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Call it a Pajamahadeen party. CNN will host select bloggers on Election Night in order to generate instant reaction to results in the Nov. 7 mid-term election, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The list of 20-plus blogs that will be represented include Althouse, Americablog, Ankle Biting Pundits, Betsy's Page, Captain's Quarters, -- Crooks and Liars, Eschaton, La Shawn Barber's Corner and TalkLeft.

The party has sparked at least some negative feedback. "I am not getting paid to appear on CNN," Ed Morrissey wrote at Captain's Quarters after some of his readers questioned his decision to participate. "They are covering my expenses, but they have made no demands of positive coverage or even that I will watch CNN's coverage on this evening.

"They are covering my expenses, just as anyone who engaged me as a public speaker would do, and even then it's limited to a round-trip ticket and one night at a Marriott-brand hotel. I may have my price, but that and a free meal ain't it, if you know what I mean."

Posted by Danny at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

Bloggers paid by campaigns were a rarity two years ago -- so rare that their work and their ethics, whether for Republicans or Democrats, became fodder for controversy. Bloggers on the campaign dime (and off) have been even more controversial this year, but that is at least in part because there are far more of them.

With increasing frequency, candidates across the country are paying bloggers to write blogs, develop Web sites, connect with energetic allies on the Internet, respond to online critics, and advise their employers about how to behave in the blogosphere. Others are paid to do more traditional campaign work like communications consulting and opposition research.

Their pay scales range from a few hundred dollars a month to a few thousand, with some of the bloggers earning top dollar for their expertise.

The best-known example is Jerome Armstrong of MyDD, the "blogfather" of Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. Armstrong and Moulitsas rose to Internet fame together during the 2004 presidential race. But with the exception of the book "Crashing The Gate" that they co-authored this year, they have pursued different professional routes since then.

Moulitsas focused his energies on blog publications, in sports as well as politics, while Armstrong chose to make his money in political consulting for Democrats. He has earned a nice wad of dough, too -- more than $200,000 in less than two years.

Armstrong's first gig via his company Political Technologies was with then-Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, who was elected governor of the Garden State in 2005. State campaign records show that Armstrong earned $24,000 for "media time" and another $15,000 for "Web site fees."

From February through November of last year, Corzine also paid Matt Stoller, now a lead contributor at Armstrong's MyDD blog, nearly $31,000 for his work on the campaign's blog, Corzine Connection. Stoller netted another one-time fee of about $240 for "media time."

While working for Corzine, Armstrong was on the payroll of at least two other politicians: Rep. Sherrod Brown, who is now leading the Senate race in Ohio; and former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who recently announced that he will not seek the presidency in 2008.

Federal Election Commission records show that Armstrong netted more than $100,000 in his work for Brown from April 2005 through this July. The payments were primarily for Web design, hosting and services. Forward Together, the political action committee that Warner created as he pondered a presidential bid, had paid Armstrong $65,000 for "computer consulting services" through September, the last figures available.

In addition to making the most money for his Internet-related services, Armstrong arguably has been the focus of the most controversy. His work for Warner and connections to Moulitsas sparked a rush of critical commentary in both the traditional media and on blogs this summer.

On the right side of the blogosphere, Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits, who blogged at the now-defunct Crush Kerry in the 2004 presidential race, has done quite well as a new media consultant. His most notable job is with Straight Talk America, the political action committee of Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican is considered a leading GOP presidential contender in 2008.

Hynes' fees so far, according to FEC records, total $31,500 to his company, New Media Strategics. The latest $5,000 payment was made Sept. 1. After catching grief for not telling his readers of his work for McCain, even while penning friendly blog entries about the senator, Hynes also disclosed that he has done consulting for the seniors' group AARP.

At least two other PACs of presidential contenders have blog experts on their payroll.

The HILLPAC of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has retained both Jesse Berney and Peter Daou. Berney earns more than $1,300 a month, according to the PAC's finance records, and Daou, who still writes The Daou Report for the online magazine Salon, is paid $1,250 a month. Both joined HILLPAC a few months ago.

In September, Daou helped organized a luncheon between former President Bill Clinton and liberal bloggers. Although the gathering generated criticism for various reasons, Daou promised that it was the first of more to come.

Volunteer PAC, which is affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., also has a new-media whiz on staff. The PAC pays Stephen Smith a salary of about $1,870 a month.

He did not blog before joining VOLPAC but said in an e-mail interview that based on Frist's "real willingness to engage aggressively with the blogosphere and to harness new means of communications and activism, I jumped at the opportunity to assist him." Smith's projects for Frist have included creating a blog aimed at confirming John Bolton to head the United Nations and recruiting "iFrist volunteers" to work on behalf of the Republican agenda.

Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont in Connecticut hired two "netroots" experts fairly early in his campaign and added two more in the fall. The aides are Aldon Hynes, Charles Monaco, David Sirota and Tim Tagaris. (Hynes' wife, Kimberly, also is a paid scheduler for the campaign.)

Tagaris, the Internet director, earned nearly $21,000 from late July through Sept. 29, according to Lamont's October quarterly report. That ranks him among the campaign's highest-paid aides. Before joining the Lamont campaign, Tagaris blogged for the Democratic National Committee and for Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Brown paid him nearly $17,000 over four months in 2005.

Earlier this year, Tagaris told Beltway Blogroll that he eventually plans to run for office in Ohio.

