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December 31, 2005Kathleen Parker On Blogs, Then And Now
Columnist Kathleen Parker triggered another round of MSM animosity in the blogosphere this week with a blog-bashing piece titled "Lord Of The Blogs."
While the article offered some pointed criticisms that no honest blogger could fairly refute, its over-the-top comparison of bloggers to the tribal, "murderous barbarians" of the classic movie "Lord Of The Flies" understandably riled the blogosphere. Parker's elitist praise for "professors, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, scientists and other journalists who also happen to blog," and her rash dismissal of those who don't fit her ivory-tower mold of acceptable bloggers also sparked a backlash.
LaShawn Barber posted an excellent and thorough response to Parker's column, including a reaction from Parker herself. You also can get your fill of outrage, sarcasm and reactionary rhetoric at blogs like Ace of Spades HQ, Daily Kos, Mark in Mexico, Outside the Beltway, PoliPundit, Right Wing News and Think Progress.
I found it more interesting, however, to compare what Parker has written about blogs in the past with her latest screed. As Parker acknowledged in the new column, she has praised blogs. More to the point, she defended bloggers against a journalistic colleague who ridiculed them as a bunch of undisciplined folks in pajamas -- a charge very similar to the one she is now making.
In one column, Parker spoke positively of bloggers being the "big bang of the information age." But in "Lord of the Blogs," she ridiculed blogs as "the big-bang 'electroniverse' where recently wired squatters set up new camps each day." While Parker proclaimed herself a "fan" of blogging back in the summer of 2003, you would never know it from the column she just wrote.
Curiously, other than an explosion in the number of blogs, nothing significant has changed in the blogosphere from the time Parker first lauded them until now. The justifiable criticisms that she leveled in the latest column -- "untempered by restraint and accountability," "undisciplined," and sometimes lacking "maturity and humility" -- have been true since bloggers jumped defiantly onto the political stage.
As The Anchoress said in a 2005 roundup, "The point can be made that some blogs are better than others, and some bloggers more temperate and serious than others, but so what? That's just life." It's also quite true of journalists, as Parker herself knows and has shown time and again in her columns.
So why did she turn on bloggers now? I don't really know -- and the explanation she offered LaShawn Barber doesn't really answer the question for me. But turn she did, as the quotes from "Bloggers Knew!" (Sept. 15, 2004) and "Blogs Breaking Logjam Of Journalism" (July 13, 2003) clearly show.
See the excerpts for yourself in the extended entry.
Lord Of The Blogs
-- Blogs are "the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility -- the angry offspring of narcissism's quickie marriage to instant gratification."
-- "There's something frankly creepy about the explosion we now call the blogosphere -- the big-bang 'electroniverse' where recently wired squatters set up new camps each day."
-- "Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality. ... [M]ost babble, buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation's inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive."
-- "These effete and often clever baby 'bloggies' are rich in time and toys, but bereft of adult supervision. Spoiled and undisciplined, they have grabbed the mike and seized the stage."
-- "Plenty smart but lacking in wisdom, they possess the power of a forum, but neither the maturity nor humility that years of experience impose."
-- "Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.' Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure."
-- "When someone trips ... bloggers are the bloodthirsty masses slavering for a public flogging. Incivility is their weapon and humanity their victim."
-- "[W]e should beware and resist the rest of the ego-gratifying rabble who contribute only snark, sass and destruction."
Bloggers Knew!
-- "Bloggers love fact-checking television and newspaper reporters and commentators ... and have proved themselves both energetic and competent on both fronts."
-- "All these discussions [about phony National Guard memos] took place after the blogosphere had worked its magic. ... Such was the spark that began the flame that grew into the wildfire that became the conflagration that threatens to consign journalistic credibility to history's ash heap."
-- "Make that yet another victory for the nerds, but not nerds in pajamas , as former CBS executive Jonathan Klein said in an attempt to impugn bloggers."
-- "The beauty of the blogosphere is that it is self-igniting, self-propelling and self-selecting, a sort of intellectual ecosystem wherein the best specimens from various disciplines descend from the ethers, converge on an issue and apply their unique talents."
-- "Though virtually newborn, the blogosphere has blossomed exponentially in a matter of earth-time seconds, from a few random voices to a mighty and diverse chorus of sometimes spectacular talent. Bloggers are the big bang of the information age."
Blogs Breaking Logjam Of Journalism
-- "I'm not an expert on blogging, but I am a fan. As a regular visitor to a dozen or so news and opinion blogs, I'm riveted by the implications for my profession."
-- "[W]hat I once loved about journalism went missing some time ago and seems to have resurfaced as the driving force of the blogosphere: a high-spirited, irreverent, swashbuckling, lances-to-the-ready assault on the status quo."
-- "[B]loggers are building bonfires and handing out virtual leaflets along America's Information Highway."
-- "The best bloggers ... are like smart, hip gunslingers come to make trouble for the local good ol' boys. The heat they pack includes an arsenal of intellectual artillery, crisp prose, sharp insights and a gimlet eye for mainstream media's flaws."
-- "[T]he blogosphere may help more than hurt. The view from my bunker suggests that blogs can't be anything but good for journalism. Just as a new restaurant is good for established ones, competition is good."
Posted by at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)
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Year-End Thoughts On Blogging
The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a progressive think tank based in New York, looks at blogging milestones in the policy arena for 2005.
The list is available at DMI Blog, but the introduction to the list is worth repeating in full here:
Read by ordinary people, journalists, politicians and their staff, blogs are shaping the public dialogue around breaking news and providing a forum for people to air opinions on the issues they care about. Blogs can be a megaphone enabling regular people -- citizen journalists -- to sound off among the "experts." But blogs can also transform the one-way message machine by enabling grassroots activists to leverage their collective power to pressure the traditional media to cover developments relevant to the public interest.
UPDATE (via Instapundit, including a new headline): Michael Silence, a blogger at the Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee, shared his year-end thoughts on blogging. While he concluded that blogging is "here to stay," he also said the number and readership of blogs is leveling, and niches are developing.
All of those points seem to be on the mark. But Silence had another observation that I question: "I think the fad of politicians blogging has come and gone. It's time-consuming, a lot of work, and there's no way they can respond to all the comments."
Maybe that is true in Tennessee -- he's in a better position to say than me -- but based on what I've seen in Congress in the past year, I wholeheartedly disagree. Lawmakers are just starting to realize how they can use blogs to energize their political bases and bypass the media to take their messages straight to the public. As more lawmakers succeed at those goals, more lawmakers will blog. And even the ones who do not blog will start trying to woo bloggers.
Posted by at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)
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Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos is in the news again, this time courtesy of Newsweek. The magazine has an exclusive interview with Moutlitsas, who offers his analysis of 2006 congressional races in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and elsewhere.
Washington Monthly recently profiled Moulitsas, and the article spurred plenty of conversation and criticism. All of the attention for the top liberal blogger has some of his critics wondering why the mainstream media are making such a fuss.
Iowa Voice said Moulitsas certainly doesn't deserve the coverage based on his record as a political prognosticator. "Seriously, what's the MSM's fascination with this guy? He's like 0-13 in selecting candidates, and virtually every political prediction he's ever made has been wrong."
Environmental Republican put Moultisas' record at 0-16 but made much the same underlying point: "If I were any of the Democratic candidates just named by Kos, I would drop out of the race tomorrow because the dude is the kiss of death."
Posted by at 02:40 PM | Comments (1)
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Blogs have earned an "honorable mention" from journalist J.D. Lasica in his Top 10 Tech Transformations of 2005.
Here's his explanation of why: "Yes, blogging already made its impact with the 2004 election, if not before, but blogging achieved mainstream status in 2005 by dint of sheer numbers (over 24 million blogs today) and by its rising up alongside mainstream media as an influential part of the public's media diet."
Posted by at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)
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Military Bloggers And Information Warfare
Late last week, a Washington Monthly article about blogs caused a stir among bloggers. Now a Washington Post article on military bloggers has the blogosphere buzzing again.
The article focuses on two bloggers who were embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq -- Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail and ThreatsWatch, and Michael Yon -- and it implies that such independent writers are becoming pawns of the military in "an increasingly aggressive battle for control over information about the conflict." The story also notes that Roggio received media credentials by affiliating himself with the American Enterprise Institute.
Michelle Malkin defended Roggio and "milbloggers" in general. The Post's "take on bloggers as tools easily exploited by one major political party or the other is typical -- and typically misinformed," she wrote. "Again, I ask: Is it too much to expect reporters who write about blogs to actually read them?"
James Joyner of Outside the Beltway reacted a bit differently. He said the use of blogs for spin, whether from the military or other official sources, is to be expected. "Given the rise of the blogosphere as an information medium, it was only a matter of time before those seeking to get their messages out would turn there," he said. "Indeed, I've been getting e-mailed press releases from congressional offices, party officials, interest groups and others for months now."
UPDATE: Roggio has responded to the Post article by both highlighting "factual errors" and criticizing the portrayal of his work as being "a tool of the military."
He also chastised the newspaper for equating U.S. military "information operations" with propaganda from the al Qaeda terrorist network. "The U.S. military is conducting an influence campaign to draw attention to the news, which is missed by the media on a daily basis," Roggio wrote. "Their belief (and one that I share) is the portrayal of events in Iraq do not reflect the actual situation on the ground. While the articles may be viewed as 'favorable' to the coalition, the question is, are they accurate and factual? The Washington Post does not address this issue, nor does it provide evidence that the military is running a disinformation campaign."
Instapundit has a roundup of other reactions to the article. And Mark Tapscott says of the Post, "Simple Corrections Won't Do It."
Posted by at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)
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Make Room For Bloggers At The White House
The White House is soon set to begin renovating the decaying press room that opened in 1970, according to The Washington Post, and blogger Hugh Hewitt has a suggestion: Reserve some space for bloggers -- and make it prominent.
