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January 30, 2007CapitolLink: Cutting The U.S. Pipeline To Iraq
Sen. Russell Feingold today will introduce a bill to halt funds to Iraq in order to force the redeployment of U.S. troops there. Here's how the Wisconsin Democrat described the measure at The Huffington Post:
The first and most important thing to know is that my plan does not cut funding for the troops. Our troops will continue to receive the salaries, equipment, training and protection they need.What I am proposing is ending funds for the continued deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq six months after the enactment of the bill. This will require the president to safely redeploy troops from Iraq by that date.
My bill does provide exceptions to allow for specific types of military missions within Iraq past the six-month deadline, such as targeted counter-terrorism efforts, the protection of American personnel and infrastructure, and a limited number of troops needed to help train Iraqi security forces. But these will be limited forces used for specific missions.
Posted by Danny at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
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Reprinted from yesterday afternoon's edition of Technology Daily
Effort To Destroy 'Google Bombs' Expected To Fail
By Heather Greenfield
President Bush is no longer a "miserable failure" -- at least not according to Google search-engine results.
The company said it has updated its algorithm to make it more difficult for online activists to launch "Google bombs" against politicians like Bush whom they oppose. But the masterminds of more recent Google bombs said the search expert's attempt to control its technology may fail.
Google bombers manipulate search rankings by creating links within their sites -- and encouraging others to do the same -- to boost the connection between certain words and online content to send political messages.
For the past two years, a Google search of the term "miserable failure" directed users to Bush's official White House biography as the top search result. Software programmer and political activist George Johnston claimed credit for that Google bomb.
Google has been aware of that episode and about 100 other Google bombs, including liberal and conservative attempts to link negative articles with congressional candidates in the 2006 mid-term election. But until now, Google has maintained that it was hesitant to intervene and alter the results by hand, as that would create other integrity issues.
"Because these pranks are normally for phrases that are well off the beaten path, they haven't been a very high priority for us," Matt Cutts, who heads Google's Internet spam team, explained in a posting on the company blog.
Cutts said Google was motivated to change the algorithm because "over time we've seen more people assume that [the political messages] are Google's opinion, or that Google has hand-coded the results for these Google-bombed queries. That's not true, and it seemed like it was worth trying to correct that misperception."
While he offered few details on the fixes, he did say that a Google search on some bombed terms is now more likely to yield news articles describing the bombing practice. That is true for "miserable failure" and an attack linking British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the word "liar."
Johnston accused Google of caving to Republican pressure and questioned how effective the new algorithm really is, by offering alternative search suggestions at his blog.
Google's update prompted a discussion on the ethics of Google bombs at News for Nerds.
Chris Bowers of MyDD, who most recently launched a Google-bombing against likely Republican presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona, noted that the practice has not been dismantled by Google's update. He also said it is inherently harder to remove Google bombs based on a politician's name with links to particular news articles.
"I am going to look into this, and into developing a more comprehensive search-optimization strategy before going forward with the next phase of the John McCain Google-bomb campaign," Bowers said. "This campaign does not end here."
Google acknowledged that the latest changes will not address every prank. In fact, the Google bomb that conservatives launched to counteract "miserable failure" is still working. A Google search of the term "great president" now leads to Bush's official biography.
"Contrary to Google's lies that they are better at detecting Google bombs, it is more than likely their algorithm just excludes whitehouse.gov from criticism," Johnston said.
Posted by Danny at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)
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Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi is no fan of the blogosphere or the Internet as a whole. In an interview with the New Sunday Times, the weekend edition of the New Straits Times, he blamed his online critics for spreading "lies after lies" to discredit his government and "rubbish" his administration.
Asia Media, a service of the Asia Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles has the story as reprinted from the Straits Times. "I know there are people who are trying their best to ridicule me," the prime minister said. "They make a mountain out of a molehill. They just want to rubbish me."
Posted by Danny at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
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Apple Inc.'s unsuccessful lawsuit against two bloggers it accused of helping expose trade secrets has cost the company $700,000 as a reimbursement for the bloggers' legal fees.
The bloggers argued that California's "shield law," which lets journalists protect anoymous sources, applied to them as they concealed their sources of information about forthcoming Apple products. A state court sided with bloggers last spring, and Apple dropped the case in the summer after a stream of bad press over the suit.
The outcome of the case was one of several instances of official recognition of bloggers as journalists, which I ranked among the Top 10 blog stories of 2006.
According to ipodNN, a California court earlier this month ordered the company to pay the legal fees that the bloggers incurred in their defense. More than half of the $700,000 -- a total of $425,000 -- went to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the bloggers. The rest went to co-counsels in the case.
"Bloggers break the news, just like journalists do," EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl said. "They must be able to promise confidentiality in order to maintain the free flow of information. Without legal protection, informants will refuse to talk to reporters, diminishing the power of the open press that is the cornerstone of a free society."
Posted by Danny at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)
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As noted this morning in Technology Daily
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spent a considerable amount of energy during the opening weeks of the 110th Congress engaging the blogosphere.
AP reports that Pelosi, D-Calif., held a conference call with a few dozen bloggers after her swearing-in as speaker. The event was closed to the mainstream media.
She also has hired a full-time staffer tasked with blogger outreach and plans to launch her own blog.
Some campaign strategists said Pelosi's courtship of the blogosphere is a savvy move. "It's a mistake to think that these people just sit behind their machines and don't do anything other than talk to each other and send money," said Joe Trippi, who managed the Web-driven presidential campaign of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in 2004. "These people are very active in their precincts, in their communities."
Posted by Danny at 09:05 AM | Comments (1)
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Hillary Clinton, Scripted Online
Upon officially announcing her exploration of a 2008 presidential bid, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she would be inviting Americans into her living room for a "conversation" via a series of Internet chats.
But new media expert Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media was not impressed with the final result. He called the chat "bogus" after reading a New York Times piece about Clinton's chats.
"Was this a joke?" Gillmor wrote. "Clinton's alleged conversation with America was so entirely scripted as to be laughable. If this is her idea of changing politics in a webby way, we're not making much progress."
That review certainly can't be pleasing to Peter Dauo and the other bloggers who are on Clinton's payroll to sell her candidacy online.
Posted by Danny at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)
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The Bush-Bachmann Embrace
Liberal bloggers are having some fun with Rep. Michele Bachmann, ridiculing the Minnesota Republican for her literal outreach to President Bush.
As Bush left the House after the State of the Union address Tuesday, Bachmann stopped him for an autograph. But as the president turned his attention to other lawmakers, she put her hand on Bush's shoulder and kept it there for several seconds -- even as Bush talked to others and kissed the congresswoman standing next to Bachmann. Bachmann eventually got her kiss and hug, too.
I watched the video via a link at Crooks & Liars, and it is rather amusing. But when the author of that entry went on to highlight a press release from Bachmann's campaign last year (also noted at TPMCafe and Talking Points Memo, I was struck by the irony of a blogger saying the release sounded "more like a diary entry for a 12-year-old who got to meet her Tiger Beat teen idol."
To me, it sounded a lot more like the fawning entries I saw from so many Democrats after "The Blog Lunch That Backfired" with former President Clinton last fall.
It's also evidence that liberal bloggers have such contempt for Bush that they have a serious problem with anyone, Republican or Democrat, being friendly toward him.
Posted by Danny at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: Blawgmakers React To Bush's Speech
Congress Blog has written reactions to the State of the Union speech from various lawmakers. Here's what they are saying:
-- Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., praised Bush's policy proposals on health care and education: "President Bush struck the right chord this evening, outlining a plan to focus tax incentives on helping working families afford basic health insurance. ... As we prepare to renew several of our cornerstone education laws, we must ensure that teachers are ready and able to teach, and students are ready and excited to learn."
-- Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Bush hsa "the kind of leadership that makes things happen" not just in fighting terrorism but also on issues like energy independence, health care and immigration.
-- Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.: "Tonight we saw a deeply unpopular president struggling to remain relevant and succeeding only in proving how out of touch he is with the American people."
-- Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.: "The president’s speech was designed to build a backstop against the American people’s shaken confidence in this administration stemming from the fallout over the military operation in Iraq. It remains to be seen if his strategy was effective."
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., chose a different forum for his blogged response to the speech: Daily Kos, the most-read blog on Capitol Hill.
A sample of Durbin's thoughts in the comments section of the blog entry: As Republicans cheered Bush's statement about curtailing earmarks in spending bills, the number of which grew dramatically during 12 years of GOP rule in Congress, "I was reminded that political amnesia is prevalent among those who sip Potomac water."
Durbin no doubt will win kudos for engaging readers at Daily Kos, but there was a downside to choosing the diary section of that free-for-all forum. His post was surrounded by several that were, er, far less senatorial -- including one with a manipulated image of Bush wearing Mickey Mouse ears and raising his middle finger to the camera.
Posted by Danny at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
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Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., On Energy:
"He raised the bar even beyond what some folks like us thought was possible. The reality is that we have to end our dependence on foreign oil. It's a security threat and the president recognizes that. This is very, very good news. Now we have to convert it to reality."
Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., On Iraq:
"The president would have talked about many of the things he spoke about five years ago. The buildup to the war and the 20,000 troops he's going to send was new. I know the public is strongly against that and a lot in the Hispanic community are against that notion. I think he needs to do a lot more rethinking and talk to all of us."
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., On Sacrifice:
"The speech was flat. It didn’t have a sense of vision or where we're going as a nation, as a people. He didn’t ask the American people to sacrifice, to give up anything. The only people giving up something are the young men and young women serving in Iraq."
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)
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John Aravosis of Americablog was part of the pre-State of the Union festivities on Capitol Hill today. He penned insider's account of encounters with the likes of freshman Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
He also snagged a few minutes with New York's other senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. So what did he and the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential contender talk about? Blogging, of course, particularly "The Blog Lunch That Backfired" with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, last September.
-- Another Democratic presidential contender, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, stopped by Firedoglake on SOTU day. But five posts into the comment thread, Dodd disappeared for a vote and never returned, leaving Dodd staffer Tim Cullen to respond to concerns about the "drive-by" appearance.
-- What lines in the SOTU roused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., from her seat of power? Instapundit has the answers.
-- Republican new media consultant David All advised lawmakers who didn't want to the lost in the swarm of people reacting after President Bush gave his speech to post their video responses to YouTube before he spoke.
-- Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo accused Bush of following a "gracious opening" that recognized Pelosi with a "calculated insult" aimed at the "Democrat majority." A writer at Balloon Juice thought the same thing, and I've heard a couple of television pundits note the Democrat-as-an-adjective faux pas, too.
-- Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters live-blogged the SOTU remotely from his home in Minnesota and also used the annual event as a great news peg for launching his new weekly show on Blog Talk Radio. Instapundit kept a list of some other live-bloggers.
-- Matt Stoller of MyDD was more interested in "The State Of The Progressive Movement" than in Bush's perception of the State of the Union. Stoller's conclusion: "It's pretty unhealthy."
-- A new media insight from Ed Cone: The New York Times and The Washington Post "are promoting live video feeds of the SOTU address at their sites. Have I mentioned that the web gives newspapers their best shot in two generations at reclaiming audience from TV?
Posted by Danny at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)
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Some more reactions from Statuary Hall
Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., On Iraq:
"What really struck me is how alone the president is. He claims that he consulted a bunch of folks but then he decided alone. I don’t know what voices he's listening to but it's not the voice of the American people, it's not the voice of our professional military and it's certainly not this Congress."
Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. On Iraq:
"The nation was looking to the president to show leadership for change. We heard that on energy. But I was very disappointed on Iraq. The nation was looking forward to something other than staying the course and increasing the U.S. presence. He didn’t at all provide hope in that regard."
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. On 'Low Energy:'
"It was one of the most lackluster of the State of the Union addresses I've heard since I've been in Congress. There was low energy from him and low energy in the room. I felt that people reacted without enthusiasm. Usually after the State of the Union I feel like I've had an aerobic workout. Not tonight. There was very little standing, not even that much clapping."
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)
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I fought the crowd, ambushing lawmakers as I could spot them. Here are some of their reactions just moments after President Bush's speech ended.
Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., On Iraq:
"Either we get out of Iraq or we do what people have been asking for a long time. New leadership and a new strategy. We have new leadership, we have a new strategy. The last thing I think we want is for Congress to micromanage the war. We have one commander in chief."
Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. On Economy & Immigration:
"I appreciated that the president talked about the economy first -- that he brought attention to the issue of spending. This is an administration that has spent too much. I'm concerned that he wants comprehensive immigration reform because I don’t agree with him on that. I think you secure the borders first, then you address your visa issues and your employer issues, but you do it one step at a time."
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., On Being 'Underwhelmed:'
"I'm underwhelmed. He didn’t really say anything new. We want some answers. I'm not convinced that he has his arms around [the war]. I left kind of disappointed that we didn’t really hear a president who could convince us that he really was in charge of this war."
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
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Conservative blogger Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall was a bit surprised to see Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, one of the more vocal Democratic critics of President Bush, lean in to shake hands with the commander-in-chief as he entered the House tonight for his State of the Union speech.
Ham was even more suprised to see Kucinich go out of his way to shake hands with Bush a second time as he left the House after the speech. "The nutroots will make you pay, Dennis," she said in a reference to liberal bloggers who repeatedly used "The Kiss" greeting at a previous SOTU between Bush and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., to attack Lieberman.
We don't know yet whether the netroots will make Kucinich pay, but they definitely noticed. From Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos: "[W]as that Dennis Kucinich by the entrance/exit grabbing Bush warmly on both the ways in and out?"
Posted by Danny at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
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The view from Statuary Hall, where members of Congress file out after the State of the Union speech, can best be described as an intensely chaotic popularity contest. Television reporters fighting print reporters for a moment of a key lawmaker's time. Spotlights glaring. Cameras rolling. Reporters can be seen straining mightily over the velvet rope separating the journalistic masses from waves of lawmakers. Tape recorders dangle from our fingertips as we get that perfect soundbite. For a few minutes early in the rush, someone flipped the power off. TV folks were horrified but us print guys didn’t miss a beat. The lights and cameras came back on, and the buzz grew to a dull roar.
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)
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Those arriving at the Atlantic Media party ahead of the State of the Union address climbed the marble steps at the Great Hall of Library of Congress as a three piece band played American classics. But once inside the buzz was not about what the president might say, but freshman Sen. James Webb, D-Va. Webb unseated former Sen. George Allen, R-Va. and was chosen to give the Democratic response to the president's speech.
Webb highlighted his own family's military service, mentioning his own son serving in Iraq, highlighting the sacrifices of military families, before denouncing the president's strategy in Iraq.
"The president took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable – and predicted – disarray that has followed."
He went on to say "We need a new direction."
Posted by Heather Greenfield at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)
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President Bush is talking and talking and talking but I've noticed several times that Nancy Pelosi needs some eye drops. She's blinking and blinking and blinking. Dick Cheney's face looks frozen. He needs a Jolt Cola.
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 09:41 PM | Comments (0)
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I won't be one of those bloggers who counts the rounds of applause tonight... but one of the first deafening clapfests came when President Bush said Congress should help the healthcare community by protecting "good doctors from junk lawsuits by passing medical liability reform." Immigration reform also got a lengthy hand-slapping.
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)
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Earmarks really irk President Bush. In his State of the Union speech, the president noted that special interest items are often stealthily slipped into bills "when not even C-SPAN is watching." As if C-SPAN could keep track. In 2005, the number of earmarks grew to more than 13,000 worth an estimated $1.8 billion. Bush said over 90 percent of the pork never makes it to the House or Senate floor. The language is tucked into committee reports "that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk," Bush bemoaned. "The time has come to end this practice."
Lawmakers seem to be a step ahead of the president. One of the first orders of business in the new Congress was the House adoption of rules that put new restrictions on earmarks. Those pork plugs will be in effect for the duration of the 110th Congress. The Senate followed suit in amending its operations.
To underscore the problem, watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste identified 9,963 pork projects costing $29 billion in the 11 fiscal 2006 appropriations bills. They included $1 million for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C.
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
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As President Bush kicked off his big speech tonight, he welcomed new members of the House and Senate and gave a noticeable little smirk when he congratulated the Democratic-led majority. He paused then continued: "Congress has changed, but our responsibilities have not. Each of us is guided by our own convictions -- and to these we must stay faithful."
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)
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Maybe I'm still reeling from the Golden Globes, but I would be remiss if I didn't engage in some "red carpet" musings as lawmakers and dignitaries file into the chamber. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with a carefully coiffed hairdo, is decked out in a muted grayish pantsuit and seemed ready to turn on the charm.
Vice President Dick Cheney looked dapper in his navy blue suit with white shirt and purplish patterned tie. His wife donned a classy but boxy off-white number. Illinois Democrat Barack Obama, a presidential hopeful in 2008, flashed a bright smile and gave hearty handshakes as he arrived.
First Lady Laura Bush showed up wearing a classy magenta suit with gold buttons and her husband, the star of the show, entered wearing a navy blue suit, white shirt and light blue tie -- a classic look for the commander in chief.
The nine Supreme Court justices filed in wearing slimming black robes. Now that's predictable.
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
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Just an hour left until the big speech. If you've whipped yourself into a frenzy of anticipation, feed your State of the Union craving over at C-SPAN's Web site. There, you can watch some videos or read reams of transcripts from past addresses. Lyndon Johnson said what in 1951? Boy, was Dwight D. Eisenhower on his soap box in 1960. Remember the Clinton era with some of Bill's best. Resourceful Web heads may even find a way to create a mash-up of George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush's greatest hits.
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)
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At least one political blogger was quick to react to Tony Snow's conference call with them earlier this evening. Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics pointed out what he called an "inadvertent gem" that escaped the White House press secretary.
Asked whether President Bush's new healthcare proposal is "the same type of sacred cow issue that will go the way of his 2005 plan to overhaul Social Security," Snow retorted: "The Republican leadership made the decision not to bring up Social Security. We don't have that problem anymore."
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 07:37 PM | Comments (0)
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An interesting array of guests will keep First Lady Laura Bush company tonight in her box at the State of the Union. Guests include: Julie Aigner-Clark, founder of the Baby Einstein Company; Wesley Autrey, the construction worker who leapt onto the New York City subway tracks to save a man who had fallen after having a seizure; Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation; Suzanne Lewis, superintendent of Yellowstone National Park; Dikembe Mutombo, a center for the Houston Rockets professional basketball team; and Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. This might make for an interesting game of "six degrees of separation."
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 07:23 PM | Comments (0)
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Here are some excerpts from the prepared remarks of President Bush's State of the Union speech released to the media hours before his address.
On the Democratic-led House and Senate:
"Congress has changed, but our responsibilities have not…We are not the first to come here with government divided and uncertainty in the air. Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and achieve big things for the American people."
On the economy:
"A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy – and that is what we have…Unemployment is low, inflation is low, and wages are rising. This economy is on the move."
On healthcare:
"[I]n all we do, we must remember that the best healthcare decisions are made not by government and insurance companies, but by patients and their doctors."
On immigration reform:
"Extending hope and opportunity in our country requires an immigration system worthy of America – with laws that are fair and borders that are secure. When laws and borders are routinely violated, this harms the interests of our country."
On the war on terror:
"There is no higher responsibility than to protect the people of this country from danger…[T]o win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy. [O]ur military commanders and I have carefully weighed the options. In the end, I chose this course of action because it provides the best chance of success."
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)
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White House spokesman Tony Snow told bloggers with "a wonkish inclination" this afternoon that the first half of President Bush's State of the Union speech would focus on domestic policy and the second half would address foreign issues.
The president tonight will not spend much time on "the way forward in Iraq," which he spoke publicly about last week, Snow said on a conference call with 25 about Internet pundits. But he will emphasize that the Democratic-led Congress has a chance to work with the White House "to get stuff done."
Democrats should realize they can do "something constructive with their two years in charge of the House and Senate," Snow said. "Simply saying 'no' to the president does not constitute a record of accomplishment," he quipped.
The chief political initiative that Bush will address is getting a handle on spending and reducing the nation's deficit. "He has a plan to make sure we have spending restraint," Snow said. Bush will call for a balanced budget in five years.
The president will also draw attention to congressional earmarks, Snow said. He wants details of all the pork that gets shoveled into the federal budget made public. Bush hopes to cut earmarks in half and crack down on the practice of slipping them in "in the middle of the night."
On energy policy, Bush will endorse a "20 in 10" plan -- reducing gasoline dependency 20 percent in 10 years. An immigration reform proposal similar to the one he pitched last May will also have a spot in the speech. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and school choice will not be left behind, Snow added.
On the foreign policy front, Bush will talk about the war on terrorism, diplomacy and "other things that serve the national interest" that don’t fall neatly under the heading of military action, Snow said. Fighting the AIDS epidemic and malaria will also get a shout-out.
For "the whole schmegegge," Snow advised bloggers on the call to visit the White House's State of the Union page.
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 05:24 PM | Comments (0)
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Just in case she ever has to do the real thing, likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton will have some experience not just giving mini State of the Union speeches, but developing a whole new way to deliver them -- online.
The New York senator began a series of what she calls "conversations" with the American people Monday night. The 30 minute discussions also run tonight and Wednesday at 7pm on her campaign website. People can email questions.
At the Huffington Post today, blogger Steve Clemons wrote, "while I could quibble with some of the substance of her remarks, the whole thing just blew me away.
Hillary Clinton has just created the new model for the State of the Union address -- and made the format we are going to see tonight look as stiff, unimpressive, and anachronistic as an old vacuum tube television."
Clinton confirmed this weekend she is considering a run for the White House.
Posted by Heather Greenfield at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)
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Reporters asked Majority Leader Harry Reid why Democratic leaders selected freshman Sen. James Webb, D-Va., to give the rebuttal to the president's State of the Union address Tuesday night. Webb, is a favorite of bloggers, and his victory over Sen. George Allen, R-Va., was a key race that gave Democrats control of the Senate.
"Every place he's been, he's been someone who's moved the ball forward," Reid said, explaining Webb's accomplishments in Vietnam and as Secretary of the Navy under former President Ronald Reagan. Reid said Webb understands what it means to go to war, what it means to be at peace and he understands Reagan Democrats.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added that she first met Webb when he was campaigning for human rights when there was no media spotlight.
But neither Reid or Pelosi directly addressed a reporter's question about whether Webb was chosen in part because he is one of two members of Congress with sons serving in the military in Iraq.
Webb is expected to speak for five minutes following the president's speech. He declined to give reporters any details on the speech, but said it would include Iraq and economic fairness, issues he campaigned on during his Senate race.
Posted by Heather Greenfield at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
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Top bloggers are gearing up for tonight's State of the Union speech. Some want readers to get in on the action.
Talking Points Memo is encouraging fans sound off on President Bush's speech -- just like Sen. Jim Webb -- who will be delivering the official response from the Democrats. TPM has a group account on YouTube for submissions and will compile favorites later tonight.