High-profile bloggers like Armstrong, Patrick Hynes and Tagaris are just the tip of the emerging political Internet. While identifying blog experts can be a daunting task for multiple reasons, including the lack of electronic searches for many campaign finance records and the disparate approaches to disclosure taken by bloggers, it can be done.

Here are some of the paid campaign bloggers and new media advisers identified by Beltway Blogroll during weeks of research this year:

-- Dan Gerstein of the now-dormant LieberDem. He was a senior adviser to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., for years before opening his own consulting shop. After he stopped blogging at LieberDem, Gerstein recently rejoined Lieberman's campaign as a paid staffer. He received payments of $7,000 and $14,000 in September.

-- Jon Henke of QandO. He was hired by the campaign of Sen. George Allen, R-Va., after a string of verbal gaffes by the candidate. Henke was paid about $2,300 on Sept. 15.

-- Abraham (Josh) Chernila and Lowell Feld of Raising Kaine. This summer, they began working for Allen's rival in the Virginia Senate race, Democrat James Webb. They are the grassroots coordinator and netroots coordinator. The latest FEC report shows disbursements of about $7,700 to Chernila and nearly $3,600 to Feld.

-- Scott Shields. He has been on hiatus from MyDD since May to work as the Internet director for Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. Shields' starting monthly wage was $2,562; it was bumped up to $2,905 in September.

-- David All. The "spokesblogger" to Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., All currently is on leave and working for Senate candidate Mike Bouchard, R-Mich. In September, All was paid $6,468 for "communications consulting." The Bouchard campaign also spent more than $9,600 on Web development in August and September, presumably for its revamped, blog-based site. (All earned more than $49,000 while working for Kingston from July 2005 through January 2006, according to data at LegiStorm.)

-- Laura Packard. Her duties as Internet communications director for the campaign of Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., include writing at the campaign blog. Her salary is nearly $3,700 a month. Aaron Hofman also posts entries to Stabenow's blog, and he earns about $2,200 a month.

-- Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed. The Senate campaign of Rep. Mark Kennedy, R-Minn., has paid Brodkorb nearly $4,600 a month for press consulting since May, he said in a telephone interview. Brodkorb also said he received one-time payments of $5,500 each this year from GOP House candidate Michele Bachmann and the National Republican Congressional Committee. He offered press advice to Bachmann and did opposition research for the NRCC.

-- Julie Fanselow, the freelance writer behind Red State Rebels in Idaho. Since May, she has been the "blog manager" for Democrat Larry Grant at a rate of $1,300 a month. Despite Idaho's Republican leanings, Grant suddenly is a strong competitor for the open seat, arguably in part because of support from the blogosphere. Fanselow also disclosed that she did paid consulting work for another candidate in April.

-- Aaron Silverstein of Heading Left. The campaign payroll for House candidate Bill Winters, D-Colo., includes $850 a month for Silverstein's services. Silverstein also was hired this year as the get-out-the-vote coordinator for Jefferson County Democrats in Colorado.

-- Jesse Taylor. He quit blogging at Pandagon last year to blog instead for Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland and has been earning slightly more than $2,050 a month. Strickland, a Democrat, appears likely to defeat Republican Kenneth Blackwell.

-- Mindy Finn. As the director of new media and political technology for Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., she is one of the contributors to the campaign blog. Her salary is about $4,400 a month. Luke Bernstein ($4,300 a month) and Stanley Olshefski ($2,300 a month) also post entries. Jon Jones, the blogger for Santorum challenger Bob Casey, earns some $2,800 a month.

-- Andrew Tweeten. He earns about $2,600 a month as the blogger for Democrat Jon Tester in Montana, who currently is in a good position to oust Republican Sen. Conrad Burns.

-- Alex Armour. As the political director for Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., he writes at SchaBLOGsky, one of the earlier candidate blogs. Armour's salary is about $3,200 a month.

Posted by Danny at 08:30 AM | Comments (3)

The White House contacted select bloggers and offered them signed copies of a bill that mandates a publicly accessible database on federal spending, according to a post by Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters. Bloggers helped push the bill into enactment, and some were invited to the White House for the bill-signing ceremony.

The best part of the story: The bill bears the signatures of President Bush, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. "Ted 'Bridge to Nowhere' Stevens. Ted 'Secret Holder' Stevens," Morrissey said. "Victory tastes sweet indeed."

Posted by Danny at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)

From Captain's Quarters: "A little over a month ago, the [George] Allen campaign collected a series of quotes from the novels of James Webb, including the one depicting a sexual assault on a young boy, and wanted to have someone release them in order to answer the tactics of the Webb campaign. ... I politely declined to publish these excerpts. Others did, and that's their choice."

Who published the excerpts that have the Virginia Senate race in headlines across the country again? The Drudge Report broke the story when the Allen campaign sent the Webb novel excerpts to that site Thursday, and John Hawkins of Right Wing News actually called attention to other Webb writings a month ago.

But the important point from the Captain's Quarters blurb is the part about Allen's campaign going to the blogosphere to do its dirty work. Anyone familiar with blogs no doubt suspected that kind of behavior already; this is a rare instance where the tactic of seizing upon blogs as a catapult to sling mud has been laid bare.

UPDATE: A look at "The Season Of Sleaze" in the YouTube era: "[T]he one-two-three punch of Google, YouTube and a broadband connection means that anyone can do in a few seconds what I did yesterday -- learn about offensive ads in a newspaper story, then take a look at them yourself.