"Whoever is doing the redesign, let's hope they put in a bloggers' row, right at the front, and lose the reserved seating for the dinosaurs from MSM," Hewitt wrote today.
Hewitt surely knows that his fantasy of a White House press room that favors bloggers over the mainstream media is not going to become reality. But the new briefing room should include space for bloggers because it won't be long before the best of those citizen journalists start earning credentials to cover official Washington. It's better to plan for their arrival now than to have to scramble to make room for them later.
Posted by at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
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Blogging About Bankruptcy
The new bankruptcy law is now the subject of a new blog, courtesy of the American Bankruptcy Institute. BAPCPA Blog focuses on court interpretations of the statute.
The act was the focus of mini-blog swarms both just before it was enacted in the spring and then again just after Hurricane Katrina, when the law was set to take effect. Bloggers who opposed the law, like Elizabeth Warren of TPMCafe, argued that its implementation should be delayed so as not to unduly impact victims of the hurricane.
Bankruptcy lawyer and ABI member David Rosendorf started BAPCA Blog, which gets its name from the new law, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. Lisa Keyfetz and David Samole are the other contributors.
Posted by at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)
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The Moulitsas Machine And 'Blogospheric Wonkery'
To hear Benjamin Wallace-Wells tell it in the latest issue of Washington Monthly, Daily Kos mastermind Markos Moulitsas Zuniga has become "a kind of part-time sage, an affiliate member" of the Democratic establishment in Washington. He has regular phone calls with party leaders, and some Democrats long to see him as their "master tactician."
But Moulitsas, who regularly and vigorously defends his self-proclaimed reputation as just "a guy with a blog," said in a rebuttal to the article that he has absolutely no desire to become part of the Democratic establishment in Washington, which he hates. "I don't want to make a big deal out of this," he wrote, "since the piece is generally fine and the intentions were good. ... But the mistakes in those first four paragraphs build me up as someone ingrained in the party structure when things couldn't be further from the truth."
The article also has sparked a side debate about the potential role of blogs, and especially leading liberal journals like Daily Kos, to push public policies. Moulitsas admittedly has no interest in policy issues, and he challenged the contention of the article -- and of bloggers like Garance Franke-Ruta of The American Prospect's Tapped -- that he should care about more than tactics and Democratic victory.
"I see Daily Kos as part of our noise machine, with tangents into organizing, fundraising, and even think tank wonkery. ... But at the end of the day," he wrote, "this site won't replace the need for a network of think tanks to challenge Cato, Heritage and the like. ... We can't single-handedly rescue the progressive movement. We are but a small part of a much broader whole."
Political Animal Kevin Drum noted that "all political movements have both tacticians and theoreticians," and that Moulitsas certainly can "leave the ideology to others." But Drum said the problem is that too many bloggers think like Moulitsas.
"To a large extent," Drum wrote, "I think Kos is symbolic of nearly the entire political blogosphere, which tends to be far more a partisan wrecking crew than a genuine force for either progressive or conservative thought."
Duncan Black, who writes at Eschaton under the pseudonym Atrios, took a contrary view. He argued that as long as Republicans control everything in Washington, there really is not much point in a bunch of "blogospheric wonkery."
"If our team actually had some power," he wrote, "we could be debating the merits of various universal healthcare proposals, or considering just how large a minimum-wage increase might be appropriate, or various other wonky things. It would be good fun. But we live in an unserious age where the people running the government have no interest in policy, and the people not running government have no ability to get anything passed without having anything good about it destroyed by the Republicans."
UPDATE: Moulitsas later posted a blow-by-blow response to factual errors and other misinformation in the Washington Monthly piece.
And Atrios noted that lefty bloggers actually can claim one huge, wonky success on the policy front: changing minds on Social Security reform.
He added, however, that "even the Social Security debate was basically a defensive one. Such wonkery is necessary when those moments arise, but there's little point in having public debates about detailed policies [that] can't possibly pass."
UPDATE II: Mark Coffey of Decision '08 also has a detailed response to the article, from a Republican perspective. Other GOP blogs offering their take include: Ace of Spades HQ, Gateway Pundit, Outside the Beltway, PoliPundit and RedState )here and here).
The conservative bloggers are focusing mostly on two things: Moulitsas' claim that he has been vindicated for the "screw them" comment he made about contractors in Iraq after one of them was killed; and the article's suggestion that some people want Moulitsas to play a greater role in the Democratic Party.
Coffey of Decision '08 and Lorie Byrd of PoliPundit are squarely behind the latter idea. "[O]h, please, please, PLEASE give Markos more of a role in the Democratic Party!" Coffey said.
UPDATE III: Three more bloggers -- Digby at Hullabaloo, Henry Farrell of Out of the Crooked Timber and Ezra Klein -- weigh in on the merits of blog wonkery.
Farrell added his voice to those noting the impact of blogs in the debate over Social Security. "Not only is a certain amount of wonkishness on the left a good thing in itself, but it can be an important political weapon," he wrote. "Looking back to the Social Security debate, left-of-center blogs played a real role in helping to torpedo Republican proposals."
Digby challenged the notion that lefty blogs are not engaged in the policy arena by providing a list of several that are. "So I say hooray for the wonkosphere and the crankosphere," he wrote. "I know that each side sometimes offends the sensibilities of the other, but we should warmly embrace our bretheren no matter what our temperaments incline us to. Robust progressive politics requires both."
Posted by at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)
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Brad Smith's Virtual Return To Washington
Brad Smith endeared himself to bloggers in his last months on the Federal Election Commission by fighting to keep bloggers free of campaign finance regulation. Smith left the post for a teaching job in Ohio in August, but his interest in campaign finance prompted a virtual return to Washington this week via RedState.
The impetus for Smith's return: a press release issued by campaign finance activist Trevor Potter, one of Smith's arch enemies during his time at the FEC.
The release from Potter, a former FEC chairman and now head of the Campaign Legal Center, focused on the recent selection of three FEC nominees by President Bush, as well as Bush's re-nomination of Republican Commissioner David Mason.
Potter is not impressed by the new nominees -- Robert Lenhard, Hans von Spakovsky and Steven Walther -- and he is downright angry that Bush made the picks as Congress is about to adjourn for the year. Potter suspects that Bush will use his power to make "recess appointments" for all of them, which means the nominees would not have to endure the scrutiny of Senate confirmation.
"The apparent intention to push these nominees through as recess appointments, without debate or an up-or-down vote, would deny the public the right to give these nominees serious scrutiny," Potter said.
Smith sent his response to that argument to Mike Krempasky of RedState, who last week celebrated the new slate of nominees. In essence, Smith accused Potter of hypocrisy because Potter supported the recess appointment of Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub three years ago and even chastised the White House for not pushing her appointment through quickly enough to suit campaign finance advocates.
"Here is a group [Campaign Legal Center] with no members, whose alleged expertise seems to blow with the wind and its own immediate political needs, taking one approach one day, and another the next, and it can't (or won't) even get basic facts right in its release," Smith wrote.
Former FEC aide Allison Hayward, who now blogs at Skeptic's Eye, also has been following the latest FEC developments. You can read her insights here, here and here.
Posted by at 12:27 PM | Comments (2)
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The Scoop From Illinois' 6th District
The race for the open House seat in Illinois' 6th District now has three Democrats in it, and ArchPundit Larry Handlin intends to interview all three. Yesterday, he had his first interview with the newest candidate in the field, Tammy Duckworth.
Republican Henry Hyde is retiring from Congress, thus giving Democrats a better shot at the 6th. Besides Duckworth, the other two Democrats are Christine Cegelis and Lindy Scott. Cegelis and Scott have blogs on their Web sites, but Duckworth does not.
Handlin divided his interview with Duckworth into separate topical entries. So far, he has covered her: background; reasons for running; and her views on health care, assault weapons, airport expansion in Chicago, and abortion. More entries are planned.
Duckworth's entry into the race has stirred some controversy in the Democratic Party. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos dubbed the battle between Cegelis and Duckworth "a classic insider-outsider race," pitting the grassroots against the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
"The DCCC has been undermining Cegelis for months, making sure donors knew that they were working hard to find someone to replace/take on Cegelis," Moulitsas wrote.
Not all Democrats consider the competition bad, though. Cegelis welcomed Duckworth to the race in a post at Daily Kos, and Moulitsas said "Democrats win regardless of who emerges from the primary."
UPDATE: Jonathan Singer at MyDD also is interviewing congressional candidates. His latest interview is with former Rhode Island Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic candidate for the Senate.
Posted by at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
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Blogger Matt Stoller caused a stir at last year's Democratic Party convention in Boston when he dared to speak something other than a positive word about party darling Barack Obama.
"To be honest, I don't get the big deal," Stoller wrote of Obama at The Blogging of the President. "I've seen him speak a few times. He seems very charismatic, but I have yet to cross that bridge with him where I feel like he's saying anything really interesting or useful. He's a lot like [John] Edwards -- charismatic and demographically useful for the Democrats. But is there there there?"
The party was so taken aback by Stoller's posting that he was asked to cease his volunteer work as the "blog community coordinator" for the rest of convention week.
Fast forward to the present: Obama, D-Ill., is now a senator and still a party darling. Some people want him to run for president in 2008.
Stoller just completed a blogging gig for the Senate campaign of New Jersey Democrat Jon Corzine and earned kudos in the summer for a report on "The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere". He also testified before the Federal Election Commission about applying campaign finance law to bloggers.
Now blogging at MyDD, Stoller is on Obama's e-mail list. But apparently Stoller is still not enamored with the freshman senator. He just posted an entry that includes an image of the Obama family's holiday e-mail card under the headline, "Merry Christmas, Barack. Now How About Doing Something?"
Stoller's current gripe about Obama is in reaction to the ongoing controversy over secret wiretapping of Americans by the Bush administration. "[T]he president just claimed the executive branch has absolute power," Stoller wrote to Obama. "Might I suggest you use some of your political capital and quit the 'Aw, shucks, I'm new here' shtick? You did teach constitutional law."