Daily Kos reflected on Bush's previous speeches. Uranium from Africa, weapons of mass destruction, a clear plan for victory in Iraq, etc. Meanwhile, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., plans to blog at Daily Kos after Bush's address.
Red State offered several lengthy posts in preparation for tonight's festivities, including one titled "What a Waste of a State of the Union" and another called "Will President Bush become the anti-Reagan?"
A number of other key bloggers seemed to be preoccupied by the perjury trial of vice presidential aide "Scooter" Libby. Yes, there is other news happening in Washington today.
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)
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The White House plans to reach out to the Internet community later today when press secretary Tony Snow previews the State of the Union speech during a conference call with bloggers. That will kick off the Beltway Blogroll's coverage of what is seen as the biggest night of the year for our commander in chief.
President Bush is expected to cover Iraq, the war on terror, energy, education, healthcare reform and immigration. His speech will run about 40 minutes, not counting applause, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell wrote on The Daily Nightly.
Meanwhile, the official State of the Union Policy Initiatives book, including all of the administration's fact sheets, was posted here this afternoon in PDF format. The information is also available in HTML format by topic here.
Posted by Andrew Noyes at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)
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Tonight is a big night ... it's Pinewood Derby night. Oh, and I almost forgot: President Bush also is giving some big speech called the State of the Union.
Guess where I'll be. That's right, watching my son race a car patterned after the Batmobile at his Cub Scout meeting.
But never fear, Beltway Blogroll is here. Andrew Noyes, one of my senior writers at Technology Daily, has graciously agreed to blog in my stead.
He'll be doing an actual "live" blog from Capitol Hill. He will watch the speech from there and get reaction from lawmakers in person as they exit the House chamber into Statuary Hall.
No one has done that before. We will be breaking new media ground at Beltway Blogroll tonight.
Andrew has done some excellent blogging work for Tech Daily. We debuted the Tech Daily Dose blog at his request on Election Night, and he revived it earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
I hope you'll click this way to see what he has to say about the State of the Unioin speech and its aftermath.
Posted by Danny at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)
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ThinkProgress has an analysis of how effectively, or ineffectively, presidential contenders have embraced the blogosphere. And the New York Daily News predicts, "The 2008 campaign is going to be all about blogging, podcasts and YouTube. ... The road to the White House goes through cyberspace now."
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who over the weekend announced that she is considering a run for the Democratic presidential nomination, is among the candidates earning praise for her online innovation.
Here's what Jerome Armstrong of MyDD wrote: "[A]s blogger-savvy as John Edwards was in outreach, [the] Clinton Internet team had the e-mails of bloggers to notify them separate from the press (no such outreach from the Obama camp). The Web site has the clean, Kerry-2004 look about it. A smart 'write our first post' call to action on the Web site. The announcement of 'an unprecedented series of video webcasts beginning Monday' ... creates a quick narrative of interaction and response around Bush's [State of the Union] address."
-- On a related note, Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine highlighted some new numbers about the Internet and the 2006 election and reached this conclusion: "I see the seeds of the revolution: Though TV is still big, the Internet and other alternate sources are gaining their share of the spotlight. And more and more people are using interactive media to interact with the election, to take action."
-- The Fix takes at look at Clinton's inner campaign circle. Bloggers Jesse Berney and Peter Daou, part of Clinton's new media team, didn't make The Fix's cut of VIPs. The Washington Note, meanwhile, reports that Clinton has hired another blogger, Think Progress editor Judd Legum, as the campaign's research director.
-- On the GOP side, presidential contender Rudy Giuliani has just hired blogger Patrick Ruffini as his e-campaign director. Giuliani's campaign apparently does not have the same level of "indifference to new media" apparent among Republicans more broadly.
-- I blogged about the "Akaka bill" a little more than a year ago. The call to offer federal benefits to native Hawaiians died in the 109th Congress, but The Right Coast, which fought against the legislation last year, reports that the measure is back in the 110th. (Hat tip Instapundit.)
-- She may be House Speaker now, but Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., still can find a few minutes to blog at The Huffington Post -- especially when the topic is how much better the House is working under Democrats and her leadership.
-- Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, one of the bloggers covering the trial of former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, pointed readers to CNN's story about the bloggers covering the trial and listed some of the other bloggers involved. TalkLeft has an archive of its Libby coverage.
-- The Courier-Post in Camden, N.J., took a closer look at some of the top blogs in South Jersey.
-- The Anchorage Daily News arranged a question-and-answer session between readers of the newspaper's blog and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.
-- As a member of the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee, Chris Bowers of MyDD last week penned an insider's report that he said "could easily lead to me being defeated for re-election in 2010 but quite frankly exposing the sorry state of the Philadelphia delegation ... and working to fix it is more important than my re-election."
-- NewAssignment.net conducted a question-and-answer session with Joan McCarter of Daily Kos.
-- Copyright infringement has been a problem of late at Daily Kos, even to the point that proprietor Markos Moulitsas Zuniga has banned multiple users from the community for violations. Moulitsas' entry about the subject prompted one reader to post a list of useful sources in the "public domain," meaning that they can be copied.
-- Blog P.I. offered an insider's look at Eagle Publishing's decision to buy RedState.
-- The News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., is one of the most smartest old media companies when it comes to grasping the value of new media, and now editor John Robinson wants to make sure the entire staff is trained in using audio, video, blogging and multimedia. One of my goals is to move National Journal's Technology Daily in the same direction.
Both of our publications might be able to learn a thing or two from "Multimedia Reporting 101," a recent entry posted by the technology correspondent at The Guardian.
-- Pay-for-performance journalism? That's a recipe for sensationalism of the worst kind. On the other hand, blogging appears to be a great way for newspaper companies to win online readers.
Posted by Danny at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)
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Bloggers Rally Against (And For) Abortion
The second annual Blogs For Life conference is being held today, in conjunction with the annual "march for life" conference to protest the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in America.
The roster for today's conference, spearheaded by blogger Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council, includes speeches by two Republican presidential candidates, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California.
The conference also will feature a panel discussion about blogs and new media. David All, the former "spokesblogger" to Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., and now a GOP new media consultant, is one of the panelists. He has more details at his blog, From The Trenches.
A live webcast of the event also is available.
UPDATE: Advocates of abortion rights also are blogging on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. Feministing has a roundup of links.
Posted by Danny at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)
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Sen. Joseph Lieberman was public enemy No. 1 of liberal bloggers last year, but his re-election in November means that bloggers won't have another chance to take him down until 2012.
That means they need a new intraparty target, and Rep. Ellen Tauscher of California has the blog's-eye on her these days thanks to her role as chairwoman of the moderate New Democrat Coalition. Lisa Vorderbrueggen, the political editor of the Contra Costa Times, has the story:
Along with heady appearances on CNN, invitations to the White House and quotes in The New York Times, Tauscher has become a favorite target of liberal bloggers. Two Web sites dedicated to ousting her from office have surfaced, a third is in the works, and she is regularly castigated by at least six progressive bloggers, including Calitics and Berkeley-based Daily Kos."We will have a candidate [for the 2008 election], and there will be a primary," Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga said. One blog -- Dump Ellen Tauscher dumptauscher.blogspot.com -- asks readers to pledge money to an as-yet-to-surface challenger as a show of support. ...
The blog noise fueled a U.S. News & World Report story saying Tauscher's role as Congress' go-to moderate legislator has made her eligible for nomination as the liberal bloggers' second-most-disliked member of Congress.
Posted by Danny at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)
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Rep. Heath Shuler appears to have made the Web site of a local newspaper in his district his blogging home of choice. He has been posting entries at The Citizen-Times of Asheville, N.C., fairly regularly since the beginning of the year.
The topics so far, including both the political and personal:
-- The first day of Congress;
-- His apartment hunt in Washington;
-- The troop escalation in Iraq;
-- Stem-cell research;
-- His first trip back home since the 110th Congress began;
-- Energy independence;
-- And accountability over Iraq spending.
Posted by Danny at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)
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Mitt Romney Hearts John McCain
I just typed "Mitt Romney for president" into the Google search engine in an attempt to find the exploratory committee of the former Massachusetts governor but got a surprising result instead.
The sponsored link at the top of the page said "Mitt Romney for president ... The exploratory committee ... Learn more." But when I looked a little closer at the Web address, I noticed that the link would take me not to Romney's exploratory committee but to the one for Arizona Sen. John McCain, a leading Republican rival to Romney.
That's some smart, high-tech advertising by McCain's team.
Not so smart was the decision to leave the McCain exploratory site virtually free of content. Voters who were curious enough to seek information on Romney and found McCain's site instead probably didn't learn much from the short biography and two speeches at ExploreMcCain.com.
Posted by Danny at 03:59 PM | Comments (2)
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Blog Registration: Real Threat Or Red Herring?
The blogosphere this week became a subject of debate as the Senate considered lobbying and ethics reforms, with some critics of the legislation arguing that language to require disclosure of paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying is so broad that some paid bloggers would have to register.
The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 96-2 yesterday.
Before the vote, Technology Daily reported that a coalition of conservative and liberal groups is lobbying against the provision. The groups include the American Civil Liberties Union, American Conservative Union, National Right to Life, Traditional Values, GrassrootsFreedom.com and the Free Speech Coalition.
"This is certainly the most expansive intrusion of First Amendment rights ever introduced into the Senate," said Mark Fitzgibbons, the president of corporate and legal affairs for Grassroots.com, which works with groups to help them use the Internet to expand support for their cause. "This is not liberal versus conservative but Washington versus the people."
"We have concluded that this would certainly include bloggers," Fitzgibbons said, according to News.com. He added that the bill, which never mentions blogs, "has no regard for the media being used" and includes the Internet.
The concern voiced by Fitzgibbons gained prominence yesterday when Instapundit, one of the top 10 most popular blogs on Capitol Hill, called attention to it.
The Running The Gauntlet blog of Townhall.com concluded, It looks like Congress wants to keep an eye on annoying people like Porkbusters. Instapundit Glenn Reynolds is a leader of the Porkbusters movement, which opposes special-interest earmarks, or "pork," in the federal budget.
But Paul McDougall, a blogger for InformationWeek, called for a "reality check" about the provision in question.
He said the ominous chatter by Fitzgibbons is "just spin." "If a blogger is receiving what amounts to a six-figure annual salary from a client -- say, Acme River Pollutants, Inc. -- to write blogs urging people to form a campaign to stop, say, a clean water act, then that blogger would have to register as a lobbyist or face the penalties set out in the bill," McDougall wrote. But "the notion that this would apply to individual bloggers who use the Web to disseminate their opinions or report news is pure nonsense."
UPDATE: The Christian Broadcasting Network is reporting that the grassroots lobbying provision was removed from the bill.
UPDATE II: "Their latest ploy is claiming that bloggers will be regulated by this bill," said John Aravosis of Americablog. "Not true, according to folks I talk to on the Hill -- well, unless the blogger in question accepts $25,000 to use their blog to lobby for some specific legislation. We should be so lucky."
UPDATE III: Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters said the blog-related criticism of the bill is "overblown and exaggerated" and added: "It's important to remain vigilant on free speech. It's equally important to refrain from hysteria and to make sure one has the details correct before going into Chicken Little mode."
Law professor Stephen Bainbridge accused Richard Viguerie, the chairman of GrassrootsFreedom.com, of "spamming conservative bloggers" and succeeding in getting them to bite on a bogus story.
UPDATE IV: Evidence of Viguerie's success in winning over Republican blogs can be found at GOPProgress and in a roundup of reactions at the Rightometer.