Posted by Danny at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)

"The Choice Could Not Be Clearer" -- that is the title of the post that House Speaker Dennis Hastert authored at RedState this afternoon in the final push toward Election Day.

Hastert, R-Ill., endorsed the notion that Democrats still view the world as if it hasn't changed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks while Republicans have a post-9/11 perception of reality. His message to voters: Choose the one that they think makes the most sense.

Here are excerpts of the entry:

To Republicans, the lessons of 9/11 are clear. We are at war with Islamist extremists and have been since at least as long ago as the first World Trade Center bombings in 1993. More to the point, they are at war with us. ... They will fight us whether we choose to fight back or not. As far as Republicans are concerned we are in a fight for our freedom and even our lives. ...

At a fundamental, instinctive level, Democrats think that there must be something we're doing to exacerbate all this, that there must be something they could do that would make Islamist suicide bombers pack up their bomb vests and stop threatening us. ... If only America would abandon its tough-talking, uncompromising stance, we could immediately spark the dawn of a kinder, gentler jihad. They think, in short, that 9/11 was an aberration, not part of a pattern. This is nothing short of insane.

Posted by Danny at 10:21 PM | Comments (1)

We editors in the news business are big on "enterprise" stories -- the kind that aren't tied to any particular news event, the kind that require skill at uncovering nuggets buried deep within bureaucracies, the kind that are made easier by the Freedom of Information Act.

The great thing about FOIA is that it's not just for journalists. Any citizen can use it, and that includes bloggers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation knows that, and after having seen some amazingly enterprising citizen journalists break important stories, the group is eager to train more people to do the same. That's why EFF today released a primer on FOIA that it bills as a legal guide for bloggers.

Among other things, the guide points bloggers to the "FOI letter generator" produced by the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. The guide also notes the conditions for getting fees waived for FOIA requests and for expediting requests through the bureaucracy.

The guide was published online at the tail end of a week when journalists have been debating the future of investigative reporting in the face of staff cutbacks at newspapers. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz sparked the discussion with a column that praised the media for breaking "many of the major probes involving members of Congress." But he suggested that cutbacks could undermine such efforts.

Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media made this point in response: "We should worry about the economic implosion that is costing jobs and sapping resources from investigative reporting. But many in the Big Media have been losing their appetite for this for some time. We need to find ways to move ahead on the assumption that the negative trend will continue."

That's where bloggers -- and groups like EFF that are giving them free and valuable advice -- enter the equation. Bloggers have available to them the tools that they need to unearth and write the best stories of tomorrow, if they will but seize the power.

Posted by Danny at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

Online conspiracy theorists who think bureaucrats are out to get blogs are spreading another rumor this week. But Defense Department officials told Federal Computer Week that all the chatter about a Pentagon-endorsed Internet blockade against liberal blogs is wrong.

Lt. Gen. Steven Boutelle, the Army’s chief information officer, said there is no policy to filter Web access based on political content before the November election. “We would never block political Web sites. ... The Army does not do that. That's something we've never done,” Boutelle said.

Wonkette is behind the current outcry over government policies on Internet use that are designed to keep employees from wasting taxpayer time and dollars on pornography, gambling and other sites. Blogs also have been targeted as a category in some instances because of regular access to them by workers who do not need to read them for their jobs.

Wonkette tackled the topic after receiving an e-mail purportedly from a politically liberal Marine in Iraq who could not read Wonkette and other sites. "I have gone through lists of liberal sites, and most of them are blocked," the e-mail said. "I've also taken the time to go to some conservative sites ... none of which are blocked."

As has been the case with other ego-driven bloggers who hear from readers that access to their sites have been blocked, Wonkette did not bother calling the Army for comment before reporting the allegation.

The report in Federal Computer Week noted that the Army has no official policy on blocking blogs, but Boutelle acknowledged that unit commanders and systems administrators may be acting locally.

Air Force Capt. Gary Arasin, a Central Command spokesman, said the military in general focuses on categories like porn and high-bandwidth audio and video, not on specific sites Arasin said. But a systems administrator could implement Internet filters without telling senior officials, said an official at WebSense, which supplies Web-filtering software to the Army.

“We don’t know exactly how they use it,” the source said. “They can choose the policies however they want to.”

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

As noted at National Journal's Technology Daily this morning

A gay rights group on Wednesday fired one of its employees after it was discovered that he had created a blog that published copies of the suggestive e-mails that former Rep. Mark Foley sent to a teenager.

The New York Times reports that the Human Rights Campaign said it first learned of the employee's actions this week and immediately fired him for misusing the group's resources.

After the messages appeared at Stop Sex Predators, ABC News released its own independent report, which resulted in the disclosure of more sexually explicit messages from Foley, R-Fla., to House pages.

The creator of the Web site declined requests sent by e-mail to identify himself after news of the scandal broke. Instead, he posted a message urging the news media to ask questions about "when the Republican leadership knew about it, what they did, how they were connected, what favors took place, etc."

Posted by Danny at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

Reprinted from National Journal's Technology Daily (also available through National Journal partner MSNBC)

By Heather Greenfield

The 2006 campaign is about to be "Google-bombed." Both liberal and conservative bloggers have embarked on plans to manipulate the Google search engine so that negative articles about the candidates they oppose appear near the top, potentially influencing undecided voters.