Any wagers on whether Stoller will be on the Obamas' mailing list this time next year?
UPDATE: Not surpringly, Stoller caught some heat for his post, including a call from Obama's office. So Stoller posted a more detailed explanation of why he is so upset with Obama.
The gist of Stoller's argument: President Bush is "a liar and a fraud," but Obama has been undermining that argument by saying the president is not a bad man and loves his country. "You cannot do business with George W. Bush and his ilk," Stoller wrote, "and talking him up undercuts the goal that all of us, including Senator Obama, seek."
Posted by at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)
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Jeff Pulver is a pioneer in Internet telephony and as such is closely monitoring congressional action, or lack thereof, aimed at helping companies like his offer 911 emergency-calling service. Last week, the founder of Pulver.com used his blog to lobby for the measure.
The bill, S. 1063, would help Internet phone firms offer "enhanced 911" service, or E911, which enables people to connect to emergency operators even if they are not using traditional phone service. But it has become enmeshed in partisan and FCC politics involving a Nov. 28 deadline for enhanced 911 and the potential for waivers from that mandate.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., reportedly is using a procedural tool to block Senate action on the E911 legislation. Pulver's blog entry urged readers to contact staffers for Rockefeller and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, the chief sponsor of the bill. Pulver provided contact details.
"If you care about this bill, about direct access to the 911 network, about equivalent liability relief, about no technology mandates, about accelerating an [Internet-based] 911 network," Pulver wrote, "then you should call. ... If the hold is lifted, we believe unanimous consent on the bill could happen before they recess early next week."
Posted by at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)
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A Tale Of Two Killers
Cory Maye of Mississippi and Stanley "Tookie" Williams of California had two very different pasts before they landed on death row -- Williams in 1981 and Maye in 2004.
Maye had no criminal record before killing a policeman who had burst into his home without a warrant. Williams, on the other hand, was a founder of the infamous Crips street gang, convicted of killing four people in two crimes.
But now the two have one more thing besides their criminal sentences in common: Each has become a focal point of renewed debate about capital punishment -- a debate being driven in large part by bloggers.
Blogging about the death penalty, and particularly against it, is not a new idea. The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has been at it for 18 months, and Amnesty International launched Death Penalty Blog in July. Some state affiliates of NCADP, including those in Alabama, Missouri and Tennessee, also publish blogs.
After the national branch in October discussed Internet activism at its annual conference, NCADP blogger David Elliot posted three entries on blogging about the death penalty. "To me, it's about encouraging each other, building community, exchanging ideas, sharing what works and what doesn't," he wrote. "Taking new messages and trying them out for a spin. Doing new things."
Blogs with broader content also cover the death penalty periodically, especially when it is in the mainstream media mix. But until last month, as the nation neared its 1,000th execution since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, the topic had not reached critical mass in the blogosphere.
Then came Tookie Williams and Cory Maye.
Williams rose to celebrity status first. "While in jail, he became an anti-gang activist, wrote children's books and was nominated by a member of the Swiss Parliament for the Nobel Prize," TalkLeft noted last month in encouraging its readers to sign a petition urging clemency for Williams.
His story spurred numerous sympathetic appeals from bloggers, as well as outrage at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., for refusing clemency.
But the facts of Williams' life before prison, plus his repeated denials of committing the murders for which he was convicted, only served to heighten the longstanding divide over the death penalty. Abolitionists and the law-and-order crowd highlighted each other's excesses.
Firmly in the law-and-order group, Michelle Malkin posted several entries under "The Tookie Files." Both she and Patterico of Patterico's Pontifications emphasized the fate of Williams' victims: Albert Owens, Tsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang and Ye-Chen Lin.
"Tonight should be about honoring their memory and bringing justice for their deaths," Patterico wrote before Williams was executed Tuesday.
Even bloggers who oppose the death penalty, including both conservative Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters and liberal Duncan Black of Eschaton, had qualms about rallying around Williams.
Quite the opposite is true with Maye. His case is the subject of a blog swarm encompassing both the left and the right.
While Black said he "can't quite see how Stanley Williams is really the poster child for the cause" against capital punishment, he endorsed the conservative-led fight for Maye. "Every now and then," he said, "the wingnutosphere finds a cause which actually has merit. ... The case of Cory Maye is indeed a travesty."
Radley Balko of The Agitator first told Maye's story to the blogosphere Dec. 7, as the debate over Williams' death sentence was reaching its climax. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit gave the story a larger audience the next day, and Balko later created a Cory Maye page.
Balko even provided a roundup of views from people who believe the Maye verdict is just -- including one whom Balko said "casts some rather nasty aspersions on me."
"Radley's done a good deal of follow-up on this case," Kieran Healy wrote at Out of the Crooked Timber, "and so far nothing he's turned up suggests that Maye is anything other than the victim of an appalling travesty of justice."
On the left, Angelica of Battlepanda is leading the call to arms, as well as taking the roll of the libertarian, Republican and Democratic blogs engaged on Maye's behalf. "When the Instapundit and I both agree that something is wack," she said, "you can be sure that it is indeed very, very wack."
The mainstream media still have ignored Maye's plight -- perhaps a case of death-penalty burnout from covering Williams. Yet the case has captured the interest of bloggers as far away as South Africa, where Laurence Caromba of Commentary noted, "If Maye manages to get off death row, Balko will share a great deal of the responsibility."
Mark Kleiman concluded much the same at The Huffington Post, albeit with a more pessimistic spin: "This case is an interesting test of the power of the blogosphere. ... Unless bloggers can somehow attract the attention of mainstream media outlets, or of the politicians whose statements the mainstream media will treat as news ... then the story is going to die, and so, probably, is Cory Maye."
The blog swarm has the potential to reach beyond Maye himself, though. It might shape public opinion about the death penalty in general, which as James Joyner noted at Outside the Beltway, already has shown signs of changing.
"Capital punishment is rather obviously allowed by the Constitution," he said. "It still has overwhelming public support, as seen in poll after poll and election after election. Those same polls, though, show a growing concern about the way the system works. It may well be that, 20 years or so from now, a majority will oppose state-sanctioned executions."
However American views of the death penalty evolve, blogs are sure to be a factor in that intellectual shift. And bloggers' musings over the execution of Tookie Williams and the death sentence of Cory Maye could prove to be the catalyst for that shift.
Posted by at 10:02 AM | Comments (11)
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Democratic bloggers have scored some noteworthy successes in rallying financial support for their favored candidates. Now Sen. Russell Feingold is giving them the chance to pick a congressional candidate worthy of his support.
As honorary chairman of the Progressive Patriots Fund, Feingold, D-Wis., has run blog ads to invite the "netroots" to pick their favorite from among 11 candidates. The candidate who gets the most votes will receive a $5,000 donation from the fund.
The candidates are: Francine Busby of California; Chris Carney and Lois Murphy of Pennsylvania; John Courage and Nick Lampson of Texas; Brad Ellsworth of Indiana; Patricia Madrid of New Mexico; Coleen Rowley and Tim Walz of Minnesota; Heath Shuler of North Carolina; and Peter Welch of Vermont.
"These candidates were selected by you and your fellow bloggers through the candidate suggestion form," the fund said at the page to which the blog ads directed readers, "and we hope to do more of these events in the future." The winner will be announced Thursday.
Welch's campaign site features the contest prominently at the top and encourages supporters to go vote for him. If netroots voters pick their favorite candidate based on which ones have blogs, though, Welch has one strike against him.
Busby, Carney, Courage, Murphy and Rowley are the only candidates of the 11 with active blogs. Lampson's campaign is upgrading the software for its blog.
UPDATE: Courage, a candidate in Texas' 21st District, won the contest, but the Progressive Patriots Fund plans to run more such contests.
Posted by at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)
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House leaders last month pulled from a budget bill language that would authorize oil exploration in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, but the prospects for such drilling just improved.
Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., reports in a Sunday blog entry at RedState that House and Senate negotiators on a fiscal 2006 Defense Department bill agreed to add ANWR language to that measure. All Republicans and two Democrats, one each from the House and Senate, supported the move.
Kingston's view: "Opening ANWR is a strong drive to the hoop to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. ... When it comes to energy and national security, we don't need to do just one thing -- we need to do everything. We need to explore our own resources in Alaska and in the deep ocean, we need to conserve, and we need to expand our fuel options and fuel choices to get us beyond oil."
UPDATE: Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, noted the House's passage of the bill, ANWR language included.
Posted by at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)
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A Few Words From Israel's Vice Prime Minister
The commentators at The Huffington Post are arguably the most diverse in the blogosphere, and the mix just became more diverse with the addition of one of Israel's leaders.
Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is also the nation's minister of industry, trade and labor, and the finance minister, posted an entry today on "moving Israel forward."
"We believe that we must continue our ongoing dialogue with our Palestinian neighbors," Olmert wrote. "The disengagement [from Gaza] was a first, bold step that dramatically changed the reality here, and we need to continue to move forward. The Israeli government ... will continue in the future to seek ways to further dialogue and negotiations with the Palestinians, and to increase interaction and cooperation in order to further change the reality for the benefit of both our peoples."
Posted by at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)
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Blogger Jason Mazzone at Concurring Opinions thinks a blog at the Supreme Court just might improve the quality of court opinions.
His proposal: "The Supreme Court should operate a blog to generate input on the court's opinions before they are published. The postings could range from limited issues ... to entire drafts of opinions and requests for comments."
He compared the concept with friend-of-the-court briefs from people who are not direct parties to pending cases. "A blog would expand on that principle and allow input from a wider audience," Mazzone wrote.
He also offered some thoughts on how to structure the blog. "An unmoderated Supreme Court blog would attract a lot of comments, many of which would be less insightful and helpful than others. ... So perhaps comments should be limited to registered users. Perhaps registration should require some kind of screening process. Law professors might qualify more easily than, say, astrologers. Anonymous posts probably should not be allowed."