Posted by Danny at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
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A pro-government Malaysian daily newspaper has sued two popular Internet bloggers for defamation in what a critic said would have a "chilling effect" on freedom of speech.
AP reports that the lawsuits by English-language New Straits Times marked the first time Malaysian bloggers have been taken to court for publishing comments on the Internet in a country where much of the traditional media are controlled by political parties or the government.
The first suit was filed Jan. 11 against Jeff Ooi, whose "Screenshots" blogs carry daily commentaries on the political situation in the country. The blog is widely read by Malaysians. The other suit, filed this week, is against Ahiruddin Attan.
Both bloggers disclosed on their sites that they had been sued. A spokesman for the company that owns the newspaper confirmed that the lawsuits were filed.
"We are not seeking to close them down," the spokesman said anonymously. "At the same time we do not support people making defamatory statements whether online or in print. We should allow the law to takes its own course."
Bloggers in Iran, meanwhile, face new registration rules that are being criticized as an attempt by the government to control the media there. BBC reports that story.
UPDATE (as noted in Technology Daily this morning):
An Egyptian blogger stood trial Thursday on charges of insulting Islam, inciting sectarian violence and other charges. AP reports that Abdel Kareem Nabil is the first blogger in Egyptian history to be put on trial.Amnesty International and the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders have accused the Egyptian government of censorship as a result of Nabil's prosecution. Nabil, who has been in detention since November, often denounced religious authorities and President Hosni Mubarak on his Web log.
He faces up to nine years in prison for inciting sedition, insulting Islam, harming national unity and insulting the president.
Posted by Danny at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)
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Kentucky Blogger Indicted Over Back Taxes
As noted this afternoon in Technology Daily:
A Democratic blogger in Kentucky who grabbed national headlines this past year for his attacks on Gov. Ernie Fletcher was indicted by a county grand jury Wednesday on three counts of willfully failing to file state income-tax returns.The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that Mark Nickolas, founder of the Web log BluegrassReport, was indicted for allegedly failing to file returns in 2003, 2004 and 2005.
In an e-mail, Nickolas denied the charges and said the returns were filed and all state taxes paid on them last year. He faces up to five years in prison for each charge.
Nickolas, the former campaign manager of now-Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky., has accused Fletcher's Republican administration of blocking state employees from reading his blog for political reasons. He said the state halted employee access to his blog the day after he was quoted in a story about Fletcher's indictment on misdemeanor conspiracy charges.
Nickolas, who sued Fletcher and other state officials over the alleged blog ban, also addressed the case at his blog in an entry titled "Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa."
"I made a mistake by not filing my state taxes promptly. Period," he wrote. "I am alone responsible, and I feel awful. I'm not going to offer any excuses. ... Regardless of how or why this happened, I am deeply embarrassed and am truly sorry."
But Nickolas vowed not to let his own mistake keep him from exposing and criticizing the mistakes of public officials. "I'm going to continue the important work here at BGR to hold people accountable for their mistakes, particularly when they refuse to acknowledge them or admit them. I believe that is what separates us from them."
The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., and the blog Pol Watchers also covered the story.
Posted by Danny at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)
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What are the favorite blogs on Capitol Hill? Here's the list, based on a survey from January to March of 2006.
10) Tie: Eschaton, Instapundit, Power Line, Salon.com blogs,
The Washington Note
9) The Raw Story
8) MyDD
7) Tie: The Corner, The Fix
6) Tie: The Note, RedState
5) Hotline On Call
4) Tie: Drudge Report, The Huffington Post
3) Talking Points Memo
2) Wonkette
1) Daily Kos
And that's just one of the many telling nuggets in a new paper made available through the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. The report is the senior honors thesis of T. Neil Sroka.
The survey also answered who on the Hill is reading the blogs. Not surprisingly, only 11.5 percent of actual lawmakers are blog readers, while 93.6 percent of their senior flacks keep one eye on the blogosphere. The rest of the numbers: 34.6 percent of junior communications staffers, 51.3 percent of senior legislative assistants, and 47.4 percent of junior legislative assistants.
"While blogs generally continue to play second fiddle to more established forms of media, the data we have collected strongly suggests that blogs are more likely to be read by senior staffers than junior staffers, a fact which implies that they may be more instrumental in policy analysis and decision-making processes than we might otherwise assume," the paper said.
The report is chock-full of other interesting tidbits, so click through for more. (Hat tip to Henry Copeland of Blogads.)
Posted by Danny at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)
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Last week, I was so preoccupied recapping the top blog stories of 2006 that I missed what may end up being one of the biggest blog stories of 2007: the Senate floor battle over "earmark reform."
The story is actually an outgrowth of No. 2 on the 2006 list. That honor went to the blog-inspired campaign to expose the senators behind a "secret hold" on legislation to create a publicly accessible online database about federal spending. Last week's crusade was over an amendment to ethics legislation that would impose more stringent language on special-interest earmarks in federal bills.
Both stories are about transparency in government, a pet cause of bloggers across the political spectrum. Last week's fight against earmarks was driven by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Republican blogs. Leading Democratic blogs also jumped into the fray. They were pitted against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and others in the new leadership.
I never found time to write about the earmarks battle, but thankfully, Robert Bluey of Human Events Online revisited it this morning in The Washington Examiner. Here is an excerpt:
[A] coalition of bloggers, led by Andy Roth at the Club for Growth, documented Reid’s strong-arm tactics. The Examiner’s own Mark Tapscott and Ed Frank at Americans for Prosperity jumped on the story. I posted video on YouTube of Reid and DeMint’s clash on the Senate floor.In the meantime, bloggers sent e-mails to Jon Henke, the newly hired new-media director for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. It’s Henke’s job to deal with bloggers, and if there was ever an occasion, this was it. ... By the next day, Henke was keeping bloggers appraised of the latest developments.
The debate had captivated the blogosphere. As Roth noted at the Club for Growth, more than 1,700 blogs had been written about earmark reform over a 24-hour period.
Three of the most well-trafficked liberal blogs -- Daily Kos, MyDD and TPMmuckraker -- also turned on the Democrat leader. ... By Friday afternoon, Reid had reversed course and DeMint was lauding him for agreeing to language that was “even stronger than what I had originally proposed.”
Posted by Danny at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)
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Can You Be A Diplomat And A Blogger?
That thorny question may take years for the bureaucrats to answer, but in the mean time, a legal eagle is the State Department is giving blogging a try in a guest appearance at a law blog. Americablog has the details:
Over at Opinio Juris ... there's a new guest blogger. Normally I wouldn't point that out ... but the guest is John Bellinger, the head of the Office of the Legal Adviser at the State Department. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time anyone at the State Department -- particularly someone in such a critical position -- has blogged in an official capacity.
Posted by Danny at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)
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Virginia blogger Waldo Jaquith has created an online aggregator for tracking legislative information and action in his state's General Assembly.
The site is called Richmond Sunlight, and users can find information by bill number, legislator and committee. The site even has statistics on things like how many bills are introduced per week, which lawmakers are filing the most, and which measures are generating the most interest.
In addition to the legislative information provided by the General Assembly's Legislative Information System, Richmond Sunlight has fundraising data on lawmakers provided by the Virginia Public Access Project and election history from the state Elections Board.
Jaquith made a splash in Virginia's blogosphere about a year ago by covering activity in the General Assembly. At least one lawmaker was so in tune with his coverage that she responded in the comment section of his blog even has he wrote.
Jaquith's new effort solidifies his reputation as an online innovator.
One other side note: I learned from reading his blog that the Virginia Young Democrats are giving "blogger of the year awards" this year. Nominations are open in all three categories -- bloggers who are ages 13-18, in college and younger than 36 -- until Feb. 11.
Are there other bloggers out there involved in "sunshine" projects in state government? Let me know at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by Danny at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)
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The Pew Internet and American Life Project is releasing a report on Americans' use of the Internet today, and Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum has the scoop based on an advance copy leaked to him.
Here's a look at what Sifry called "by far the most interesting discovery from their survey":
Twenty-three percent of campaign Internet users have either posted their own political commentary to the Web via a blog, site or newsgroup (8 percent); forwarded or posted someone else's commentary (13 percent); created political audio or video (1 percent); [or] forwarded someone else's audio or video (8 percent). "That translates into about 14 million people who were using the 'read-write Web' to contribute to political discussion and activity," the study's authors, Lee Rainie and John Horrigan, write.
Go visit PDF for more insights from the study and Sifry's observations on the results.
Posted by Danny at 01:16 PM | Comments (0)
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Who's Blogging The Libby Trial?
Bloggers will be among the credentialed media tomorrow when the trial against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, a former aide to Vice President Richard Cheney begins. He faces federal charges for allegedly leaking intelligence information to the press.
Crooks & Liars and Firedoglake are among the blogs that have annnounced they will be there.
The Media Bloggers Association (I'm a member) is coordinating a rotation of some bloggers for the trial, but apparently others received credentials from the court on their own.
If you're aware of other bloggers who are covering the trial, let me know at dglover@nationaljournal.com, and I will include links here.
Posted by Danny at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
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Local blogs have been a hot topic lately, so a roundup of links seems in order. Click your way to these blogs for insights on the subject or examples of local blogging:
-- The Washington-based Sunlight Foundation and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University are hosting a workshop today about local politics online. "Our goal is to connect the people working in the trenches with people working in other trenches and with new tools, so that everyone can do a better job sharing important political information with citizens," Zephyr Teachout wrote at the foundation's blog.
-- Blogger Relations: "There's a lot of emphasis in the blogosphere on strengthening these networks so look for local netroots blogs to flex their muscle in news, analysis, outreach, organizing and fundraising as we head into a new Congress and onward to the 2008 election cycle."
-- National blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD are threatening an alliance with Virginia blogs in a quest to take down Republican Sen. John Warner in 2008. They already have a nickname for him ("Senator Torture") and have practiced manipulating images to criticize him.
"[T]he Virginia and national blogospheres will be even more sophisticated, bigger and aggressive than we were in 2006," Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos wrote in response to an American Spectator article about Warner contemplating retirement in part because of blogs. "If John Warner wants to avoid the [George] Allen treatment, then a nice, cushy, comfortable retirement is a great option.
-- Firedoglake and a diarist at Daily Kos are encouraging Democrats to get active online. At the top of the suggestion list is starting blogs focused on specific districts and states.
-- Personal Democracy Forum noted "seven easy (and free) steps you can take" to find the best local blogs in your area. No. 1 is using the new site Placeblogger, a portal to "hyper local" blogs.
-- Arkansas House Majority Leader Steve Harrelson claims to be the first "blawgmaker" in his state. His effort went online Saturday.
-- 13th Floor snagged an e-mail interview with Bill Gentes, the blogging mayor of Round Lake, Ill. "It is the single smartest thing I have ever done as mayor, it allows me to control the dialog, it gives me the ability to answer my 18,000 residents questions in depth and gives me a way of going over the top of every naysayer and right to the general public."
-- When a North Carolina blog called attention to the "sideshow" of Libertarian Mike Munger running for governor, Munger responded at his own blog. That won him a measure of respect from his Democratic critic.
-- Also in the Tar Heel State, a school board candidate for 2008 already has a blog. Ed Cone, a blogger in the state, praised that early move. "Campaign blogging needs to be a long-term and consistent effort. Done well, it might actually be a time-saver over a traditional method of building name recognition and mindshare -- running and losing a couple of times."