Liberal bloggers had the idea first. Chris Bowers of MyDD outlined the strategy Sunday. He said the plan involves purchasing "Google AdWords that will place each negative article on the most common searches for each Republican candidate. Simultaneously, I will produce an article on MyDD that embeds that negative article into a hyperlink."

Bowers asked bloggers to help add links, and they spent the next few days compiling negative news articles on Republican candidates in about 50 targeted races.

Conservative blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News learned of the strategy and urged his allies to "fight fire with fire." Hawkins expressed concern that the Google-bombing campaign just might work for Democrats.

"Who would be doing a Google search on a particular candidate in the final days of a campaign?" he wrote. "Probably an independent voter who is trying to get more information about a candidate. And if the first article he runs across is a brutal hit piece, well, that could be the information that helps him make up his mind."

Pete Leyden, director of the Democratic think tank the New Politics Institute, just published advice on search-engine strategy. "It will definitely work," he said. "So few people are buying political search ads [that] a blogger can get it for literally pennies per eyeball."

"It's a very smart move," Leyden said.

Jeff Mascott of Rightclick Strategies, who advises clients about online strategies, said buying Google AdWords and placing them "is a very cost-effective way in reaching an individual." But he also said that with Google updating its search criteria every 30 days, the Google-bombing campaign likely would not work in time for the election.

Mike Connell of Connell Donatelli Inc., online strategists for conservative candidates, agreed. "It may not be too little, but it may be too late," Connell said.

Google is not thrilled by the idea. "We don't condone the practice of Google-bombing or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results," spokesman Ricardo Reyes said. He added that such campaigns are not impossible but are unlikely to be effective given the complexity of the Google search algorithm.

Before the bombing campaign, a Google search of Sen. George Allen, R-Va., found a Washington Post article about of his alleged racially disparaging remark just below his campaign Web site in ranking. A search of Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., also found mostly negative articles among the top 10 sites anyway.

Kari Chisholm, a Democratic new media strategist for one of Burns' opponents who lost in the Democratic primary, doubts that the Google-bombing campaign will be very useful. "It's not about chasing the 1 percent of voters that haven't figured out there's a difference between [Democrat] Jon Tester and Burns," Chisholm said.

Posted by Danny at 04:28 PM | Comments (1)

The military's love-hate relationship with blogs, which I mentioned in a column in the spring, has been on display in recent days, with the Pentagon sending mixed signals to bloggers. Here is a recap of some of the coverage:

-- U.S. Central Command sent an e-mail to bloggers in order to encourage them point readers to information on the CENTCOM Web site. One goal is to virally spread news that may be ignored by major media.

"I would like to invite you to check out our Web site. ... It's one more resource for information and you're free to use any of it (video, audio, photos and articles) in conversations on your blog," the e-mail said. "Also, if you would like, you can be added to our mailing list. ... Most of the time we can get CENTCOM information out to bloggers before it appears in the main stream media."

Spc. Chris Erickson, a member of CENTCOM's "electronic media engagement team," sent the e-mail, which was obtained and published by Raw Story. The blog outreach effort was first disclosed in a March press release.

-- While the Pentagon brass clearly think enough of blogs to solicit their help in spreading good news, commanders in the field apparently don't share that view, as evidenced by two recent incidents:

1) Camp Lejeune did not respond by telephone or e-mail to a blogger's questions about body armor for soldiers, and an official at Camp Pendleton answered by saying that questions from bloggers don't merit a response.

"We talked to [name withheld] at Camp Pendleton, and were told that the Department of Defense does not support blogs," Captain's Journal reported. "We responded by posing the following question: So if we were the L.A. Times or some similar MSM outlet, you would support our questions? In a profound revealing response, Camp Pendleton said, “but sir, you aren't the L.A. Times. You're a … blog!"

2) Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, the director of the combined press information center in Iraq, refused a request from renowned milblogger Michael Yon to embed with U.S. troops in Iraq. "I do not recognize your Web site as a media organization that we will use as a source to credential journalists covering ... operations," Johnson wrote in a July 18 e-mail that Yon cited in the Oct. 30 issue of Weekly Standard.

Yon said Johnson "has repeatedly gone on record decrying the lack of press coverage in Iraq, all while alienating the last vestiges of any press willing to spend month after month in combat with American soldiers."

After reading the magazine article, blogger Michelle Malkin wrote, "I hope the Pentagon has a good answer to this that does not involve sneering at milbloggers." And in an update to that entry that further demonstrates the military's inconsistency about bloggers, she noted that journalist/blogger Michael Fumento made it through the military public affairs maze and is now blogging from Iraq.

-- As a resident of Manassas, Va., I was particularly interested in a story about a Virginia National Guard unit dedicated to watching blogs. The 10 members of the data-processing unit scours official and unofficial Army Web sites for "operational security violations," or OPSEC. That's military-speak for disclosing information that could put U.S. troops in jeopardy.

Milblogs like Andi's World and BlackFive insist that they appreciate the need for maintaining OPSEC, but they warned that strict military policies on blogging could do more harm than good by debilitating a powerful medium.

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald blasted the military for its approach to blogs. "When something good is happening in the military, you can rely on someone high up and behind the lines to try to kill it. Slowly. Bureaucratically. Bleed the life out of it," he wrote. "That is what is happening to milblogging, the Internet phenomenon that lets soldiers in Iraq tell us what they see, do and think."