That kind of thinking isn't exactly in the democratic spirit of blogging. But then again, the Supreme Court isn't exactly democratic.
Mazzone's post has sparked only one comment so far, from Concurring Opinions founder Daniel Solove who asks a series of questions: "What kinds of issues do you have in mind where you believe the blog will be of assistance? Ones involving precedent and case law? Or ones involving factual and empirical matters? Or both? Can you provide an example of a specific case or issue where tapping into the wisdom of the blogosphere would have potentially assisted the court?"
Posted by at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)
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BillBlast: Feingold's Filibuster
The Senate voted 52-47 today not to limit debate on the USA PATRIOT Act, and Sen. Russ Feingold, the mastermind behind the opposition, quickly claimed victory in a post at TPMCafe.
Feingold, D-Wis., has been guest blogging at the site all week, as the Senate pondered its next move on a bill to extend the life of the 2001 anti-terrorism law. He has been fairly prolific, too, posting 10 entries. That's two a day -- not bad for a senator also trying to rally support against a once overwhelmingly popular law.
Feingold gave some of the credit for his success to the TPMCafe community. "There is no doubt that the reaction from citizens like you on this issue helped convince a number of members to vote with us," he wrote.
The PATRIOT Act currently ranks as the fifth most-searched topic at the blog search engine Technorati.com. Americablog and Instapundit are among those that have posted on the issue today.
The debate over the PATRIOT Act had generated plenty of commentary on its own. But this morning's New York Times piece about the Bush administration spying on Americans triggered a whole new blog swarm. Michelle Malkin critiqued that story at length in a post dubbed "Red Alert: Chicken Littles On The Loose."
(I guess she hasn't seen the new "Chicken Little" movie, or she'd know that maverick fowl wasn't just suffering from a bout of avian flu. He was right: The sky is falling!)
UPDATE: Read more commentary on the PATRIOT Act and Times story at Captain's Quarter's, Concurring Opinions, The Huffington Post and Hugh Hewitt, MyDD, New Donkey, Power Line and TalkLeft.
Posted by at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)
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Abortion has been one of the most divisive issues in America for decades, and blogs are now one of the hottest formats for advocacy on divisive causes. Which begs the question: Why isn't there more organized advocacy on abortion, be it pro or con, in the blogosphere?
Someone must have asked that question in the anti-abortion community recently because in about a month, bloggers who oppose abortion will be hosting the "first annual" Blogs4Life. The event will be held Jan. 23, just before the annual March for Life that marks the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
Blogger Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council, which will co-host the conference, announced Blogs4Life yesterday. National Review columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez will be the featured speaker. She blogs at The Corner.
Yoest billed the meeting as an "opportunity for pro-life bloggers to get together and talk about how to maximize the impact of their blogging." And yes, you read that right, the event is exclusive. Bloggers who favor abortion rights are not invited, as the Blogs4Life site also makes clear: "The conference is open to all who support the sanctity of human life." The abortion rights crowd will just have to orgazine its own strategic blogging confab.
I won't be surprised if I hear about that one soon.
UPDATE: Although more than 40 blogs participated, the Blogs4Life event yesterday didn't generate much copy online. As of this afternoon, even the Blogs4Life site had only one post-event entry.
La Shawn Barber authored the meatiest post on the gathering. It includes links to other commentary by participating blogs. Her views on whether abortion should be allowed in the cases of rape and incest were the most powerful.
"Since the day I realized I was a Christian," Barber wrote, "I was never torn about this issue. The life of the unborn is precious and worthy of protection no matter how that life is conceived. It really isn't more clear than that. What's unclear is whether Christians are willing to live as the world does or as God requires."
Posted by at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: No 'EZ Pass' To Torture
The debate over U.S. policy on torturing suspected terrorists and other prisoners of war has been raging in Congress and in the blogosphere for weeks. Now a member of Congress has added his two cents in the blogosphere.
In an entry at The Huffington Post, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., advocated U.S. policy that would prevent the United States not only from torturing its prisoners but also from shipping them to other countries with looser rules on torture. He criticized what he sees as an attempt by the Bush administration to grant itself an "EZ pass around the law."
"Under pressure from the public," Markey wrote, "it looks like the Bush administration might just change the words it uses regarding torture. But if its deeds remain unchanged -- if the Bush administration continues a policy of 'extraordinary rendition' that has 'disappeared' hundreds of detainees into the night -- all the words in the world will not alter the damage that is being done to the standing of the U.S."
Posted by at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)
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The U.S. auto industry is a fan of Canadian-style health care, and Rep. Jim McDermott has the paper to prove it -- or so the Washington Democrat said in his latest entry at The Huffington Post.
McDermott began by recounting his long-running support for a government-funded healthcare system for all Americans and chastising Republicans for failing to address healthcare woes in the nation.
Then he reprinted parts of a letter that he said "was sent separately to the Canadian government by Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Daimler Chrysler and the union representing auto workers in late 2002." One quote from the letter said of Canada that "it is vitally important that the publicly funded healthcare system be preserved and renewed."
"That's the U.S. auto industry acting outside the U.S," McDermott wrote. "It's time to act inside the U.S. ... It's time for the Republican majority to make health care a priority. It's time for the auto industry to support a solution that is morally responsible and economically urgent: health care for every American -- as a right, not a privilege."
Posted by at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)
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After multiple bouts of ill-advised potshots at bloggers -- the kind I recounted in a July speech at the Heritage Foundation -- you would think that some of my colleagues in the green-eyeshade gang that is mainstream media would stop slinging those barbs. But John Harris, the political editor at The Washington Post, apparently hasn't learned from his predecessors' lapses.
Harris has been caught in heated MSM-to-blog combat all week over the merits of "White House Briefing," the blog/column authored by Dan Froomkin at washingtonpost.com.
Post ombudsman Deborah Howell fueled an internal fire at the newspaper by giving Harris and others a public forum to air their grievances against Froomkin. But numerous bloggers jumped vigorously to Froomkin's defense, and now the fire is burning out of control far beyond the walls of Washington's oldest newspaper.
Today in an online chat at Post Politics Hour, Harris tried to downplay the controversy. But as the journalism trade publication Editor & Publisher noted, if he really wanted to appease the swarm, Harris probably shouldn't have called bloggers part of an "online crankosphere."
"For all its interesting and useful features," Harris wrote, "some things I don't like about the online crankosphere are its frequent humorlessness and tendency to blow issues way out of proportion. After I popped off on some of these issues, some colleagues gently suggested I might be flirting with these traits myself. (They are liars and no longer my friends.)"
Harris clearly was attempting a little levity to ease the tension of the past few days. Instead, some of those "humorless" bloggers heard more hostility from the MSM ivory tower.
Here are two reactions from the left blogosphere, which defended Froomkin against charges of being "liberal":
Americablog: "I'd rather be a crank than a high-priced whore for the White House."
Crooks and Liars: "When reporters stop repeating talking points they got directly from [White House adviser] Karl Rove's fax machine, then we'll be a little less cranky."
Posted by at 08:40 PM | Comments (0)
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Charmaine Yoest of Reasoned Audacity, one of the sites on the blogroll at the left, has a new job with the Family Research Council. She is the new vice president of external relations. Yoest takes the post after serving as a senior fellow at the council.
"My portfolio now includes all of their Web and new media activities and the radio productions," she wrote. "I'll also still be involved with policy issues -- in particular I'm working on a book about women and work. A subject near to my heart, of course. ... I am most grateful that I get to tackle this exciting new project but still maintain a flexible, home-based schedule."
Posted by at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)
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BillBlast: PATRIOT Act In The Spotlight
The 2001 anti-terrorism law known as the USA PATRIOT Act is in the spotlight again this week -- both in Congress and in the blogosphere. The House-Senate compromise version of legislation to renew expiring provisions of the law is on Congress' agenda, but both lawmakers and bloggers have misgivings about the bill.
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., is pulling double duty on the PATRIOT Act beat. He is threatening a Senate filibuster of the reauthorization bill, and he is blogging about the measure in a guest stint at TPMCafe.
"Although I was the only senator to vote 'no' on that law back in 2001, I'm not alone anymore," Feingold wrote in his first post. "Countless people across the country, from all over the political spectrum, have stood up and made it clear that they refuse to sacrifice their rights and freedoms for vague assertions that doing so will make us safer."
Both the right-leaning Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and the solidly left Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft are among the bloggers voicing concerns about the bill. Yesterday, they focused their ire on a provision designed to combat the abuse of the prescription drug methamphetamine.
Reynolds said the language is evidence of "mission creep" in the law, adding that "the problem with this is that it has nothing to do with terrorism. Putting it in the PATRIOT Act just reinforces my fears -- present since the beginning -- that [the statute] had more to do with finding an excuse to enact bureaucratic wish lists into law than with protecting us from terrorism."
Merritt's take on the issue: "The only effect this bill will have on those who cook meth is to cause them to steal the pills instead of buy them. ... We need to be vigilant about keeping terror laws and drug laws separate, except in such instances where the two clearly are linked. We already have laws that penalize terrorism and laws that penalize illicit drug activity. There is no need to combine them."
Posted by at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
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Studying Up On Blogs
The Republican Study Committee has a new staff-written blog. Check it out. (Hat tip to The Club For Growth.)
Concurring Opinions, meanwhile, points its readers to a relatively recent blog called Judging Crimes, which is authored by Assistant Attorney General Joel Jacobson in New Mexico.
Posted by at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)
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NBC News anchor Brian Williams is blogging about his travels with President Bush, but Stephen Baker of Business Week Online's Blogspotting finds the reports rather tame, maybe even lame.
Baker's analysis seems on target when you see consecutive blog headlines like "In The Motorcade," "From The Hotel Ballroom" and "Back In The Motorcade." Real mouse-clickers, those. Reminds me of the travel blog Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, penned during the August congressional recess, Dairy Queen photos and all.