-- The Washington Post thinks enough of blogs focused on the District of Columbia to have organized a summit with some of them. Marc Fisher, a columnist and blogger at the paper, recounted what happened at the summit.
-- The McClatchy newspaper company expressed its interest in "hyper local" blogs a bit differently by buying a couple of them in California. On the other hand, Backfence, a startup focused on local blogs that sparked a lot of coverage in its early days (barely a year ago) already has fallen on hard times.
And while I'm on the subject of local blogs, I wanted to give a shout out to Andy Harrover, a councilman in Manassas, Va., where I'm located.
Andy lives in our neighborhood and his company is just a couple of houses down the street from our home. We talk occassionally about politics, technology and, yes, blogs, so I'm glad to see he started one this month. It's called My Side Of The Fence.
UPDATE: Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media has a roundup of the Sunlight Foundation/Berkman Center conference on local "political watchdogging."
Posted by Danny at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)
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Virginia blogger Mike Stark thrust himself into his state's U.S. Senate race last year by initiating confrontations with Republican Sen. George Allen on the campaign trail. He went so far as to file charges against Allen campaign staffers who tackled Stark because of one such videotaped confrontation, though prosecutors never pursued the case.
Now Stark has picked another fight with a radio station across the country in California.
The New York Times mentioned Stark's Friday call-in encounter with KSFO as part of a larger story about bloggers who organized a campaign against the station. The bloggers, led by one called Spocko, believe some of KSFO's hosts are guilty of racist and violent comments, and they taped and distributed digital segments of those comments to make the case that advertisers should boycott the show.
The station dedicated three hours of programming to the issue Friday, and Stark was among the callers. One of the radio hosts dismissed Stark as a "creep" after this comment: "You've spoken of the number of apologies you have tried to make. How many apologies does a professional get before they realize they are an incompetent and move on to another line of work?"
Stark's account of the call-in segment is available at his blog, Calling All Wingnuts, and Crooks & Liars called the show "an obvious PR stunt" to smear liberal blogs.
Posted by Danny at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)
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Cory Maye: Another Top Blog Story Of 2006
Radley Balko, a senior editor at Reason magazine and former policy analyst at the Cato Institute, wonders why the case of Cory Maye didn't make my cut for the top 10 blog stories of 2006.
Regular Beltway Blogroll readers may recall that I wrote about Maye's death sentence in Mississippi for killing a policeman who had burst into his home without a warrant. Balko broke that story on his blog, The Agitator, and other bloggers rallied around Maye as the victim of the practice of no-knock police raids.
The main reason the story didn't make my top 10 list is as simple as a date: I wrote about the Maye case in December 2005, and my top 10 list was compiled by searching the 2006 archives of Beltway Blogroll.
I'm reluctant to say that because my failure to mention the case last year was a regrettable oversight on my part. The Maye case was indeed one of the top blog stories of 2006. Unfortunately, I never mentioned the news that made it so: Balko's legwork on Maye's behalf helped get Maye off death row. I was aware of the news but simply never wrote the follow-up entry I intended, and I forgot about it by the time I wrote my annual roundup.
The news hasn't been as good for Maye since then, but Balko was right when he said this to me via e-mail: "[W]hat about Cory Maye for a blogosphere best of 2006? The guy is now off death row! Surely that's as significant as many of the other items that made your list."
Meanwhile, Time blogger Andrew Sullivan said my list "should prompt a wave of blogospheric annoyance" because I dared to include "blogs officially recognized as media." His retort: "Er, some of us acknowledged that years ago."
Well, Mr. Sullivan, if you had read the explanation of why that subject made the list, you would have known that it had nothing to do with outlets like Time (or National Journal) realizing that blogs are media. That's why I used the word "officially" -- because it was about the Federal Election Commission, courts and legislators taking formal steps to treat bloggers like the rest of the media.
That never happened until 2006.
Posted by Danny at 04:16 PM | Comments (1)
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Chris Bowers of MyDD recruited bloggers for a "Google bomb" campaign against key Republican congressional candidates last fall. Now he is plotting a similar online attack against one potential GOP presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
"It is my goal is that this campaign will allow us to dominate articles on McCain in the top twenty Google searches on McCain. ... By flooding Internet searches on McCain with the truth about McCain," he wrote in a diary at Daily Kos, "we can go a long way toward defining McCain's image to the national electorate. And the best part is, we will do it with the truth."
-- Online Media Daily took note of the blog campaigns by presidential candidates, and The Washington Times examined the potential role of MySpace in the 2008 presidential campaign. One thing is certain: Politicians are going to have to know how to lead in a fast-paced tech era.
-- One aspect of that fast-paced era is the newfound power of "trackers," the people who follow opposition candidates on the trail to capture their worst moments on film. Republican new media strategist David All of From The Trenches called them "The 'Bad Boys' of YouTube" and offered some tips on how to respond to their work.
-- Blog P.I. and Patrick Ruffini examined grassroots efforts to raise money online for presidential candidates, while Blogads recapped recent blog advertising buys of presidential candidates.
-- Jerome Armstrong of MyDD started a conversation about what political technologies (the name of his company, incidentally) might be hot for the 2008 campaign. That prompted Micah Sifry to write a post at Personal Democracy Forum.
-- Ann Althouse invited her readers to predict what the blogosphere will mean for the 2008 presidential election. Read the comments for the answers.
-- YouTube is the hot tool right now -- so hot that even Starbucks has used the site to defend its business practices in Ethiopia.
-- I do believe this was the first-ever blog entry by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. -- at least it's the first I recall seeing. He also held yet another conference call with bloggers this week.
-- A roundup of blog news from the states:
1) The News Journal in Delaware examined the impact of political blogs in the First State;
2) Inspired by my entry on the top blog stories of 2006, a blogger in Louisiana ranked the top blog stories for the Pelican State;
3) In a bit of old news that still remains relevant, bloggers in Texas pressured a Texas state lawmaker into revising a bill aimed at online defamation so as not to threaten bloggers. One newspaper blogger wishes she had fought the bloggers.
4) A Democratic state lawmaker in Pennsylvania penned a diary entry at Daily Kos to explain how Democrats salvaged majority control in the House there.
5) And a diarist at MyDD ran for a slot as Democratic party delegate in California. The vote was yesterday.
-- Get a glimpse into the netroots party held in Washington last week to celebrate the Democratic rise to power in Congress ... and see how close they came to relishing an even larger victory. Plus the worst quotes from Daily Kos in 2006.
-- Joan McCarter of Daily Kos is skeptical about the future of The Politico, a Washington-based newspaper/Web site that is supposed to launch Jan. 23. Her take: "Seems to me the reason the blogs have proliferated so is because we bring a different perspective than what D.C. insiders provide, a perspective that has been absent in the national debate for a long time--ours. Regular people's."
-- Playing off the piece I wrote last year for The New York Times, a journalism ethics professor reached this conclusion about the relationship between politicians and bloggers: "The politicos are keen to reach the blog-going public, and for all the brave posturings about the Internet's culture of transparency, it's plain that online hirelings are much more persuasive when their wisdom isn't clearly, consistently and prominently labeled as paid content."
-- An Army major won an award for an article about the rise of military blogs.
-- The Hill newspaper has a new blog just for its favorite pundits.
-- Technology and Internet expert Esther Dyson let pass her chance to be "a monthly columnist for a well-known national print publication" and instead took a blogging gig at The Huffington Post. The reason: She didn't like the strict ethics rules of old media, particulary the one about never taking money from sources. She thinks it's OK for expert commentators to do that so long as they disclose their affiliations. Dyson then promptly disclosed some of hers.
-- The Media Bloggers Association, of which I am a member, has arranged credentials for a rotating cast of bloggers to cover the federal trial against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, a former aide to Vice President Richard Cheney, for his alleged role in leaking intelligence information to the press.
The MBA also is getting press for its efforts to bring professionalism to blogs. And Online Journalism Review pondered what lies ahead in 2007 in terms of the rights for online journalists.
-- A good question: "What Are Citizen Journalists Good For?" Click the link for proof that "hyper local citizen journalism projects continue to gain momentum." They must be good for something because the McClatchy newspaper company just bought a couple of citizen journalism sites.
-- Blogcritics reviewed the blogs of the Reuters news service and found them to be lacking even though they are a good example of "convergence between traditional and new media."
Posted by Danny at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)
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Old Media Versus New On The Romney Team
Hotline On Call reports that Carl Forti has landed at the presidential exploratory committee of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Yes, that's right, the same Mitt Romney who earned endless kudos this week for being so smart about new media has hired as deputy campaign manager and political director the same man (Forti) who has been dismissive of blogs. While working as communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee, Forti pretty much ignored blogs and made it clear why: "A lot of times, you just don't know how reliable the information on these things is. ... Ninety percent of the time, we know more than they do."
Maybe Forti's attitude has changed since he spoke those words to me a little more than a year ago. Maybe he's a bit more interested in political innovation on the Web than when one of my reporters for Technology Daily interviewed him in the run-up to the 2006 campaign.
As I noted last week, Forti certainly had a chance to see firsthand how much damage those unreliable bloggers can do to a political candidate like his former NRCC boss, Rep. Thomas Reynolds of New York, so maybe he learned a thing or two about the Web the hard way that will benefit Romney.
But if not, there may be some serious clashes between Romney's online team and Forti, who, according to Hotline, will oversee the campaign's politics and field desks.
It wouldn't be the first time that the new kids on the campaign block clashed with the veterans. Democrat Matt Stoller of MyDD apparently had some trying experiences while blogging for the campaign of now-New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine in 2005.
On the other hand, Stoller said it shouldn't deter his fellow bloggers from working for campaigns. "[I]f you're thinking about blogging for a big campaign or organization, you should do it," he wrote in November 2005, months before several bloggers heeded his advice. "It's going to be unpleasant; you will lose most of the internal battles in the campaign, and you're going to be second-fiddle to the traditional communications and press operation.
"But it's worth it because the Internet is now so big that it simply cannot be ignored. And you, my friend, cannot ignore the rest of the political world, and seeing politics from the inside makes this oh so clear."
Posted by Danny at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)
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Blog Power: The Top 10 Blog Stories Of 2006
Here, in David Letterman-style, are my picks for the Top 10 blog stories of 2006:
10) YearlyKos
9) Supreme Court confirmation hearings
8) Congressional Leadership elections
7) Bloggers hired by campaigns
6) Blogs officially recognized as media
5) Network neutrality
4) Telephone privacy
3) Primary defeats
2) The "secret hold"
1) Election Day
Now for the back story of how the list came to be:
My blogging has been light since the beginning of the year for a reason. As I noted a couple of days ago, I was invited to speak about blogs at The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars.
On the one hand, I was esctatic because the center gave me an entire hour to talk about blogs (and other technologies) -- 30-45 minutes dedicated to a lecture on their policy and political impact, and the rest of the time for questions from the students. When I've tackled the subject before, it's always been as part of a panel discussion where I had a brief time for introductory comments and then the panel took questions. I loved the idea of addressing my favorite subject exclusively and at length to college students who knew little about it.
On the other hand, I was baffled as to how to fill the hour. Oh, it's not that I have any trouble talking about blogs. If I were a senator, my name would be Mr. Smith and I'd deliver the best blog-ibuster you've ever heard. No, the problem was that I wanted to keep myself from rambling and not giving the students the most useful information.
Fortunately, right about the time I received the invitation last year, I had decided to do a Top 10 list of the best blog stories from 2006. That was pretty much why I was invited to speak. What I quickly learned, though, is that it takes an awful lot of writing to fill 30 minutes of time, so that's what I've been doing in my spare time.
