. The vote was 27-4.
The drive for "network neutrality," which describes the effort to make sure dominant Internet providers do not charge extra for high-speed content, was a key point of contention. To find out what happened, listen to the latest episode of the Tech Policy Pod, which I record every Friday for National Journal's Technology Daily.
This week's audio roundup also covers the privacy of taxpayer data, the right to gamble online and the growth of tech "pork" in the federal budget.
Posted by at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)
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Lone Star Blogger: Texas Lawmaker Advises Peers
State lawmakers on Friday were lectured about e-democracy by an unlikely member of the online community: one of their few colleagues with a blog.
National Journal's Technology Daily reports that at a National Conference of State Legislatures conference, Texas Rep. Aaron Pena, the first elected official in his state to post a blog, told a group of his peers that engaging citizens online can be easy and cost-effective, but it also takes discipline.
Pena said blogs can facilitate discussions between constituents and their lawmakers that otherwise could not occur, and that it does not take much money or technical savvy to do so. He said he often posts to his blog from the House floor and during committee hearings, even though he claims his knowledge of the Internet is so poor that he often needs help performing the most basic tasks on his computer.
Pena, a Democrat, maintains two blogs using Google's free service -- one with a local focus and another to comment on national issues.
Posted by at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)
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I haven't had much spare time for blogging this week, but here are quick blurbs to serve as a recap of the week:
-- Sen. Trent Lott loves his share of the "pork" in the federal budget, so it goes without saying that the Mississippi Republican hates the PorkBusters who are out to force a politically kosher diet on congressmen. But Lott said it anyway this week.
"I'll just say this about the so-called PorkBusters," he told The Washington Post in an article about what is now being called the "railroad to nowhere." "I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina," he said.
The response from N.Z. Bear, one of the leaders of the PorkBusters campaign: "I'm sorry to say it, but we have just barely gotten started making the likes of Mr. Lott tired. So I hope he's ready for many sleepless nights to come."
-- Tom DeLay, R-Texas announced his plans to resign from the House, but GOP Bloggers wondered why some Democrats aren't doing the same. One contributor at The Huffington Post, meanwhile, urged the blogosphere to donate to the defense of Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., in his longrunning court battle against now-House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
-- The directors of RedState added their unified voice to the immigration debate, outlining seven principles for immigration policy.
-- MyDD highlighted the fightin' words of a Democratic official in Philadelphia: "We need to understand the Internet and to teach our people how to use it. We need to battle the bloggers on their own turf."
-- Borders is urging people to read banned books. That made Wizbang curious about the company's seemingly hypocritical decision to ban the April/May issue of Free Inquiry because it published some of Muslim cartoons. Ezra Klein shared the answer from the CEO of Borders.
-- Bloggers love to talk, so inviting them to panel discussions could be a mistake. Matt Stoller offered some advice at MyDD after he participated in an event in Maryland: "I have to warn future blog panel moderators -- bloggers are shy and don't tend to have much to say. I'm lying. Just cut us off. Two minutes for an answer to a question and then be brutal. Otherwise we'll run roughshod, mwah hah hah."
(Full disclosure: I was invited to participate in the Wednesday roundtable in question but had to decline because of other obligations -- and you can bet the panel moderator would have had a hard time cutting me off, too.)
-- Erick-Woods Erickson of RedState thinks Daylight Savings Time should become a presidential campaign issue.
-- The Week magazine named Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters as "blogger of the year" at a ceremony in Washington. Power Line, which won the honor last year, and Tapscott's Copy Desk were among those to praise the selection of Morrissey.
-- Will this be the "year of scrutiny" for the blogosphere and citizen journalism? Debbie Weil of BlogWrite thinks so.
-- And Hotline On Call looked at "The Funniest Photos On Official Congressional Web Sites."
Posted by at 06:46 AM | Comments (0)
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The Downside Of Sharing A Famous Name
Updated at the bottom with one of those amusing stories.
Most of the time, I don't mind sharing my name with the actor of "Lethal Weapon" fame.
Oh sure, I don't get many hits actually about me when I Google the name "Danny Glover," and I have to hear the same wisecracks almost every time I introduce myself, be it in person, by phone or by e-mail. But folks tend to remember me because of that shared name. Plus I have a few amusing stories to tell about people, including bloggers like Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, who have mistakenly assumed that I was the actor. One man even chastised me by e-mail for misrepresenting myself because I used the name my parents have called me since birth!
But there is a downside to sharing a famous moniker: When my celebrity namesake is the subject of unflattering attention, I have to see my name linked with some rather harsh commentary. Like this: "fringe lunatics Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte."
I have a feeling I may be seeing more of that in coming days, now that the actor Danny Glover has appeared with Rep. Cynthia McKinney to defend her actions in one of the wackiest tales on Capitol Hill in a while. And I know for a fact that a whole bunch of bloggers are going to be associating my name with that story because the name was featured prominently in a blast e-mail from the office of a prominent House Republican to bloggers this afternoon.
The story I'm talking about is all over the news and the blogosphere at the moment. It involves an altercation between McKinney, D-Ga., and a Capitol Hill police officer. She allegedly bypassed a security checkpoint and then assaulted the officer after he first verbally and then physically tried to stop her.