"Other bloggers would be able to give us impressions of the president -- tell us if he seems confident, well-prepared, if he's making good sense," Baker concluded. "Williams limits himself to describing what it feels like to be traveling in the president's entourage. These are blog posts written to ruffle as few feathers as possible."
Posted by at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)
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An Unimpressive Read On Blogs
The New York Times Magazine piece on the political power of blogs is out, and the reviews from conservative bloggers are in. They are not flattering, either.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit proclaimed the article "much ado about not much." "It's about 200-300 words, quoting only 'liberal activist Matt Stoller' and (indirectly) other unnamed Democrats, about the message discipline of Republicans," Reynolds wrote. "OK. Whatever."
Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters said the article's author, Michael Crowley, "should sue [Editor & Publisher] for lifting his entire 283-word article for their 360-word description of it. Crowley offers no support, no research, not even a hyperlink to the two bloggers he mentions in his threadbare blurb. ... If any one article proved how out of touch the Exempt Media truly is regarding the blogosphere, Crowley's is it. And if E&P wanted to demonstrate that its reputation for news analysis is vastly overblown, they've managed to do it here."
Michelle Malkin headlined her analysis of Crowley's piece "Candidate For Dumbest NYTimes Piece Ever," adding that it was "one of most insipid, shallow and uninformed wastes of space" ever in the newspaper. She echoed some of the same points Stephen Bainbridge made at Professor Bainbridge after he had seen only the E&P summary.
"Anyone who swallows the idea that conservative bloggers are an organized arm of the Republican machine who are easily mobilized at the command of [White House adviser] Karl Rove does not read conservative blogs -- and should not be paid by the NYTimes or anyone else to write about them."
Stoller, who posted an entry at MyDD on Friday after liberal bloggers started reacting to the E&P analysis, invited complaints about his comments to Crowley in a follow-up blurb. But as of late tonight, no MyDD readers had done so.
Posted by at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
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Who Has Mastered The Power Of The Blog?
That was the question on the minds of liberal bloggers yesterday after Editor & Publisher previewed a story set to appear in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
According to the journalism trade publication, the magazine piece will argue that conservatives have an advantage over liberals when it comes to using blogs in the political arena. Michael Crowley, a writer for the liberal New Republic, wrote the Times piece. It includes the insights of Matt Stoller, who recently finished a blogging stint for the successful gubernatorial campaign of U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.
Yesterday, two of the most popular liberal blogs, Daily Kos and Eschaton, posted a combined three entries in response to the Editor & Publisher summary of the Times article.
Armando offered this thought at Daily Kos: "[I]f you define effective as being a part of the Mighty Wurlitzer, having no respect for the facts and shilling for the Republican Party, Crowley is 100 percent correct. ... I am proud to say we will never be 'effective' in the way the right blogs are."
And Markos Moulitsas Zuniga added in the same entry: "Instead of getting riled up about [it], we'll keep doing what we're doing. And at the end of 2006 we'll be able to take stock of the situation and declare, definitively, that the conservative blogosphere is merely a redundant extension of their noise machine."
The response also prompted Stoller to comment at MyDD. "When talking to Crowley," Stoller wrote, "what I didn't make clear enough is that the right framework is not right versus left on the blogs but the whole conservative message machine as a whole versus the left-wing blogs. ... While right-wing blogs currently drive message on a local level, they really aren't powerful in and of themselves. Liberal blogs, by contrast, are new infrastructure, but we haven't figured out how to make that new infrastructure useful to electoral politics yet."
The summary of Crowley's article also is sparking comment on the right. At Professor Bainbridge, for instance, Stephen Bainbridge challenges Crowley's conclusion that the right only uses the Web to push their issues and candidates while the left often criticizes its leaders.
"Where was Crowley when the right side of the blogosphere erupted into civil war over [Supreme Court nominee] Harriet Miers?" Bainbridge wrote. "Or the torture debate? Or Terri Schiavo? Or the ongoing fights between libertarian and social conservative bloggers? Where was he when we took on [former Senate Majority Leader]Trent Lott? Or [President] Bush over [the response to Hurricane] Katrina? Sheesh."
More blogosphere analyses are sure to come once the full Times piece is published tomorrow.
Posted by at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
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Colorado Gov. Bill Owens this week warned state employees not to use government computers to post comments at political blogs in the state, the Rocky Mountain News reports. Such activity could lead to disciplinary action, the governor said.
The newspaper asked Owens about anonymous blog comments by "Real Deal" at Colorado Political News after the posts were traced to a computer in the governor's office. The blog was launched early this year and has quickly gained notoriety in the state's political circles.
Owens spokesman Mark Salley told the News that it has verified the use of government computers in the executive and legislative branches for postings at the blog. "The governor believes such use is not appropriate," he said.
Bob Lee, the governor's chief of staff, issued a directive that prohibits "the use of government computers from being used to post to any such sites."
Posted by at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)
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BillBlast: Filibuster Of PATRIOT Act Threatened
Sen. Russell Feingold yesterday threatened to filibuster the pending compromise version of legislation to reauthorize the 2001 anti-terrorism law known as the USA PATRIOT Act.
Joshua Micah Marshall posted the details via a Feingold statement at Talking Points Memo. And next week Marshall's readers may get to hear about any filibuster firsthand from Feingold, D-Wis. With the Senate back in session and the PATRIOT Act on the agenda, Feingold is set to guest blog at Marshall's TPMCafe.
Feingold was the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act when it was first enacted, and he continues to oppose the law because of concerns that it impinges on Americans' civil liberties. However, he argued in the press release that President Bush "could sign PATRIOT Act reauthorization legislation into law tomorrow if the House would just take up and pass the compromise Senate bill that was approved unanimously in the Senate earlier this year -- a bill that includes important and reasonable privacy protections."
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., also criticized the compromise version of the legislation at ConyersBlog, where he has a PATRIOT Act Action Center.
"Yesterday, the House Democratic conferees made one formal request: that the government show some connection to a terrorist before delving into our citizens' most personal records and possessions," Conyers wrote. "It was flatly ignored. Politics won out over civil liberties. The White House won out over the Senate, the House, Democrats and Republicans. I simply cannot support this bill."
Posted by at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)
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The Democratic National Committee is inviting party organizers from the states to the nation's capital on a rotating basis for training sessions. Organizers from Washington state visited this week and made a special request, according to an account at the DNC blog.
"[T]hey asked to spend a bit of time talking with the Internet team, apart from the standard class, about the use of blogs -- both internally on their own Web site and externally on blogs both in their own state and nationally," DNC blogger Tim Tagaris wrote.
That request made the DNC curious about party blogs at the state level, so Tagaris posed the following questions for people who interact with the state parties: "Does your state party have a blog on its Web site? How do they use it well? What would you like to see them do differently? And finally, what kind of content would you like to see that would keep you coming back on your state party's blog?"
The post didn't spark many responses, but the comments offer a snapshot on the state of the political blogosphere. Kansas and Washington state received praise for their blogs, and a commentator from Nebraska invited bloggers to the Cornhusker State for a forthcoming technology summit aimed at "spurring the growth of our budding blogosphere."
A Democrat from Maryland, on the other hand, criticized his state party affiliate for its lack of a blog. "It seems like all the reform is happening in the red states and at the top of the party at the blue-state level," he wrote. "It's politics like it's been for the last 50 years, and it's annoying."
The harshest critique came from a Democrat in Illinois who answered Tagaris' questions point by point. Here is that post in its entirety:
What [do] you look for in terms of online two-way communication with your state party?How about someone with a pulse on the other side?
Does your state party have a blog on its Web site? How do they use it well?
No. [The] Illinois Democratic Party doesn't have a blog. The only thing more useless and lifeless than their Web site is the Illinois Democratic Party. Ditto that for Cook County Democrats.
What would you like to see them do differently?
Wake up.
If it wasn't for the grassroots and a few elected officials like Jan Schakowsky, there wouldn't be any Democratic activities in Illinois. Last time I saw my elected officials in the community was never! They take things for granted because the state's been trending Democratic after Republican corruption scandals.
And finally, what kind of content would you like to see that would keep you coming back on your state party's blog?
First let's see some real action before they consider blogging. The grassroots and Jan Schakowsky already get things done and run first rate blogs, too. There's zero reason to go to the state party's Web site. I can get every last bit of that info somewhere else.
Posted by at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)
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CapitolLink: GOP Bloggers Celebrate Tax Cuts
The House on Thursday passed a bill that would extend some tax cuts enacted during the tenure of President Bush, and two Republicans who helped pass those proposals blogged about it.
The legislation, H.R. 4297, encompasses tax breaks for capital gains, dividends, research and development, college expenses, and state and local sales taxes, among other areas. The vote was 234-197.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee posted a blog entry at RedState as the House debated the measure. She focused on the deduction for state and local sales taxes and the political dynamics of that issue for moderate Democrats in her home state, one of the few to benefit from that particular tax break.
"We fought to get that deduction restored in 2004, but it expires after April 2006," Blackburn wrote. "This bill extends it another year. The federal government was penalizing states that had chosen to go with a consumption tax/sales tax rather than an income tax. ... I don't believe that the feds should penalize a state for choosing a better tax system!"
Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas addressed the issue at his own blog after the vote. He credited the tax cuts with boosting economic growth and creating jobs. "To keep the economy on the right track," he argued, "it is time to extend these policies."
John Aravosis of Americablog was among the liberal bloggers who saw the vote differently. "This is just pandering, pure and simple, to special interests," he wrote. "Republican lawmakers are giving money out hand over fist to their lobbying friends."
Posted by at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)
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Just before leaving for the Thanksgiving congressional break, the House took a politically loaded voted on withdrawing troops from Iraq. In theory, the vote was on a proposal from Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., but Democrats condemned the debate as a sham and the Republican-sponsored resolution as a poor substitute for the language Murtha had crafted.
Now Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., wants the House to vote on Murtha's resolution instead. And in an entry at The Huffington Post, she said the blogosphere can help build support for the measure.