The good news is that the end result is worth publishing here, too. For a detailed explanation of why I made the choices, go to the extended entry.
#10: YearlyKos. That was the name of the June convention organized by the fans of Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the publisher of the blog Daily Kos.
Think about that for a minute: Readers of a blogging community, and contributors to it, held a convention ... in Las Vegas ... to celebrate the leader of their favorite media outlet. Can you imagine readers of The New York Times or The Washington Post doing something like that?
More to the point, can you imagine the Times or the Post covering something like that? It's so inside blog-ball that you wouldn't expect mainstream media outlets to be interested. Communities of people have conventions all the time, but they never get covered beyond the trade publications dedicated to their industries or fields.
Yet the Times and the Post were there in Vegas with the Kossacks. And so were a lot of other top news organizations and columnists. Granted, much of their coverage was critical and even dismissive or mocking. But they were there.
Even if they didn't want to be, they had little choice because so many newsmakers were there. The roster of speakers included Democratic luminaries like Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, now-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and four potential presidential contenders. One of them, Mark Warner, spent tens of thousands of dollars on a lavish party for bloggers.
YearlyKos was an amazing spectacle and a great demonstration of the political blogosphere's significance.
#9: Supreme Court confirmation hearings. After President Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court in 2005, some Republican bloggers vigorously challenged that choice. The Bush administration tried to win them over by scheduling the party's first-ever conference calls with bloggers.
The tactic ultimately failed, as Miers withdrew her nomination. But the GOP learned that it pays to have conservative bloggers fighting with them rather than against them. When Bush later nominated Samuel Alito to the court, the party handpicked Republican bloggers to attend this year's confirmation hearings. They treated the bloggers lavishly and gave them exclusive access to interview and hobnob with high-ranking officials.
Not surprisingly, the bloggers were quick to defend Alito, something they had refused to do for Miers after numerous entreaties. Alito is now a justice on the Supreme Court, and blog calls and other forms of outreach have become almost standard fare in Washington.
The White House had one this week. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and Brett McGurk, the director for Iraq at the National Security Council, discussed Bush's speech on the way forward in Iraq.
#8: Leadership elections. When it comes to electing leaders in Congress, bloggers have no official say. But they had plenty to say about the elections this year anyway, and lawmakers listened, even if they didn't always vote the way bloggers wanted.
The first instance came after Texan Tom DeLay resigned as House majority leader. Some Republican bloggers didn't want Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri to replace DeLay, and they forced their way into the conversation by organizing conference calls with all three candidates for the job. Though their favorite, John Shadegg of Arizona, didn't win, the backing he gained from bloggers helped tip the election to John Boehner.
GOP bloggers had less success when they organized similar conference calls with candidates for various minority leadership posts after the November election. The top three slots all went to lawmakers they had opposed, proving that outsider bloggers still have limited influence over the insiders in the capital city.
But on the other side of the blogosphere, concerns that Democratic bloggers voiced about a couple of ethically challenged House members arguably were a factor in keeping those members off prime committee slots. Alcee Hastings was considered a candidate to head the Intelligence Committee, but his past as an impeached judge cost him the job. And William Jefferson was not reinstated to the Ways and Means Committee seat he lost last year after being ensnared in a bribery investigation.
Democratic bloggers who constantly decried the GOP "culture of corruption" during the 2006 campaign were determined not to have their party's image tarnished even before Democrats officially took control of the House.
#7: Bloggers hired by campaigns. The ability of bloggers to inject themselves into the leadership races, the most insider of debates, helps explain why some lawmakers are actually hiring them.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., was one of the first to do so. He paid two bloggers as consultants in 2004 and hired one of them onto his Senate staff after Thune defeated then-Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle.
This year, several campaigns hired bloggers:
-- Democrat Ned Lamont of Connecticut hired no fewer than four of them to fulfill various tasks on his intraparty challenge to Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
-- Now-Sen. James Webb of Virginia hired two of the bloggers who had pushed to get him into the race against Sen. George Allen.
-- When Allen's race became unexpectedly competitive because of his verbal gaffes, the senator hired a blogger. He still lost, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just hired that blogger as his new media director.
-- Democrat Mark Warner picked the company of MyDD blogger Jerome Armstrong as an Internet consultancy while Warner was considering a 2008 presidential run.
-- And at least two other presidential contenders, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican John McCain, also are paying good money to high-profile bloggers for new media advice.
The trend will heighten as the 2008 election nears. Late last month, Democrat John Edwards demonstrated the importance of the Internet in presidential politics -- and of having on board people who understand it -- when he announced for the 2008 race in an online video before he did it in person. He followed his official announcement with a guest appearance on Daily Kos to answer questions from readers.
You'll see more of that kind of activity in the run-up to 2008. And I've already seen quite a bit of it in the opening days of the 110th Congress. Several lawmakers have made guest appearances on both local and popular national blogs.
#6: Bloggers officially recognized as media. While gaining influence within the political realm, bloggers also began earning official recognition as media this year.
The first significant victory came in March, when the Federal Election Commission largely exempted blogs from new Internet-related campaign finance rules on the grounds that blogs are media. They applied to blogs the same exemption that governs newspapers, broadcasters and other traditional media outlets.
The decision followed a blog swarm against the FEC about a year earlier. The outcry began after news broke that the agency might try to regulate blogs. The FEC ditched that draft staff proposal, and dozens of bloggers filed critical comments as the agency weighed how to apply campaign finance law to the Internet. Several high-profile bloggers testified before the FEC and before Congress.
Bloggers also earned recognition as media from the state judicial and legislative branches last year. A California court ruled that bloggers can protect their anonymous sources under the state's "shield law," and Connecticut passed a shield law after rejecting an effort to exclude blog authors and people without journalism degrees.
The Media Bloggers Association, of which I am a member, is helping with such causes. The astute legal counsel provided by the group prompted one advertising agency to drop a foolhardy and unfounded lawsuit against a Maine blogger.
More recently, MBA has been working with some success at getting bloggers credentials to news events. When former vice-presidential aide Scooter Libby goes to trial next week for allegedly lying and obstructing justice in a probe about intelligence leaks, a handful of bloggers will be in the courtroom because of MBA's advocacy.
You're also starting to see mainstream media outlets embrace blogs:
-- Journalists write blogs, and bloggers write for traditional publications as prominent as Time magazine.
-- Both LexisNexis and Reuters have deals for distributing blog content, and the new BlogBurst syndication service has some major newspapers as clients.
-- Associated Press has a partnership with the blog search engine Technorati.
-- CNN Money last year listed "blog editor" among seven trendy jobs.
-- And just a couple of weeks ago, the McClatchy newspaper chain bought two local blogs in California.
One of the best examples of this convergence happened in Washington several months back. The print newcomer in town, The Examiner, hired my friend Mark Tapscott as its editorial-page editor. Mark is an ink-stained wretch who loves blogs almost as much as me, and he immediately created a "blog board of contributors" at The Examiner. He later moved his own blog onto The Examiner site.
#5: Network neutrality. Three of the five biggest blog stories of 2006 were policy oriented -- and not surprisingly, all three of them involved technology. Coming in at No. 5 was the debate about "network neutrality," or mandating that dominant, high-speed Internet firms cannot boost the fees that competitors must pay to put content on their networks.
The pro-net-neutrality crowd found the most support in the blogosphere and in the online community more broadly. Their demands, made through the newly formed Save the Internet coalition and other outlets, were a factor in killing a major telecommunications bill because it did not include strong enough neutrality rules.
The demand for net neutrality also shaped the largest telecom merger in history between AT&T and BellSouth. Just before the New Year began, AT&T agreed to some net neutrality conditions on the merger -- the kind of conditions it had fought for months. Bloggers who back neutrality celebrated the decision as a win for their cause, albeit a limited one.
Blogger Matt Stoller of MyDD, who is speaking at a media reform conference in Memphis, Tenn., over the weekend, put it this way:
"AT&T, the single-worst company in terms of net neutrality, gave up a lot of ground to an angry public. ... For now, we can take solace in the fact [that] a Bush-crony dominated FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, and a multibillion-dollar telecom industry lost to a group of public interest advocates and a fed-up public."
#4: Telephone privacy. I love this one because it's the story about one blogger who got angry about something and made a difference.
John Aravosis of Americablog was irritated to learn how easily people could buy cell phone records online. He griped about that fact online, even buying his own records to prove a point, but no one listened much.
Then he bought the mobile records of 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark. All of sudden, he was a guest on news shows and a source in stories. Lawmakers listened. They introduced a flurry of bills aimed at curtailing the practice, which is called "pretexting," and held hearings on the topic.
Both the House and Senate took action on the measures within months.
The issue faded for a while, but then Hewlett-Packard was caught buying the phone records of board members, employees and journalists in an attempt to find leaks within the computer company. Congress cleared a bill, and Bush signed it into law.
That end result might have been achieved without the involvement of Aravosis, but he clearly was a significant factor in moving the bill early in the legislative process. He brought to the subject the kind of passion that you used to see in newspaper editorials but that is too often lacking today. And he stayed after the story until editorial writers and the rest of the mainstream media listened and called attention to his pet topic.
It's a great example of how much power one person can achieve on the Internet.
#3: Primary defeats. Aug. 8 was a momentous day for the political blogosphere. On that day, they helped take down three incumbents in Congress.
The biggest news was Lamont's victory over Lieberman in Connecticut. Bloggers were involved in that race from start to finish.
Lamont met with at least one key blogger early in his campaign, hired four of them and used a fifth as a volunteer production editor for his first video blog. Bloggers helped raise more than $300,000 for him online. They also followed his campaign across Connecticut and swarmed his headquarters on primary night -- all the while shaping media coverage of the race by focusing on Lieberman's support for the war in Iraq.
Elsewhere the same day, blogs played a role in the intraparty defeats of Rep. Cynthia McKinney in Georgia by now-Rep. Hank Johnson, and of Congressman Joe Schwarz in Michigan by now-Congressman Tim Walberg.
The conservative Club for Growth used its blog to bash Schwarz for his centrism, and RedState joined in that effort. Here's what Erick Erickson of RedState said after Walberg won: "Most of our time ... was devoted to the drumbeat that Joe Schwarz is a liberal. And I think the voters believed it."
In Georgia, Johnson became the first candidate to write at Congress Blog in order to draw attention to his run-off with McKinney. He certainly was helped by McKinney herself. She had become a laughingstock and target of bloggers across the political spectrum months earlier for punching a Capitol Hill police officer.
But Johnson saw potential in the blogs. One of his aides said, "They've been effective in reaching out to the people who make the news, the people who determine what's hot and what's not ... and reaching the national media at an affordable price."
The outcomes in all three states served as a warning to incumbents: Enrage the blogosphere at your peril.
#2: The "secret hold." August was a good month for bloggers on the policy front, too. They became aggravated when a couple of senators used procedural tactics to anonymously hold a popular bill for bringing Internet transparency to federal spending, and they worked collectively to out the senators by calling every one of their offices.
From the right, an Internet coalition dubbed Porkbusters led the charge. Bloggers who are part of the coalition asked readers to call their senators and put them on the spot with a simple question: Are you responsible for the secret hold?
The liberal blog TPMMuckraker soon joined the effort, focusing on Democratic senators, and the moderate Republican blog GOP Progress also participated.
The tactic worked. Sens. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, and Alaska Republican Ted Stevens reluctantly admitted to their secret holds and eventually lifted their objections. Congress cleared the bill soon after, and Bush invited bloggers to the White House ceremony when he signed it.