Posted by Danny at 01:53 PM | Comments (2)

Sen. George Allen almost sounded like a blogosphere expert in his guest post at RedState yesterday.

You would never suspect from his opening praise for bloggers and their importance to candidates that Allen, R-Va., waited until August -- after he had been busted by the media and derided in the blogosphere -- to hire a blogger as a new media coordinator. Oh, the irony of Allen waxing eloquent about blogs.

After bowing before the altar of the political blogosphere, Allen then gave obeisance to Porkbusters and other bloggers for helping push into law a bill requiring a publicly searchable federal budget database. "That means greater transparency and accountability for American taxpayers," Allen wrote. "I was proud to be a sponsor of that bill."

All of that deference to bloggers was Allen's way of backing into the lead for the real topic of his blog entry: cutting federal spending by enacting a "taxpayers bill of rights," among other things.

Then for good measure, he closed with a redundant nod to Porkbusters. "I applaud Porkbusters' citizen activism, which aims to increase transparency in government in order to cut wasteful and unnecessary pork-barrel spending," he wrote. "I share that goal."

Allen failed to mention his support for budget earmarks directed to Virginia, including defense earmarks he touted earlier this month and various transportation expenditures, energy and water projects, and more in fiscal 2006. To be fair, he was very transparent in touting such projects by press release.

UPDATE: Allen's foray into the red half of the blogosphere appears to have worked in a political sense. Captain's Quarters cited the senator's entry as evidence that he has joined the fiscal reform effort, unlike his Democratic opponent, James Webb.

But like Allen himself, Ed Morrissey ignored Allen's spending record in the Senate, focusing instead on what Webb might do as a senator. "Readers will not find anything about fiscal responsibility on Webb's issues pages," Morrissey wrote. "They will find the basis of a lot of public projects, which usually means higher taxes and more waste. ... One Virginian at least sounds serious about fiscal responsibility, and it isn't Webb."

Posted by Danny at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

Admittedly no fan of Sen. Barack Obama, Matt Stoller of MyDD wants the Illinois Democrat to run for president in 2008 anyway.

But don't think for a minute that Stoller is ready to support Obama. Instead, he wants to put the Democratic Party's latest "rock star" to the test and, if it comes to it, expose his "symbolic emptiness."

"[W]hen Obama has to face his first round of negative ads, and his first real negative campaign on a state or national level, does he really want to face the charge that he's a pretty face and an empty suit?" Stoller wrote after Obama announced that he is considering a presidential run. "Is that what he wants to be known as? I hope not. That's not what I want for this incredibly talented and brilliant man, and that's not what I hope for our Democratic Party."

Oddly enough, Bull Moose Marshall Wittmann, a regular whipping boy for liberal bloggers, is on the same wavelength as Stoller when it comes to Obama's substance. While Wittmann said Obama "appears to have an impulse to transcend the polarized partisan divide and seek a new politics of national unity," he argued that the senator has yet to offer any "distinctive policy, proposal or position."

Wittmann differs from Stoller, however, in that he said Obama's promise is to fashion himself in the moderate mold of policymaker. He is just waiting for Obama to "challenge the liberal orthodoxy." "An Obama candidacy has great potential -- but only if he truly challenges his party and our country," Wittmann wrote.

If Obama runs, it will be interesting to see whether he moves more toward the left, as Stoller hopes, or the center, as Wittmann would like to see.

Posted by Danny at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

Ned Lamont surely must be jealous of fellow Democrat James Webb.

Up in Connecticut, Lamont put another $2 million of his own money into his Senate campaign Saturday. That brings to $12.7 million his total personal investment in his bid to unseat Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat running as an independent since Lamont beat him in the Aug. 8 primary.

In Virginia, on the other hand, it took Webb less than $1,000 to vault him into a competitive race with Republican Sen. George Allen.

The Old Dominion's seat looked to be safely Republican until August. That is when Allen referred to Webb volunteer S.A. Sidarth as a "macaca." Sidarth had been videotaping Allen's campaign events, and the macaca incident, which some people interpreted as a racist reference to Sidarth's Indian heritage, triggered a series of negative stories about Allen that continued for weeks.

According to the October quarterly campaign filing at the Federal Election Commission, Webb spent all of $918.21 for Sidarth's services -- $433.21 for "travel reimbursement" and another $485 for "reimbursement," both on Aug. 24. The campaign no doubt considers it money well spent.

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

Secret ballots are taken for granted in America these days, but it wasn't always the norm that it is now. The first president elected by secret ballot was Grover Cleveland in 1892, so until Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, more presidents had been elected by open ballot than in secret.

Polling in private emerged for good reasons -- fears of intimidation and bribery before voting, and retaliation afterward -- and the United States isn't likely to return to officially sanctioned open ballots for the same reasons. But Americans remain free to voluntarily disclose how they voted, and in a political blogosphere that has become increasingly obsessed with transparency, that's exactly what is happening.

On Friday, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds availed himself of the early-voting option in Tennessee and invited his readers to vote themselves by guessing which Senate candidate, Republican Bob Corker, Democrat Harold Ford Jr. or write-in Frank J., won Reynolds' support. Forty percent guessed that he voted for Corker, and 36 percent said Ford. The rest went to Frank J.