"Ending this war is not simply about bringing our troops home," Lee wrote. "It is about putting an end to a mistake that is making our country and the world less safe and draining critical funds from crucial needs here at home. It is time for some democracy in action."
Posted by at 09:41 PM | Comments (0)
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Shared logos are becoming a regular feature in the blogosphere as bloggers unite in common causes. But it's not often that you see one of those logos on a congressional Web site.
The logo from the PorkBusters campaign, in fact, appears to be the first to achieve that status. Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn has the logo displayed prominently on the right side of his Senate Web site, just under a ticker that shows the rapidly increasing federal debt. The logo also appears on a separate page dedicated to the PorkBusters cause.
In mid-October, Coburn led an unsuccessful fight against state- and district-specific "pork" in spending bills. Coburn's spokesman said the PorkBusters logo was added to the senator's site about a month ago. Though only symbolic, the posting of the graphic is yet another milestone for bloggers and even more proof that they are a force to be reckoned with in Washington.
Posted by at 08:36 PM | Comments (2)
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The New York Times raised the curtain on its new movie blog this week, and while The Carpetbagger is unlikely to have any relevance in policy and political circles, the newspaper's philosophy on blogging may at some point.
The blog L.A. Observed offered a glimpse into the Times' thinking via an internal note to the paper's staff from deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman.
Landman rightly dismissed the "dopey argument" that divides bloggers and journalists. "Blogs make some newspaper people nuts; they're partisan, the thinking goes, and unfair and mean-spirited and sloppy about facts. Newspapers make some bloggers nuts; they think we're dull and slow and pompous and jealous guardians of unearned 'authority.' ... Indeed, some blogs are lousy. So are some newspapers. Some blogs reject journalism. Some practice it."
He then acknowledged, again rightly, that blogging technology has "special power" to help people compile their thoughts, connect with others and interact quickly -- and people can use it however they choose, applying whatever standards they deem appropriate.
For the Times, that means applying longstanding journalistic standards to a new medium. "Our bloggers will have editors," Landman wrote. "They will observe our normal standards of fairness and care. They won't float rumors or take journalistic shortcuts. Critics and opinion columnists can have opinion blogs; reporters can't. ... We'll encourage readers to post their thoughts, but we'll screen them first to make sure the conversation is civil. Some bloggers will accuse us of violating blogospheric standards of openness and spontaneity. That's life in the big city."
Next up for the newspaper is a group real-estate blog, but politics and policy may not be far behind. Remember, the Times had a quasi-blog called Times on the Trail during the 2004 election. "More blogs are in the works," Landman noted. "Even more are at the idea stage."
And here is one last thought from the memo that is worthy of note, a thought that more mainstream media outlets should take to heart: "We will use blogs to convey information, sometimes in conventional ways, sometimes not-so. Our notions of journalistic responsibility are perfectly compatible with spirited fun."
Posted by at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)
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Interior Secretary Gale Norton met with three industry bloggers yesterday to discuss the merits of oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
The bloggers at the event were Pat Cleary of the Manufacturers' Blog, Eric McErlain of NEI Nuclear Notes and Erick Woods-Erickson, who is currently building a blog for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.
Cleary posted multiple entries on the event, and McErlain also live-blogged the meeting, later including an audio transcript of what transpired. "It's good to see blogger briefings like these becoming the norm around town," McErlain wrote, "and they need to happen more often."
The Republican National Committee clearly agrees with that assessment. It has held numerous conference calls with bloggers in recent weeks. Although it canceled one such call earlier this week, the RNC has another scheduled for this morning at 11 a.m.
The topic is the war in Iraq, and the participants will be GOP Reps. Jack Kingston, a Georgian who blogs on his congressional site and at RedState, and John Kline of Minnesota, a 25-year Marine Corps veteran. The lawmakers recently returned from trips to Iraq.
Posted by at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
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With federal funding for the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska now uncertain, Andy Roth of The Club for Growth has a new suggestion of allegedly wasteful spending for the PorkBusters to target in the federal budget.
The spending earmark he highlighted would provide about $13 million to build a museum celebrating the work of the Army Corps of Engineers. The irony: the money would come from the bill to fund relief from Hurricane Katrina, whose devastation raised questions about the work of the corps in New Orleans.
"Let's repeat that," Roth wrote. "Part of the money being used to fix the levees will be used to celebrate the government's inability to build levees that don't break. Only the federal government has the bureacracy and arrogance to spend so much money on such an asinine project."
Posted by at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)
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Liberal bloggers Jerome Armstrong, on hiatus from MyDD, and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos have begun taking orders for their forthcoming book on the "netroots."
The tome, Crashing the Gates: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, is set to be in bookstores in March, but Moulitsas explained that people who pre-order one of the 10,000 copies from a special edition will receive their books three weeks early.
He urged Daily Kos readers to place their orders now because doing so could push the book onto the best-seller list and will help fund marketing efforts. Armstrong and Moulitsas will be on a book tour to promote the book in the spring.
Moulitsas included a chapter-by-chapter outline of the book at Daily Kos. He also provided this summary for his readers:
[T]hose of you who think it's about blogging are going to be disappointed. It's about a progressive movement that is failing to keep up with the times -- issue groups that don't realize it's no longer 1975 or even 1995, consultants that operate under the rules of the last election while Republicans operate on the technological bleeding edge, an incestuous relationship between the party committees and consultants that serve themselves more than our candidates, progressive workers who are paid slave wages, and party establishment that has allowed the right to build its powerful [vast right-wing conspiracy] without a response from our side.
Posted by at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)
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A New Standard For Campaign Corruption
The two bloggers at the forefront of the battle over campaign finance law never have been fans of "reformers" like Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21.
But yesterday those bloggers, Mike Krempasky of the conservative RedState and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the liberal Daily Kos, registered their contempt for Wertheimer at a new level. Both suggested that the man who says his mission is to combat corruption may be corrupt himself, at least by the standard he sets.
Krempasky and Moulitsas posted their criticisms of Wertheimer in response to a letter he wrote to lawmakers in opposition to a campaign finance bill, H.R. 1606. The measure would grant a limited exemption from campaign finance law to the Internet, including blogs. In November, the House failed to pass that bill under expedited procedures, but it could be considered again later this month under normal floor rules.
The letter mentioned the lobbying scandal involving Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon and said abuses of campaign finance law are at the core of that controversy. "The last thing the House should be doing is passing legislation, like H.R. 1606, which would again allow members of Congress to use influence-buying, corrupt soft money to finance their campaigns," Wertheimer wrote.
Both Krempasky and Moulitsas argued that Wertheimer set the corruption bar so high as to tar even himself. "[L]ast time I checked, his letter to every congressperson was an effort to influence Congress," Moultisas wrote. "And his organization, Democracy 21, is well-financed by unknown interests (organizations and foundations whose donors are not public). ... By his own words, Fred is corrupt and akin to Abramoff."
Krempasky went further, suggesting that Wertheimer is worse than Abramoff because Abramoff had to file lobbying disclosure forms. "Fred takes money from, well, who knows -- incumbents, foundations, wealthy individuals -- and then promises to apply pressure to Congress to keep their competitors (challengers, bloggers, activists) off balance. Corruption is a strong word. Let's use it. Over and over and over and over."
UPDATE: Adam Bonin, Moulitsas' lawyer and a contributor at Daily Kos, also addressed the issue in a later post.
"Members of the reform lobby like Common Cause have been our real and natural allies on so many issues, and we should be working together to clean up politics," Bonin wrote. "But we see robust and unfettered political discourse on the Internet as being part of the solution to dirty politics, and they see it as part of the problem. And I think it's from that difference in mindset -- that failure to grasp what this medium empowers individuals and groups of citizens to do -- that has led us to where are today."
UPDATE II: Former Federal Election Commission staffer Allison Hayward critiqued the arguments in the reformers' letter to Congress at Skeptic's Eye.
Posted by at 10:47 PM | Comments (0)
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Republican John Campbell snagged nearly 45 percent of the vote in California's special election yesterday, easily besting his two main opponents in the 48th District.
Hotline On Call has the vote breakdown for Campbell, Democrat Steve Young and American Independent Party candidate Jim Gilchrest, the founder of the Minuteman Project along the southern U.S. border and an immigration foe.
Hotline Editor-In-Chief Chuck Todd said Gilchrest's finish behind Young was the "mild surprise" of the contest. "Gilchrist's disappointing third-place finish could mean that those who care passionately about the immigration issue are a vocal minority," Todd wrote, "but they are just that, a minority."
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos had a slightly different take on Gilchrest's showing. "He's a xenophobe, anti-brown-immigrants type," Moulitsas wrote. "He had the Republicans spooked, and 25 percent is a solid showing. Expect this to add pressure on the GOP to get even more draconian on immigration issues."
Overall, however, the blogosphere's reaction to the results has been subdued to say the least -- especially when compared with the chatter that ensued in August, after Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt narrowly won a special election in Ohio's heavily GOP 2nd District, and again after Democrats won the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races in November.
Yesterday, for instance, DavidNYC of Swing State Project penned a detailed analysis of how 40 percent of the vote for Young is "the one number that matters." After Young finished well short of that mark, DavidNYC wrote today: "Alas, it didn't happen. Whereas I had hoped that Gilchrist would pull votes only from Campbell, he appears to have pulled them from Young, too. ... I'll let the spinmeisters take it from here."
More coverage and analysis can be found at The Club for Growth, The Fix, PoliPundit and RedState.
Tim Chapman of the Capitol Report blog for Townhall.com also reprints his interview with Campbell from September.
Posted by at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
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Republicans are outraged by the latest pointed comments on the Iraq war from Democrats Howard Dean and Sen. John Kerry, and Rep. Jack Kingston is among their critics. He responded yesterday in a blog entry at RedState.
Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview with a San Antonio, Texas, broadcast station that the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong." And Kerry, D-Mass., said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that young American soldiers should not "be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children."