McKinney initially issued a statement of regret for the "unfortunate confrontation." But this afternoon, in an appearance with her lawyer and actors Glover and Belafonte, McKinney's lawyer characterized the lawmaker as "a victim of being black while in Congress."
So I guess for a few days anyway, I'll just have to get used to bloggers saying things like "expressing solidary with violent 'progressives'" is what Danny Glover does best.
UPDATE: I just received an e-mail from someone irate at me for backing my "sister," Cynthia McKinney. I'll say it again: I am not the actor! I'm Danny Glover, the journalist and wannabe blogger.
For your entertainment, here's the e-mail (bad grammar and typos edited out) that accused me, instead of the actor, of racism:
Mr. Glover, you should be ashamed of yourself! Now I understand why God will be erasing Hollywood from the earth. Soon God will push all of you actors in life into the ocean. I will not miss one of you, and I am hopeful that the remainder of us Americans will see the message from God that he has grown impatient and sees your hearts as unyielding to the word.Your latest stunt of going to back up your, in your own words, "sister," Ms. McKinney, who is a blight on society and an embarrasment to the human race that we are all supposed to belong to. In God's eyes we are all his children and should be all brothers and sisters; however, in your eyes the color of one's skin determines their connection on earth. I say goodbye and good riddance. The sooner the better for that state of Sodom and Gommorha to be gone!
Posted by at 07:12 AM | Comments (23)
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Heroes And Villains In Jill Carroll's Release
Blogs have been the subject of both praise and scorn for their work in the story surrounding last week's release of Jill Carroll, a freelance writer for The Christian Science Monitor who had been held captive in Iraq for nearly three months.
On the positive side, TechWeb News reports that about 200 bloggers helped push for Carroll's release by linking to a Monitor page dedicated to its reporter's captivity. The Committee to Protect Bloggers also spearheaded a campaign on her behalf.
"Jill is not a blogger but she's got that spirit," said a March 11 entry at the committee's site that encouraged bloggers to fight for Carroll. "She's an independent intellect who is fascinated by the world and has a desire to speak what she sees."
The Carroll-related scorn for bloggers is the result of numerous screeds attacking her in the days after her release because of comments she made while in captivity or still in hostile territory. Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice is among those taking bloggers to task for some of their knee-jerk reactions to comments that Carroll made under duress and disavowed once out of the Middle East.
Gandelman cited those reactions as evidence of a deeper problem with blogs. "Despite the incredibible journalistic and informational potential of blogs, weblogs in the early 21st century have evolved into extended op-ed pages, with occasional smatterings of original reporting and research. There's nothing wrong with that," he wrote.
"But blogs have also emerged as a kind of cyberspace talk radio where judgments are faster than traditional 'snap' judgments, supposition is angrily expressed as utter certainty, demonization is the rule, and some sites are so fixed on promoting personal political agendas and world views that they lose sight of the value of a bit of restraint before politically pigeonholing someone."
While noting that non-bloggers can be just as quick to pop off as bloggers, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds agreed with Gandelman to an extent. He added that "bloggers should try to think about this stuff first, and -- of course -- should be quick to correct when they're wrong. Just as Big Media should."
But in a post at MyDD, Matt Stoller said the Carroll episode reveals nothing about blogs and everything about a "racist and war-mongering right-wing movement that doesn't like a woman whose survival cuts against their narrative." He also took a potshot at "the nonpartisan new media blog pontificators who don't want to deal with the fact that the right-wing movement is populated by creepy racists."
UPDATE: The response to Stoller by Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House: "How many baseless (as in unspecified and unproven), scurrilous, laughably ignorant, witless, jaw-droppingly idiotic charges can one drooling, mouth-breathing refugee from the cuckoo land that calls itself the 'reality-based community' make and still be taken seriously by anyone over the age of 4?"
And blogger Danny Carlton, who openly writes under the alias Jack Lewis, links to an array of conservative blogs in an effort to rebuff attacks against conservative bloggers in general.
He wondered aloud what he was missing. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the critics, but here's one answer: Carlton did not mention a series of posts at The Corner, including this one by Jonah Goldberg. Those posts, at the group blog of one of the more familiar conservative media outlets, seem to have created much of the backlash.
UPDATE II: The Blogometer has more.
Posted by at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)
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If campaign finance law is your passion, then The Club For Growth blog should be on your list of places to visit this week, at least until the planned House vote on a campaign finance bill.
Why? Club blogger Andy Roth has the answer: "Barring any major surprises ... we're going to blog only about 527 reform until the fateful vote scheduled for Wednesday takes place. We anticipate that will be roughly 60 hours from now."
The debate is about a bill, H.R. 513, that would change the campaign reporting rules for so-called 527 groups, nonprofits that get their designation from the section of the tax code that defines them. Roth lamented that the issue is not getting more press.
He certainly will be doing his part to see that it does. He posted three entries within about an hour-and-a-half this morning, including a link to coverage at Capitol Report, the blog written by Tim Chapman of Townhall.com.
He also noted that, like the club, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste will be using the vote on the legislation to compile annual rankings for lawmakers.
Posted by at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
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