The majority guessed correctly. "I liked Harold Ford Jr. when we interviewed him, and I wouldn't shed any tears if he were elected; he'd raise the caliber of the Democrats in the Senate," Reynolds said. "But when push came to shove, I voted for Corker. I liked him, too, and ultimately the combination of Ford's 'F' rating on gun rights and the sleazy 'outing' behavior of the Democrats was such that I just felt I had to vote Republican in this race."

In the local House race, Reynolds sided with Democrat John Greene in a "protest vote" against Republican Jimmy Duncan Jr.. He also backed Democrat Phil Bredesen for governor and, true to his libertarian bent, voted against a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

(Two votes for Democrats and one against an amendment also opposed by the Democratic Party. So why is it that leading Democratic bloggers hate Instapundit so? Oh yeah, his support for the Iraq war.)

Reynolds may well have started a trend in the blogosphere. Today, Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters disclosed not only his absentee ballots in Minnesota but those of his wife as well.

"Both of us supported the Republican candidates on our ballot, and did so gladly," he wrote. They also wrote Morrissey's name in for mayor of Eagan. "I sense a grassroots groundswell for a new mayor here in Minnesota's eighth-largest city," he said. "I'll check after Election Day to see if any other Eagan residents decided to cast votes for Edward Morrissey, and I'll be sure to report on the results. I'm already preparing my concession speech."

People's political leanings generally are quite obvious on their blogs, so such voting disclosures aren't likely to surprise many readers. Even so, it's interesting to see the current generation of Americans so willing to make their ballots open to the world on the Internet when their political forbears fought so hard to keep ballots secret.

Posted by Danny at 09:10 AM | Comments (7)

This is a story that has nothing to do with blogging but that begs to be told far and wide.

The characters: A farmer; his wife, who teaches elementary school; and three children who get A's in school.

The setting: A Saturday morning on a Pittsylvania County farm in the heartland of Virginia.

The plot: Wife is home alone; husband drives up to find police vehicles in driveway; men in flak jackets, with pistols drawn, drop into shooting position as farmer approaches; husband and wife are grilled and held for five hours in home as a para-military team searches it; chidlren are interrogated upon getting home from school; computers and digital equipment are seized.

The climax: Nine days later, chief county investigator returns equipment and says, in effect, "Whoops, sorry about that, got the wrong Internet address."

The farmer's outrage (quite restrained, if you ask me): "I support the police and their efforts, but I believe every United States citizen should fear and be angry about these tactics. I will not rest until I know what went wrong in this investigation. I pray that you will not, either."

Posted by Danny at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)

Republican bloggers are fretting the prospect of their party losing control of Congress when voters go to the polls in 18 days, but I get the distinct impression they will be celebrating if at least one Democrat is re-elected.

A new Quinnipac University poll in Connecticut shows that Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat who is running as an indepedent after losing the Aug. 8 primary, has a 17-point lead over Democratic nominee Ned Lamont.

After word of the poll spread, it didn't take long for another round of the curious cross-party gloating from the GOP blogosphere that ensued a couple of weeks ago after another poll. That Reuters/Zogby poll actually showed Lieberman with a stronger, 20-point edge.

The reason for the joy is simple: To GOP bloggers, the race isn't about Lieberman, Lamont or the potential spoiler in the race, Republican candidate Alan Schlesinger. It's about their online enemies, the netroots who helped fuel Lamont to Democratic victory in August.

Hence post-polling statements like this at GOP Bloggers: "Do the liberal netroots feel stupid now?" Or this at Hot Air: "I'll ask again: Where are the nutroots now?"

Former Republican and enthusiastic Lieberman supporter Marshall Wittmann also scoffed at the netroots and their "the people-powered fraud." Writing at Bull Moose, he noted that Lamont is having to spend his own millions on the race.

"It appears that despite all of the fevered efforts of the nutroot community, the fervent keyboarders are a bit cheap," Wittmann said. "They may be 'crashing the gates,' but they aren't exactly making a rush on their bank accounts for their boy, Negative Ned."

Democratic bloggers aren't exactly ignoring the Connecticut Senate race. As I noted in today's "Blog Bits," Matt Stoller of MyDD is in the Constitution State now to cover the contest, courtesy of readers who paid his way, and blogs like Daily Kos and Firedoglake still write about the race.

But based both on the (in)frequency of their entries and the tone of them, the netroots simply aren't as engaged in the battle as they once were.

The troops simply didn't need stern lectures like this a few weeks ago: "If you aren't happy with what you are hearing about poll numbers or establishment Democratic support for the Connecticut Senate race, well, here's the solution: Get up off your butt and do something about it. You can volunteer for Ned's campaign, for canvassing, or calling, or whatever."

UPDATE: Democrat Jon Tester, another netroots favorite, has a good shot at defeating Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont. But if both Tester and Lamont lose, Jim Geraghty of National Review Online said, "I may need medical attention as a result of laughing so hard at the netroots."

Posted by Danny at 07:50 PM | Comments (0)

Michelle Malkin thinks the European Union wants to stifle video bloggers.

"This proposal to force Internet innovators to apply for broadcast licenses is an attempt to squash competition under the guise of protecting children and regulating 'hate speech,'" she wrote.

Malkin urged bloggers to contact the EU Council and object to the plan. She's also tracking other coverage of the issue.

Ars Technica addressed the topic, too, and News.com compiled some blog reactions.