Kingston blasted both officials. "It appears that Howard Dean and John Kerry are back in presidential primary mode: where both are in a full sprint in the race to see who can cross the line of liberal extremity first," Kingston wrote. "One has no faith in our soldiers' ability to win wars. And the other actually accuses our own soldiers of being terrorists."
The DNC issued a statement in response to the criticism of Dean. It chastises Republicans for "cherry-picking Governor Dean's words just like they cherry-picked the pre-war intelligence," emphasizing that Dean was merely criticizing the Bush administration's recently released strategy for winning the war.
"As Governor Dean said, our troops are doing their part, serving with great courage," the DNC statement said. "But a 35-page report based on poll-driven slogans is not the way to win. We can only win if the Iraqi people are able to play a greater role in peacekeeping, and we can only win if the president gives an honest assessment of what's really happening on the ground in Iraq."
Posted by at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
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'Blog Jam' On Internet Governance
The push for a greater international role in Internet governance may not have sparked a blog swarm yet, but the issue merited special attention yesterday in a "blog jam" at Pajamas Media.
For three hours, a handful of experts on the subject debated the best approach to overseeing the Internet. The participants included: Franklin Cudjoe, the head of the African think tank Imani Ghana; Perry de Havilland, an entrepreneur whose most recent venture involves blogs and who is a blogger at Samizdata; Dan Gillmor of the citizen media venture Bayosphere; and Peng Hwa Ang of the U.N. Working Group on Internet Governance.
The blog jam followed the publication of two articles on the topic at Pajamas Media on Sunday -- one by Peng and the other by Claudia Rosett, a member of Pajamas Media's editorial advisory board.
UPDATE: Pajamas Media hosted a second round of the blog jam today, with different commentators.
Posted by at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)
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Yesterday's news about a federal judge's procedural ruling on charges against Rep. Tom DeLay has sparked new criticism from conservative bloggers about how the press is covering the story.
The judge dismissed a conspiracy charge against DeLay, R-Texas, but let two other charges stand, at least for now. The judge also said he would rule later on allegations of prosecutorial misconduct by Texas District Attorney Ronnie Earle, the Democrat who brought all of the charges.
Conservatives like Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters complained that top national newspapers placed more emphasis on the charges that remain and downplayed the dismissal of the conspiracy charge. "The motion regarding prosecutorial misconduct relates directly to the two remaining charges," Morrissey wrote. "If the judge rules that Earle acted unethically or illegally in getting the indictment, the remaining charges will also get dismissed -- and it seems a fair bet that it will happen."
John Hinderaker of Power Line complained that the press treated the dismissal of the indictment differently than it did the news that one had been granted at all. "It is deeply ironic, I think, that the filing of the bogus conspiracy charge by partisan D.A. Ronnie Earle made front-page headines across the country while the dismissal of the same charge is greeted with a yawn," Hinderaker said. "The Minneapolis Star Tribune, for example, headlines today's development, 'DeLay wins a minor legal skirmish.'"
Like Morrissey, he argued that the money-laundering charge probably will be dismissed, too. And he blamed the mainstream media for spinning the news as a defeat for DeLay when, in time, he said Earle will be the loser.
The spin machine appears to have been working both directions, though, as Daniel Solove noted at Concurring Opinions by highlighting various headlines on the latest DeLay news. Conservative news outlets like The Washington Times and Fox News focused on the one charge that was dismissed, while liberal media like The Washington Post and The New York Times emphasized the indictments that remain on the books.
"[B]y these headlines, it appears that there were two very different results in the case," Solove wrote.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, meanwhile, questioned Earle's tactics. But he added, "Personally, I don't like Tom 'no pork here' Delay, and I think it's good for the country (and the Republicans, actually) that he won't be resuming his leadership position" in the House majority right now.
Michelle Malkin has a roundup of DeLay news. And the Democratic blogs Daily Kos and MyDD, sensing an opportunity to slay a GOP giant, drew attention to a new poll that shows people in DeLay's district currently favoring any Democratic candidate over DeLay for re-election.
Posted by at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)
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Voters in California's 48th District are casting their ballots today for their choice to replace former Rep. Christopher Cox, the Republican who vacated the seat to become Securities and Exchange Commission chairman.
The race has not generated the same flurry of attention in the blogosphere, particularly the Democratic "netroots," as the August battle between now-Rep. Jean Schmidt and Democrat Paul Hackett in Ohio's 2nd District. But bloggers both national and regional have played a role nonetheless.
The Orange County Register noted the role of the regional blogs in particular by publishing an October column from one of those bloggers on the day of the primary balloting. That blogger, who goes by the pseudonym Jubal, writes for OC Blog.
"Orange County's growing blogosphere now provides county politicos of all stripes with [a] more comprehensive, real-time sense of what is happening in county government and politics than O.C.'s mainstream media," Jubal wrote.
On the national level, the Democratic blog Swing State Project, which played a key role in driving interest in the Ohio race, has been following the activity in California's 48th. On Friday, the blog urged a final-weekend push for Democratic candidate Steve Young and yesterday noted that the National Republican Congressional Committee has spent a half-million dollars on behalf of Republican nominee John Campbell, despite the GOP leanings of the district. Daily Kos also noted the NRCC spending.
"[President] Bush won CA-48 by an 18-point margin," wrote DavidNYC of Swing State Project. "That's pretty nuts for the NRCC to be so scared. They may pull this one out thanks to favorable demographics and superior firepower -- John Campbell's raised about 10 times what Steve Young has. But they simply can't afford to be this generous with every Bush plus-20 candidate next year."
Chris Cillizza, who writes The Fix blog for The Washington Post, mentioned a third candidate in the race yesterday. He said American Independent Party candidate Jim Gilchrist has garnered the most national media attention for his opposition to immigration.
In a separate item today, Cillizza looks ahead at the special election to replace Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, who resigned his House seat last week after pleading guilty to taking bribes. Cillizza said the race already is drawing comparisons with Ohio's 2nd District, and he suggested that Democrat Francine Busby could be the next Hackett.
Posted by at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
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Sen. Clinton Gets A Democratic Challenger
Jonathan Tasini slayed the giant that is The New York Times on behalf of freelance writers, and now he is taking aim at New York's junior senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, on behalf of voters who he said have a "desperate longing for something better" in the Empire State.
Tasini will officially announce his Democratic primary challenge to Clinton tomorrow. Today he posted an entry at The Huffington Post that stated his reasons for doing so.
First, he touted himself as the "mirror opposite" of Clinton on issues like the war in Iraq, workers' rights and health care. He also said that unlike Clinton, he will base his campaign on small monetary donations and volunteers full of energy.
But Tasini further sees his candidacy as a challenge to "poll-tested politics" and to the Democratic Party itself, which he said "has an opportunity to capture large swaths of the voting public -- if it has a spine, an authentic message and the courage to offer something besides an agenda that is Republican-lite."
As the head of the National Writers Union, Tasini was the lead plaintiff in a successful Supreme Court case that set the precedent for paying freelance writers for republished and archived electronic content. His campaign site includes a blog.
Posted by at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)
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The Cato Institute launched an online monthly with a twist today. The journal, Cato Unbound, is published in the blog format and will serve as a forum for discussing the issues raised in the libertarian think tank's publication.
The site will feature a new essay each month -- the first, by James Buchanan, calls for three constitutional amendments -- and follow-up responses "every other day or so" from other leading commentators. Next comes "a more free-form discussion," and Cato also will publish the best letters and blog posts from readers, with the goal of "creating a hub for a broader conversation about our heady topics."
The concept has been well-received by libertarian and conservative bloggers, including Andrew Roth at The Club for Growth. "Don't look now folks, but I think the Internet in general and the blogosphere in particular are about to gain a few IQ points," Peter Jackson wrote at the Liberal Capitalist Party.
Instapundit also reports that Cato plans to start a more traditional blog, with less structured posts, later this month.
Posted by at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)
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Back in 1893, a small band of U.S. Marines, acting at the behest of a renegade U.S. diplomat and greedy businessmen, staged a successful coup against Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii. President Grover Cleveland fired the diplomat, condemned the "subversion of the queen's government," and urged Congress to seek a solution "consistent with American honor, integrity and morality."
Instead, the United States annexed Hawaii in 1898. And in the century since then -- even after Hawaii voted overwhelmingly to become the 50th state in 1959 -- battles over the sovereignty of the Aloha State have continued to erupt. In 1993, for instance, the U.S. government officially apologized to Hawaiians for the overthrow of their monarchy.
The latest fight is over "the Akaka bill" in Congress, and blogs have become a weapon in the ongoing warfare over that legislation. From Hawaii to Washington, blogs both large and small, with audiences national and regional, have demonstrated the power of their technology to explore a niche topic in great detail and to try to rally opposition to a relatively obscure proposal.
The bill, authored by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, would recognize native Hawaiians much like the federal government recognizes Indian tribes. That step would make Hawaiians who meet certain ethnic standards eligible for federal aid in education, housing and other arenas.
Although the measure has the support of the state's congressional delegation and its governor, some Hawaiians still want to live in a sovereign nation and see the bill as a threat to that goal. Some conservatives, meanwhile, oppose the measure on racial grounds because it would grant federal aid based on Hawaiians' blood lineage.
Opponents from both angles are blogging against the legislation. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin's rants are generating the most attention because of her broad readership. She dubbed the measure "the worst bill you've never heard of" and has characterized it as "apartheid in Hawaii."
"[G]iving native Hawaiians Indian tribal-like status and immunity from federal civil rights laws is historically absurd and legally treacherous," she wrote. "At no time in their history have native Hawaiians organized, acted or existed as a tribe."
Scott Crawford of The Hawaiian Independence Blog also opposes the bill but because he is among those advocating the return of Hawaii as a sovereign nation. He has been blogging about the Akaka bill since 2003, with the dual goals of providing a clearinghouse for links and a forum to debate the issues surrounding the legislation.