The campaign added to the clout of the Porkbusters. Their laser focus against pork-barrel spending already had embarrassed Stevens over his "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska and GOP Sen. Trent Lott over his "railroad to nowhere" in Mississippi.
The presence of the Porkbusters clearly has been felt on Capitol Hill. If you go to Sen. Tom Coburn's Web site, you'll see the Porkbusters logo because he counts the group as an ally in his fight against earmarks. And if you go to the Porkbusters site, you'll find a quote from Lott proclaiming his disgust with the bloggers because "they have been nothing but trouble ever since [Hurricane] Katrina."
#1: Election Day. That is unquestionably the top blog story of 2006. Democrats regained control of Congress, and their blog allies had a hand in the victory.
Ridiculed from the right for two years over a poor won-loss record in electing their favorite candidates, the netroots came through this year with seven wins, five in the House and two in the Senate. On the flip side, Republican bloggers who took a stand for particular candidates finished with a 2-19 record.
The biggest win arguably was Webb's upset of Allen in Virginia. It was the last Senate race to be decided and the one that tipped control to Democrats. Webb and Montana Democrat Jon Tester were the two netroots candidates who also received the most personal money from Moulitsas at Daily Kos.
Here's what MyDD's Armstrong, who co-authored the book "Crashing The Gate" with Moulitsas, said of the Webb-Allen race: "Taking out George Allen, who was the runaway insider poll's No. 1 pick for the Republicans' presidential nomination in December of 2005 -- that's one of the biggest upsets in the last 50 years."
A sidebar to the top blog story of the year is the "macaca" incident that spelled the beginning of the end for Allen. Webb's campaign gave a video camera to a volunteer so he could track and tape Allen's events. Allen made a joke at that volunteer's expense, calling him macaca.
Bloggers swarmed, splattered the video all over the Internet and used it as the corner piece of a puzzle that painted Allen as a racist. Over the next several weeks, they pieced the rest of the puzzle together for the mainstream media.
The macaca video cost Webb's campaign all of $918.21, the amount it paid to reimburse the volunteer for travel and other expenses.
You can't get much more bang for the buck than that. Now you know why I said anyone with a message and a compelling voice can make a difference in today's digital world.
Posted by Danny at 12:36 PM | Comments (1)
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Sen. Chrisopher Dodd yesterday announced his decision to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. He called himself a "darkhorse" candidate, and MyDD blogger Jerome Armstrong wasted no time in saying that's most likely where Dodd will stay.
"[I]t's gonna take something very surprising to break Dodd out of the back of the pack," Armstrong wrote.
That sounds about right, but the fact that Armstrong, the "blogfather" of the left, said it made me wonder: Wasn't that pretty much the establishment's conventional wisdom about Vermont Gov. Howard Dean back in 2003? Didn't Armstrong and the rest of the crashing-the-gate crowd embrace Dean as their man in spite of the odds against him? And isn't that largely why bloggers have the clout they do today?
All of which begs another question: How much more reliable is conventional blog wisdom about politics -- the kind handed down by high-profile online pundits like Armstrong -- than conventional establishment wisdom?
UPDATE: In this case, the two conventional wisdoms are the same, as Hotline alum Howard Mortman aptly illustrates at Extreme Mortman.
Posted by Danny at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
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Blog Ethics: From One Blogger To Another
Bloggers who aspire to journalism, even while also aspiring to activism, should bear in mind these words from Colin Delany of e.politics:
If we're going to function as journalists, we'd better start acting with at least some basic journalistic standards. If you're wrong or even might be wrong, let your readers know! It only helps a writer's credibility to be honest about mistakes.
My agreement with Delany's point may irk bloggers who in the past have accused me of wanting to impose journalistic standards on bloggers, but I don't necessarily advocate that.
I happen to think most journalistic standards are great to follow and would be happy if bloggers saw fit to emulate them. But all I really want is for individual bloggers to work toward some collective principles about how best to do what it is they do so as not to undermine the medium.
The retort I've heard before is that there is no such thing as "the blogosphere" or "bloggers," plural, that blogging is all about the individual, and those individuals will rise or fall based on their own credibililty. All of that is true. But it doesn't change the fact that people judge the blogosphere and bloggers collectively based on the words and deeds of a few, so aspiring toward some consensus blog ethical principles is a good thing.
Posted by Danny at 04:13 PM | Comments (1)
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Nothing ... but I made you look. Well, actually they have a little something in common. Technology Daily published two blog-related news summaries in our AM roundup, and Libby and Romney were the subjects.
The first summary is based on two Washington Post stories, one about bloggers receiving credentials to cover the high-profile trial of former top Bush administration aide Libby next week and the other about bloggers who are making money on their work. Here's that item:
The credibility of Web logs as journalism may be boosted by the perjury trial of former vice-presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, The Washington Post reports. A pair of the 100 seats at the trial reserved for media will go to bloggers, a first in a federal courtroom. Libby has been accused of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Justice Department's investigation of a White House news leak. His trial opens next week. The Media Bloggers Association, which represents about a 1,000 members, has been negotiating with judicial officials for two years to win space for bloggers in courtrooms. President Robert Cox said a diverse group of bloggers, including himself, would rotate throughout the Libby trial. The Post also reports that some bloggers are earning decent money.
The second summary focused on an "ancient" video clip of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney that has come back to haunt him on YouTube as he runs for president:
The presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney already has a YouTube problem. The Boston Globe and AP report that a video on the site of Romney endorsing a series of liberal viewpoints during a 1994 U.S. Senate campaign has generated more than 12,000 hits. Romney, a Republican who established a presidential exploratory committee last week, called Glenn Reynolds of the popular Instapundit Web log on Wednesday to defend himself and accused the creators of the video of unearthing "ancient footage" to attack his current conservative stances on issues such as gay marriage. Romney said he has gotten wiser since the 1994 race, which he lost to Democrat Edward Kennedy. "Of course, I was wrong on some issues back then," he said. "I'm not embarrassed to admit that."
Instapundit's comment on the series of events also is worth noting: "That's kind of cool, using a podcast to respond to a YouTube interview. All new media, all the time!"
UPDATE: Republicans David All and Mary Katharine Ham are among those praising Romney and his online team for how they responded to the YouTube video. Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine comments as well.
And GOPProgress said Romney's team was smart to respond quickly.
John Hawkins of Right Wing News was not impressed by the substance of Romney's response. "[H]e comes across as a politician who has changed his positions because he needs to appeal to conservatives if he wants to get the Republican nomination for president," Hawkins wrote, "and it's hard not to be leery of pols like that because conservatives keep getting burned by them over and over again."
Posted by Danny at 12:48 PM | Comments (3)
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Here's how my colleague Conn Carroll opened today's issue of The Blogometer:
The explosive blog swarm over President Bush's speech on Iraq says something about the state of the blogosphere today: It's huge, and at least some pretty high-up strategists think it's important enough to make their clients -- some of the most powerful people in America -- take the time to do a little kowtowing.Both Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., have injected themselves into the debate. ... In defense of their positions, each takes to the blogosphere, as McCain guest-posts at PowerLine and Kennedy makes appearances at Daily Kos, Blue Mass Group and Huffington Post. That's not all -- Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., took time not only to post at Kos but to answer questions. Then he came back a third time 45 minutes later to clarify a thought and move the discussion to his Web site.
Three senators, two of whom are almost household names and the third no slouch as a member of Democratic leadership, used the blogosphere to further their positions. With that kind of attention, we can only imagine where the future of the 'sphere will lead.
I talked all about the past and future of the blogosphere this morning in a speech to several dozen students who have been in Washington for a seminar the past two weeks. I'll post my speech -- or at least the guts of it on the Top 10 blog stories of 2006 -- when I get a chance.
But for now, I'll just say that it has been amazing to watch the attention being showered on bloggers at the start of the 110th Congress:
-- Democratic bloggers went to Washington last week to celebrate, and House leaders gave them special access in the Capitol on the opening day of the session. (See coverage at Americablog, The Huffington Post, MyDD (here and here) and PoliticsTV (via a roundup at AirCongress, my new independent venture) for the evidence.
-- Democratic lawmakers celebrated their ascendancy to power by doing a little blogging themselves on opening day. The list included Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.; Rep. Jan Schakowsy, D-Ill.; and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
-- The "blawgmaking" has continued apace since then, with guest posts by a series of newcomers to the political blogosphere:
-- Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., at RedState;
-- Freshman Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., at the On Faith blog of Newsweek;
-- Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., at The Huffington Post;
-- Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., at The Huffington Post;
-- Freshman Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., at The Huffington Post;
-- And freshman Rep. Heather Shuler, D-N.C., at the Asheville Citizen-Times.
Plus other Democrats who are "old hands" at blawgmaking have made fresh appearances at The Huffington Post. They include: Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio; Rep. John Conyers of Michigan; Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts; Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts; and Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.
-- Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., held a conference call with Republican bloggers. (See the coverage at Capital Briefs, RedState and Right Wing News.)
-- Even the White House got in the game. As I noted earlier, two high-ranking officials held a conference call with select bloggers this afternoon. The Right Angle has audio.
You didn't see that kind of behavior two years ago, which tells you just how much influence political bloggers have gained since the stormed onto the scene in the 2004 presidential election. I full expect their power to increase, at least for the next two years.
Posted by Danny at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
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Bloggers Pressure Democrats Over Iraq War Policy
As noted in Technology Daily this morning:
The nation's Democratic lawmakers are learning the price of defying their party's liberal base, facing animosity from bloggers who disagree with statements or proposals made specifically with the war in Iraq.
The Los Angeles Times reports that after Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., said she would support President Bush if he proposed an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, anti-war bloggers fumed and the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org considered attacking her in a television advertisement.
"There will be people watching to make sure they do the right thing," said Tom Matzzie, MoveOn's Washington director.
The political pressure of bloggers and advocacy groups prompted Democratic leaders to make Iraq more central to their first 100 hours in control of Congress than they had planned.
A footnote: White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and Brett McGurk, the director for Iraq at the National Security Council, will hold a blogger conference call at 4 p.m. today to discuss the speech Bush will give tonight on the way forward in Iraq.
Posted by Danny at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)
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The Price Of Admission For Bloggers
Free Press is hosting the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tenn., next week, and the Internet-friendly group has welcomed bloggers to cover it for their readers. But the bloggers who go will have to pay for the right to blog the event.
"Blogger credentials ... are available to those who will be blogging the event," Free Press noted on the page dedicated to press and blog credentials. "We are offering bloggers the discounted registration rate of $75."
The cost for traditional press appears to be nothing, probably because most journalism organizations don't pay to cover the news -- and with Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, among other officials, on the roster of speakers, it is a newsworthy event.
The conference also will feature bloggers Duncan Black of Eschaton, Joan McCarter of Daily Kos and Matt Stoller of MyDD as speakers (I wonder if they have to pay, too). And my good friend (tongue-in-cheek), actor Danny Glover, will be there.
One other note: The conference site has a blog, something that is becoming increasingly commonplace.
Posted by Danny at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)
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Every several weeks, I like to point Beltway Blogroll fans to new blogs I've stumbled across, either through e-mail contact with readers or in my own reading of blogs. Here are the latest:
-- If they haven't already, health policy wonks should bookmark Health Affairs Blog, a production of the policy journal Health Affairs. "In addition to staff-written posts, we've been inviting leaders in the health policy world to write posts on wide range of topics from health reform to the election impact on health policymaking," associate publisher Jane Hiebert-White said in an e-mail to me a few months back.