The rest of this week's blog bits:

-- Bloggers are being credited with stopping a military aircraft sale to Venezuela. "That effort failed once the bloggers alerted Congress about the double-dealing," said J. Michael Waller of the Institute of World Politics. Captain's Quarters commented on the decision.

-- A Canadian politician was suspended from his party because of his blog.

-- Congressional Quarterly published a belated piece on the power of bloggers to move legislation when they unite. The focus was on the new law to create a federal budget database that National Journal has been covering since August -- at Beltway Blogroll, Technology Daily and GovExec.com. It's nice to see CQ join the party ... now that it's over. (Full disclosure: I worked as a reporter and editor at CQ for nearly seven years, so I coudn't resist that dig at a rival.)

-- The blog-backed Rightroots fundraising effort for select Republican congressional candidates netted more than $242,000 from its Aug. 1 launch through Oct. 15, according to a recap of the project at Right Wing News. Rightroots merited an article in Roll Call, as noted by Raw Story.

-- With the help of her readers, Arianna Huffington penned a concession speech for Connecticut Democrat Ned Lamont in an attempt to motivate him in the last weeks of his bid to unseat Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

-- Matt Stoller of MyDD is back in Connecticut blogging for Lamont after readers donated the $3,000 (and more) that Stoller said he needed to cover the race. It's the second such request by Stoller in the past couple of months. Just before Connecticut's Aug. 8 primary, he solicited sponsors to pay his tab, and they did.

Chris Bowers of MyDD also recently made another of his trips on the campaign trail, this time for Dan Maffei, the Democratic candidate in New York's 26th District. And Jerome Armstrong, who has done Internet work for Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, returned to blogging about Ohio (and other places) last week, after former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner announced that he will not run for president in 2008. Armstrong had mostly quit blogging after starting to work for candidates like Brown and Warner.

-- Like Stoller, Liz Mair of GOPProgress is reporting from the road in Connecticut this week. But she is covering four key House races in addition to the Senate battle. Mair also is visiting other states, including Rhode Island, in her campaign tour.

-- The San Antonio Express-News surveyed the lay of the political blog land in Texas and concluded that blogs "aren't kingmakers, but they sometimes have the power to bedevil campaigns by concentrating attention on candidates' foibles, past transgressions and records."

-- Erick Erickson of RedState endorsed the Libertarian candidate in Texas' 22nd District, the seat once held by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Matt Lewis of The Ballot Box said that is the wrong call. Erickson responded to the criticism by pointing interested parties to the online contribution page for the GOP candidate in the race.

-- A Democratic political consultant in Tennessee threated to sue a Republican blogger for suggesting a connection between the consultant and the release of e-mails in the ongoing House cyber-sex scandal. Instapundit's analysis of the consultant's threats: "This generally backfires."

-- Did Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos sell out to big oil in the form of a Chevron ad that points to an "astroturf" Web site? That's what some of his readers are saying.

-- A councilwoman in Long Beach, Calif., blogs as a way to connect with her constituents, but she is a rarity. One councilman admitted that he had never heard of a blog, though he was intrigued by the idea.

-- The ConvergeSouth new media summit in Greensboro, N.C., was just a week ago, but attendees already are talking about how to improve the conference next year, which would be the event's third. One blogger crafted his "fantasy program" for the self-described "unconference." Another celebrated the role that "powerful women" played in this year's event.

-- Last week's Friday festival included an item on Wal-Mart's continued troubles in the blogosphere. There is plenty more to read on the topic this week.

For starters, the Edelman public relations firm, where RedState blogger Mike Krempasky works on the Wal-Mart account, is catching as much or more heat as the retail chain and was pressured into a belated apology. Potomac Flacks and Publishing 2.0 have more on that angle.

BusinessWeek also ran an article titled "Wal-Mart vs. The Blogosphere," and BlogHer reacted to the controversy.

-- Liberal blogger and commentator Kirsten Powers briefly opened Powers-Point to reader comments by request but quickly had to shut the feature down because of the "liberal intolerance" of a "liberal nut."

-- Daily Kos and Eschaton are sick of unsolicited e-mails, which I can understand. But what I find striking is how often bloggers on the left get irritated and lecture their readers about how to behave online. I rarely, if ever, see the same leave-me-alone/go-blog-on-your-own-site attitude from bloggers along other points on the political spectrum. Why is that? Just curious.

-- The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a blogger/activist "is well on his way to becoming the longest-jailed journalist in U.S. history." The blogger's lawyer recently described for the newspaper the video that landed him in the slammer for refusing to turn it over to police.

-- Some blawgers, that ever-growing population of bloggers who are lawyers, are facing scrutiny from state bar associations over their online musings. The issue: Should attorney advertising rules be expanded to cover blawgs?

-- From BBC News: "There's not just an oil boom in Saudi Arabia -- there's a blogging boom, too."

-- As the father of three children adopted from Guatemala, I'm always looking for reasons to write about adoption. John Hawkins of Right Wing News gave me a reason this week when he jumped to the defense of singer Madonna in her attempt to adopt a child from the African nation of Malawi. The Washington Post reports that the adoption also is of great interest in Britain, Madonna's adopted home.

-- I also love to write about Guatemala, and Wizbang gave me a reason to tackle that topic. "The Land Of Eternal Spring" is in the running for a seat on the U.N. Security Council and is leading Venezuela. I blame Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez for the string of amusingly bizarre yet annoying e-mails I received recently, so Guatemala gets my support for two reasons.