In addition, the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii launched a blog called Akaka Talka about a month ago. Although the group said it is not technically against the bill and is simply trying to inform the public about the issues, the institute's polling has received favorable mentions at MichelleMalkin.com.
Other Hawaii-focused blogs like Poinography also are covering the debate over the Akaka bill.
Malkin's influence on the issue is obvious. She has spurred mini-blogswarms against the legislation, with other blogs linking to her posts and offering criticisms of their own.
Betsy Newmark, for example, wrote this admonition in September: " I have no faith that [President] Bush won't sign this mess or that the Supreme Court won't find it constitutional. ... Don't count on five justices on this one. Better to strangle this bill before it gets to that stage."
But even smaller sites like Crawford's can have influence. "I can't point to one place where I've had some major impact but more just a lot of small impacts in helping to raise awareness and shape the debate," he said in an e-mail interview. "I guess one example would be when I see language I have used show up in someone else's letter to the editor in the Honolulu dailies."
Crawford added that people have told him of journalists who are readers -- and the media report the stories that lobbyists, policymakers and other stakeholders in the debate see. Crawford also said many Hawaiian groups and lobbyists read his blog, post comments, send him e-mails or reference the site in their own blogs.
He further noted that he criticized the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii for its "push poll." "Shortly after that, I heard one of the advocates of the bill on [a National Public Radio] program call it a 'push poll' and use very similar language to what I had blogged," Crawford said.
David Keanu Sai, chairman of the pro-independence group The Hawaiian Kingdom, said that while he has not paid much attention to blogging about the Akaka bill in general, he occasionally reads Crawford's blog and considers it "a great forum to discuss these issues.
He cautioned, however, that it "is also apparent that some people who write comments on this blog don't understand certain legal and political frameworks, and it looks like a war of words and emotions [rather] than constructive dialogue of some very technical and complicated issues."
The fate of the Akaka bill remains unclear. The debate has been going for about six years, with a few senators who have placed procedural roadblocks to a floor vote being the chief obstacle to enactment. The Senate appeared to overcome that obstacle last year, when supporters of the measure and the Senate leadership agreed to take a floor vote by this past August. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee approved an amended version of the legislation in March.
But in September, after Hurricane Katrina altered the legislative agenda in Congress, the Senate reversed course on the Akaka bill by withdrawing a motion to limit debate. The measure has languished since then, and last month, Akaka told the Honolulu Advertiser that a Senate vote is unlikely this year.
That is just fine with bloggers like Malkin, who celebrated when bad weather forced the legislation off the short-term agenda. "Just about the only good thing about Hurricane Katrina," Malkin wrote in a September appeal for readers to call Congress, "is that it delayed a planned vote on cloture for the awful Akaka bill."
Posted by at 09:25 AM | Comments (13)
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The Bull Moose's Reality Check For Bloggers
I caught some heat in the blogosphere a few weeks ago when I argued that bloggers do not have as much influence as they might think on major policy issues. Now Bull Moose Marshall Wittmann is asking the question, "Are Bloggers Necessary?"
His post from earlier this week was part praise for moderate bloggers and part appeal for more such commentary "from the vital center." But in making that appeal, Wittman argued that politicians should be wary in giving too much weight to what bloggers think.
"[I]t is generally a good thing that the blogosphere provides an opportunity for more and more Americans who want to get engaged and sound off," he wrote. "However, we should keep it in perspective. The blogosphere is generally an ideological hothouse that does not reflect the everyday thoughts of Americans. In that way, it is much like talk radio."
Wittman's comments, too, sparked some reaction in the blogosphere -- from left-leaning bloggers who ridiculed his call for centrism.
Ezra Klein, a writer for The American Prospect, led the charge. "What frustrates me about Wittman is that he's infatuated with centrism for the sake of centrism," Klein wrote. "He doesn't offer an ideology with greater coherence than the splintered philosophies pushed by the major parties. ... He wants a third way, but so far as I can tell, all he's interested in is the building of the road, not where it goes."
David Sirota of the Progressive Legislative Action Network was even more blunt, and personal. "Wittman is an ignoramus who likes to talk about the need for 'ideas' -- but is badly lacking when it comes to actually having ideas himself," Sirota wrote. And Nate of Common Sense added: "I can never decide what exactly Wittman stands for. Other than being against partisanship."
Posted by at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)
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Bloggers who comprise the Democratic "netroots" are determined to see that their party competes for every House seat in 2006. Now one of those bloggers is making his site's fundraising support for candidates conditional on the party's success in meeting that goal.
Chris Bowers of MyDD made that requirement clear in a post that decried the party's failure to field candidates so far in eight of Texas' 21 congressional districts.
"I personally think that the netroots should cut off funding to any Democratic candidate in any state where Democrats do not field a full slate of candidates," he wrote. "I promise that MyDD will not raise money for any candidate in any state where a single Republican incumbent in the House is left unchallenged. I will also not raise any money for the DCCC unless 435 candidates are run nationwide. And there will not be an negotiation on this matter."
Posted by at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)
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As bloggers continue to make their mark inside the Beltway, more trade groups, lawmakers and others are starting to "get it" when it comes to the power of the blog to impact their pet issues.
Here are some new bloggers/blogs that have come to my attention in recent days:
-- BoardBuzz, published by the National School Boards Association
-- Rep. John Boozman, D-Ark.
-- Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga.
-- Rep. John Linder, R-Ga.
-- Majority Matters, a quasi-blog published on the House majority leader's Web site.
-- Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J.
-- Plowing the Hill, published by the Democratic minority of the House Agriculture Committee.
My thanks to Pat Cleary at the Manufacturers' Blog, Nicole Folk at the Congressional Management Foundation and Katie Harbath at the House Administration Committee for pointing me to most of the above blogs.
For the rest of the Beltway Blogroll audience, please send tips about other policy blogs to dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)
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A Second Look At A Campaign Finance Ruling
A Federal Election Commission ruling celebrated by bloggers last month is giving at least one of them pause this month after more details of the decision were released today.
Adam Bonin, the lawyer for three bloggers who testified before the FEC in the summer, said at Daily Kos that the concurring opinion of two FEC Democrats could spell trouble for sites like the one where he blogs.
The FEC ruled unanimously that Fired Up, a publisher of Democratic blogs, deserves a media exemption under campaign finance law. But in their concurring opinion, FEC Chairman Scott Thomas and Commissioner Danny McDonald hinted that the same publisher one day could qualify as a "political committee" subject to campaign finance law, depending on whether its "primary objective is to influence political campaigns."
Bonin sees a dangerous precedent in that thinking. "[T]hese commissioners have indicated that they believe a site that gets too partisan will have to file with the FEC," he wrote at Daily Kos. "Fired Up isn't there yet, they indicate, but it could be. As could others -- like this one, clearly. ... People engaged in online politics should not have to worry about having to submit themselves to a fact-intensive 'major purpose' test to determine" if their Web sites must register as political committees.
The view of Thomas and McDonald is further reason for supporting two pending House bills designed to give bloggers a clearer exemption from campaign finance law, Bonin said. The House failed to pass one of those bills under an expedited procedure in November, but lawmakers could consider it again when they return to work later this month.
Bonin also said the concurring opinion is justification for grilling future FEC nominees about "what kind of enforcement should bloggers be subject to." One slot on the commission currently is open, and the terms of Thomas, McDonald and David Mason technically have expired, even though they are still serving.
Posted by at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)
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When The New York Times ran a story in October on the United States reaching the "grim mark" of 2,000 soldiers killed in Iraq, the newspaper printed a few seemingly prophetic words from a fallen Marine who wrote before his death that he was "pushing my chances" with a third deployment in Iraq.
When President Bush cited that same letter this week upon releasing his strategy for victory in Iraq, he told the rest of the story behind the farewell message of Cpl. Jeffrey Starr.
"After he died, a letter was found on his laptop computer," Bush said of Starr. "... He said: '[I]f you're reading this, then I've died in Iraq. I don't regret going. Everybody dies, but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq; it's not to me. I'm here helping these people so they can live the way we live. Not [to] have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. Others have died for my freedom; now this is my mark.'
"There is only one way to honor the sacrifice of Corporal Starr and his fallen comrades," Bush added, "and that is to take up their mantle, carry on their fight and complete their mission."
To hear blogger Charmaine Yoest tell it, Bush cited the part of the letter ignored by the Times for one reason: "the power of the blogosphere." Specifically, Yoest gives the credit to fellow conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who covered the controversy surrounding Starr's letter.
Malkin, too, made reference to Bush giving honor to Starr. "Good for the White House for fighting back against [mainstream media] bias," she wrote.
Posted by at 09:49 PM | Comments (0)
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As the blogosphere gains power in the political and policy arenas, more public officials are beginning to blog. But bloggers also can serve in official capacities, as Chris Bowers of MyDD proved a little more than a week ago.
On Nov. 22, he was appointed to serve as a committeeman for the Democratic Party in Philadelphia. The political slot in ward 27, division 23 isn't one of great power, to be sure. Even Bowers acknowledged that it did not take much for him to win the appointment in a ward where more than half of the committee slots are vacant. Still, he is the first blogger I know of to be given such a role.
Bowers will face a primary election in May, but he does not expect any opposition. "Even in one of the most Democratic areas of the country, the party still faces a severe shortage of active members and volunteers," he wrote. "As [Democratic National Committee Chairman] Howard Dean has often said, politics are determined by those who show up. I showed up. That was really all it took."
DNC blogger Tim Tagaris took note of Bowers' appointment in the party's blog:
I can guarantee this is a man who will take the job of organizing his community very seriously. Filling these local seats will undoubtedly increase turnout on Election Day and have a positive impact on participation even before the first ballot is cast. If we are to win at all levels in 2006, 2008 and beyond, these are the types of seats that we have to make sure are filled not just in Philadelphia but all across the country. And as those numbers increase, it is a sure thing that [the percentage] of the vote for Democrats in those areas will rise accordingly.
Posted by at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)
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