That's an approach we took when we launched Tech Daily Dose here at National Journal for the election last November, and it's one I'd like to see more often. It just makes sense for Washington-oriented publications who quote experts all the time to give those same experts more room to air their views, and collecting them all in one place is a great service to readers.
-- The Baghdad bureau of the McClatchy newspaper company started a blog called Inside Iraq last week. That move comes on the heels of McClatchy newspapers buying two local blogs in California, FresnoFamous and ModestoFamous.
NewAssignment.net noted the significance of that convergence: "Clearly, with the purchase of FresnoFamous, McClatchy sees in its future a push toward citizen-based journalism and Web sites which capture that flavor." BuzzMachine commented as well.
-- Time magazine launched a group blog focused on federal politics. Dubbed Swampland, it is written by Washington bureau chief Jay Carney, Time.com Washington editor (and former Wonkette blogger) Ana Marie Cox, political columnist Joe Klein, and national political correspondent Karen Tumulty.
-- David All, the one-time "spokesblogger" to Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., has a blog, From The Trenches, at his just-launched new media consultancy, The David All Group.
-- HoyerBlog is a new site dedicated exclusively to new House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and is written by one of his constitutents. I imagine it won't be long before every lawmaker in the House and Senate leadership, in both parties, has such blogs focused on them, both pro and con.
There's also a new service called Placeblogger that serves as a portal to blogs that cover specific locales. Its launch sparked a flurry of commentary at media blogs like the Center for Citizen Media and PressThink.
See a trend in policy or political blogging? Want to tell me about a new blog you've found? E-mail me at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by Danny at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
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Tech Daily Dose, Live From Las Vegas!
Although I've been blogging for NationalJournal.com for a year-and-a-half now, we're still just dipping our toes into the blogosphere at Technology Daily, where I serve as editor.
We launched our blog, Tech Daily Dose, during Election Week last November to provide an extra burst of news and guest commentary on Election Night and in the immediate aftermath. The site has been on hiatus since then, but we're bringing it back Sunday.
The reason: Senior writer Andrew Noyes will be in Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. There's just too much news at that major event -- and too much of it that occurs after our PM deadline -- to limit our coverage to our usual AM and PM Editions, so Andrew will be blogging off deadline.
And the best part is that our coverage on the blog will be available to nonsubscribers as well as subscribers. We hope it will give folks at CES and elsewhere a taste of what we do on a regular basis at Tech Daily and convince them that we are a must read for the latest news in tech policy and politics.
Stop by during the early days of next week and give us a look -- and by all means let me know what you think. You can reach me at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by Danny at 04:04 PM | Comments (0)
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Rumblings In The Republican Blogosphere
This has been a busy personnel week on the Republican side of the blogosphere, marked by two noteworthy hirings in the Senate and the departure of a new-media-unfriendly communications director on the House side.
Jon Henke started the week with news of his hiring as the new media director for new Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Henke bolstered his blogospheric reputation after a brief stint on the unsuccessful re-election campaign of Sen. George Allen, R-Va., and his pending move from his Richmond, Va., home to Washington has won praise (some of it grudging) from friend and foe alike.
"Unlike most of the wingnutosphere, Henke is a genuine strategic thinker who understands the dynamics of Internet politics and the game of modern communications," Matt Stoller wrote at MyDD. "He's not inward looking and he gets that the right has to seriously invest and change their institutional framework to catch up to us. This is an excellent hire by McConnell, and it suggests he will be a very formidable leader."
Robert Bluey of The Right Angle at Human Events Online agreed. "The move also illustrates that Republicans are finally starting to realize the positive impact bloggers can have when trying to craft a message and effectively communicate it to an audience that doesn't want to be treated the same way as the press corps," he said.
Bluey benefited from the other hiring in the Senate. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., hired blogger Tim Chapman away from the Heritage Foundation, and Bluey will replace Chapman at Heritage's Center for Media and Public Affairs (where I recently accepted an invitation to be on an advisory board comprised of journalists and bloggers).
Chapman will be DeMint's senior communications adviser and promised, "Conservative bloggers will have a friend and a resource in Senator DeMint, no doubt about it."
Carl Forti, who just left his job on the House side, could not have said the same in his role as the spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. When I spoke to him about blogs a little more than a year ago, here is what he said: "A lot of times, you just don't know how reliable the information on these things is. ... Ninety percent of the time, we know more than they do."
Forti's former boss, Thomas Reynolds of New York, felt the wrath of those "unreliable" blogs this year when news broke that Reynolds allegedly knew about former Rep. Mark Foley soliciting teenage. male congressional pages but did nothing about it.
Whether Reynolds' replacement at the NRCC, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, and his new spokesman will be more new-media-savvy remains to be seen, but Matt Lewis of The Right Angle is hopeful for the New Year. "Clearly," he wrote, "one lesson Republican candidates learned in 2006 was that failing to be proactive in the blogosphere was a costly mistake -- a mistake they aren't likely to repeat in 2007."
Patrick Ruffini knew that lesson before the election and has been trying to apply it in his job as the e-campaign director of the Republican National Committee. Now Ruffini also is back to blogging (a move celebrated by Bluey) at the site that bears his name. "These are interesting times," he said in his resurrection post. "And the blogosphere is where the fight will be waged, and won."
Correction: A reader named DJ correctly noted in the comments that Reynolds is still in Congress. I have corrected that error of mine in the text above.
Posted by Danny at 12:43 PM | Comments (3)
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Bloggers love to talk about presidential candidates, and some candidates want to be seen on the blogs. But that doesn't mean that bloggers endorse the candidates who advertise on their sites.
A trio of the top Democratic blogs have felt compelled to make that point in recent days.
Duncan Black of Eschaton was the first to do so after John Edwards joined the Democratic field a few days ago. Black praised Edwards' "campaign-as-creative-movement-building" approach but at the same time reiterated that his acceptance of candidate ads does not imply endorsement.
"I'll definitely give my opinions about the policies candidates support and the way they try to deliver their message," Black wrote. "And, of course, I'll be busy trying to push back against unfair media smears of any of the candidates. But, again, the fact that I praise or defend candidate X does not mean I've joined their team."
His post prompted two endorsements of another kind. Both John Amato of Crooks and Liars and Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft seconded Black's view of blog ads and candidates.
Posted by Danny at 12:27 PM | Comments (1)
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Mitt Romney And The Blogosphere
Likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is garnering some press and blogosphere attention for his early outreach to the blogosphere in advance of his official entrance in the 2008 race.
The Boston Globe yesterday published a piece on Romney's blogosphere overtures, and Paul Mirenghoff of Power Line commented on some of the predictions in the piece. Specifically, Mirenghoff expressed doubt that blogs will be a significant force in choosing the next Republican nominee for president.
"I'm a bit skeptical about claims that blogs will be 'a major political force' in Republican primaries, and that candidates will be 'judged' in any significant way by how well they've 'mobilized bloggers,'" he wrote, adding that blogs probably will "reflect political reality more than they shape it."
"Indeed, Romney's early success with conservative bloggers is a more a reflection of the strong positive impression he tends to make in person than of some special saavy with the 'new media.' His success in the primaries will depend more on his ability similarly to impress the voters he meets, than the prospect that voters will take bloggers' word for how impressive he is (or is not)."
A few days earlier, conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt, who is the author of the book "Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World," interviewed Romney and praised his early efforts in the blogosphere. "Romney is setting the standard," Hewitt said, "and this is a crucial precedent for him to set: The GOP must have a standard bearer willing and ready to use the new media environment to push not just his candidacy but the ideas that bind the party together."
Romney already has made a smart hire in Stephen Smith, who until recently was working for the political action committee of outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Smith joined the Romney team soon after Frist decided not to run for president in 2008.
Robert Bluey of The Right Angle noted Smith's hiring in a piece that also looked at other potential new media experts available to GOP campaigns for the 2008 race.
Posted by Danny at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
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The Missouri blogosphere has won praise from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for breaking some of the biggest political stories in the state this year, and politicians aren't too thrilled by the development.
"Such coverage helps explain why potential Missouri candidates for 2008 are already grousing, mainly in private, about scrutiny they're facing on various blogs," the paper noted. "... Dave Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, says Missouri politicians must accept the fact that activities or comments that once were ignored could now end up as fodder for the Internet for all the world to see."
-- In Utah, state lawmakers are blogging about policy and "changing how lawmakers communicate with the public," according to AP. New West compared the development with "that uneasy feeling you got in your guts the first time you heard you mom say, 'Not!' a’la 'Wayne's World'" and "the time your Grandma referred to one of her many antique rings as 'bling-bling'?"
-- Ezra Klein made the case for more such "blog wonkery" at the national level. "The blogs offer new opportunities for politicians seeking a name through policy," he said. "... Happily, it's an easier job than you might assume, and even the conversion of a few serious politicians would make an enormous difference."
-- Three out of five of the best political moments of 2006 chosen by Slate involved the Internet. Firedoglake, meanwhile, noted the netroots highlights of the year.
-- Democrat John Edwards entered the 2008 presidential race last week. As a result, he now has more than $300,000 extra in the bank via the ActBlue online fundraising group. As noted at Beltway Blogroll last week, ActBlue also has draft funds for potential Democratic candidates, but none of those funds are generating much interest yet.
-- Effective tomorrow, RedState will be a part of Eagle Publishing. "We believe that, with the resources of a committed and innovative company behind it, RedState can take the next leap forward at this critical time in our nation's history," RedState's directors recently announced. "This purchase allows for many things that the RedState model of the past two and a half years didn't - including more full-time staff, stronger support mechanisms and greater grassroots building.
-- David All, another conservative innovator in the new media space, has left his job as the "spokesblogger" to Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., and is now running his own consulting shop, The David All Group. "I strongly believe that our party needs to find and embrace modern, better ways to communicate with America to win back the majority, and I look forward to helping the team do just that," he said in an e-mail announcing the move.
-- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani could use the advice of a new media expert like All. Giuliani now has a presidential exploratory committee for the 2008 presidential race and a Web site to go with it, but it's about as old media as you can get -- no blog, no podcasts, no video and really not much of anything.
-- Technology bloggers are talking about the approval of the merger between AT&T and BellSouth. Isen.blog has a roundup and asks: "What's the all-fired hurry? Why, all of a sudden is it so urgent for these elephants to dance? And why, especially, a stealth agreement released late on a holiday Friday afternoon when telecom reporters are home with loved ones? ... My fork says this one isn't done yet.'
-- The government of Pakistan reportedly is blocking blogs that originate from the free service offered by Google.
-- According to Think & Ask, the Foghound consultancy in Massachusetts counts this among its 10 marketing trends for 2007: "More people will tire of reading so many blogs, and will narrow down their daily reading and posting."
Posted by Danny at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
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As the news cycle slows every year at this time, journalists who are looking for stories start looking to the blogs and then attack with abandon.
We've seen national manifestations of that trend already in the recent tirades by a Wall Street Journal editorial-page editor and by syndicated columnist George Will. Now the behavior of some local bloggers in Santa Clarita, Calif., has triggered yet another attack on the blogosphere in general.
"True to the nationwide trend, Internet blogs written from and about the Santa Clarita Valley also flourished this year," the Los Angeles Daily News concluded in a story about those blogs. "It's a new kind of journalism in which bias is fine, name-calling acceptable and grammar a nonissue."
The rest of the article is a straight feature on what people can find at some of the local blogs, but it's amusing that the staff writer felt compelled to take a stereotypical poke at blogs. I'll be glad when the late-year, anti-blog silly season has ended.
Posted by Danny at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
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