Posted by Danny at 07:02 AM | Comments (0)

Renowned political analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia tackled the subject of blogs in an appearance on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" last night, and he didn't have much nice to say about them. Neither did show host Bill O'Reilly.

Think Progress has a partial transcript, and here are the key excerpts:

Sabato: "The blogs on left and right, and I mean way left and way right, the things they come up with daily, the vitriol, the vile nature of the comments. And then they have hundreds and hundreds of people e-mailing."

O'Reilly: "these are hired guns. These are people hired — being paid very well to smear and try to destroy people. ... If I can get away with it, boy, I'd go in with a hand grenade."

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

Captain's Quarters is based in Minnesota, but that geographical fact didn't keep Republican Sen. Rick Santorum from making an appeal for re-election in Pennsylvania at the well-trafficked blog.

"If you want to keep your taxes low, defeat the Islamofascist threat to our freedom, and restore sanity to our judicial system by appointing judges who won't re-write the Constitution every chance they get, then my victory in Pennsylvania will help protect you and your family from the radical left seeking to seize control of the United States Senate this November," Santorum wrote.

Besides "Islamofascist," he saturated the post with plenty of other code words no doubt designed to rally the conservative base. Two other examples: "Bill Clinton's massive tax hikes" and "we cannot cut and run from Iraq."

The base heard the message. GOP Bloggers responded to Santorum's blog post by urging its readers to volunteer if they live in Pennsylvania or contribute to Santorum if they live elsewhere.

The message: "We can all understand that our congressional GOP hasn't been exactly stellar -- but they are still our GOP and the only party who will even so much as give conservatism a second glance. Too much is at stake for anyone to indulge in a fit of perfectionism -- with the life of our nation on the line in the war on terrorism, we daren't let the perfect become the enemy of the good."

Posted by Danny at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

Yesterday, I stumbled across Radar Online's list of "America's Dumbest Congressmen." Today, I discovered that Rolling Stone has a similar list -- "The 10 Worst Congressman" -- in its latest issue.

There is little overlap in names between the two lists. At this rate, every lawmaker seeking re-election could become equally infamous before the election. The familiar cries to "throw the bums out" can't be far behind.

The Rolling Stone list, part of the magazine's cover story on "The Worst Congress Ever," is different from Radar Online's in ways other than the names. For starters, it is about as partisan as it could get. Nine of the 10 lawmakers on the list are Republicans, and the only Democrat, Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana, is under federal investigation and had his homes and congressional office raided.

Rolling Stone also picked only House members, leaving the impression either that: a) the magazine's editors think the Senate is squeaky clean, or b) that Rolling Stone doesn't realize the Senate is part of Congress. I vote for the latter.

At any rate, here are the magazine's picks for worst congressmen:

10) Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo.
9) Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky.
8) Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.
7) Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif.
6) Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.
5) Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.
4) Rep. William Jefferson, D-La.
3) Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska (as at Radar Online, he is recognized in part for the "bridge to nowhere" that so animated bloggers)
2) Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.
1) House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

Readers are discussing the list, including its partisan slant, at National Affairs Daily, the blog of Rolling Stone. (Who knew Rolling Stone had a blog ... and especially one focused on national affairs?)

Posted by Danny at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)

The Stanford University medical school yesterday released a study that pajama-clad bloggers undoubtedly will appreciate.

Based on a telephone survey, the researchers found that more than one in eight Americans admit to some sort of "problematic Internet use." Some people even visit their doctors as a result.

Lead author Elias Aboujaoude listed the impulse to "make blog entries" among the compulsions, and he said such drives are "not unlike what sufferers of substance abuse or impulse-control disorders experience: a repetitive, intrusive and irresistible urge to perform an act that may be pleasurable in the moment but that can lead to significant problems on the personal and professional levels."

"Repetitive, intrusive and irresistible urge" -- yep, that sounds like my symptoms. And save for the "single" part, I fit into all of these categories, at least until I hit 40 in a few weeks: "single, college-educated, white male in his 30s, who spends approximately 30 hours a week on non-essential computer use."

I wonder: Do they have an anti-blogotic yet?

P.S. Please don't tell my wife about this blog entry. She has been trying to get me to quit cold turkey.

Posted by Danny at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

The campaign of Rep. Chet Edwards has dismissed an intern who posted to his blog, Affable Athiest, an image of a desecrated American flag.

The dismissal came after another blog, Right of Texas, broke the story and after RedState wondered aloud whether Edwards, D-Texas, Justin Mueller, would can the intern.

"The photo of the individual with the desecrated American flag and offensive t-shirt is revolting and in direct conflict with the values of Chet Edwards and our campaign," campaign manager Chris Turner told Right of Texas. "He has volunteered sporadically, and given his actions, he has been told that he is not welcomed in our campaign again.”

Mueller commented on the dismissal in a post at his blog. He claimed that he was "expunged from the Democratic Party.

"Well, thanks to the wonderful folks down at Right of Texas, a right-wing blog, I have been kicked off of the Chet Edwards campaign," Mueller wrote. "Apparently, being opposed to the mass slaughter of innocent people, and then expressing that disgust is enough to get you hounded and expelled from any traditional electoral channels whatsoever."

Posted by Danny at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

There may not be a blog conspiracy at the Interior Department, but there is an irrational fear of blogs by the chief information officer, W. Hord Tipton.

Speaking yesterday at a breakfast hosted by the