« January 2006 | Main | March 2006 »
February 28, 2006Blogs Rise To The Presidential Level
A couple of recent polls have some people envisioning the fall of blogs, but blogs are still rising in all the right places within Washington.
The latest evidence: President Bush and his top adviser, Karl Rove, are saying kind words about blogs. According to comments excerpted from a new book about Bush titled "Strategery," both of them see blogs as a counterweight to mainstream media outlets that they think haven't always been fair to the president.
"[T]he amazing thing about this world we live in," Bush said, "is that there's a kind of free-flowing, kind of bulletin board of ideas and thoughts out there in the ether space, sometimes landing on somebody’s desk and sometimes not, but always available. It's a very interesting period."
Bush himself didn't actually use the word "blog" or any related words in the excerpt, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been talking about blogs privately. Beltway Blogroll has learned through a Capitol Hill source of a recent meeting that Bush had with a Republican member of the House leadership to discuss blogs and their significance in Washington. That same lawmaker is now penning a follow-up letter to the president, the source said.
Expect to hear more about that soon. Until then, you can read what Power Line and Tapscott's Copy Desk had to say about the Bush and Rove comments from "Strategery."
And for a more critical response, see the post of Marty Kaplan at The Huffington Post. Here's an excerpt to pique your curiousity:
Sure, an abundance of opinion is swell, and the blogosphere breaks the monopoly on megaphones. But the only way to break up a "monopoly on the news" is more journalism, not more propaganda; more independent media companies, not more gigantic media conglomerates; more investigative reporting, not more subpoenaed and jailed reporters and whistleblowers; more government openness, not more official secrecy; more respect for the idea of truth, not more nihilism about the notion of reality.
Posted by at 07:59 PM | Comments (8)
 |
One of the top newspapers in Wisconsin explored the presidential prospects of Sen. Russ Feingold over the weekend, and leading liberal bloggers weren't happy with the tone of the piece.
Specifically, and in the typically self-interested fashion of the blogosphere, they were ticked at some of the conclusions the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reached about Democratic bloggers.
The paper pitted the results of a Gallup presidential poll about potential Democratic presidential candidates against those of polls at Daily Kos and MyDD. The conclusion: Wisconsin's Feingold doesn't even register as choice among the Democratic population at large but is the favorite of the netroots.
That's no surprise, considering Feingold's outreach to bloggers as outlined in the article. But the paper hinted that being a favorite among bloggers may not be the best thing for a presidential contender. "While some view the Internet as above all a democratizing force," reporter Craig Gilbert wrote, "others see it as polarizing as well, fueling candidates who tap into the passions of activists and ideological voters but not the broader electorate."
Talk like that -- and quotes from people like Carol Darr, an enemy of Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas Zuniga for about a year now -- sparked another rant against "tired D.C. conventional wisdom."
Eshcaton dishonored Darr with its "Wanker of the Day" award. Moulitsas also went ballistic, as did John Aravosis of Americablog.
"Let the institutional players keep thinking that we're 'extremists' and that 'no Internet candidate has been elected president' so that they stay away these parts," Moulitsas wrote. "There are too many good players who get this whole netroots thing -- like Feingold and [former Virginia Gov. Mark] Warner -- to worry about the rest."
Posted by at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
|
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came to Washington last week and took some time from his schedule to meet with a few bloggers. All of them left the meeting talking about his rather transparent presidential ambitions at least in passing.
Most of the bloggers mentioned those ambitions in a flattering way. "Sitting in a small room with him along with a handful of other bloggers, it was easy to forget that you were talking to a governor and possible presidential candidate," Pat Cleary of ShopFloor, the blog of the National Association of Manufacturers, wrote in an entry that focused on Huckabee's healthcare views. (Cleary also recapped the governor's comments on partisanship, the budget and competitiveness.)
Tim Chapman, who blogs for Townhall.com, headlined his entry "Could This Man Be Your Next President?" "I would have liked to hear him say that Republicans should not have passed the 2003 Medicare bill," Chapman wrote. "I also would have liked to hear him talk a little tougher on congressional spending under Republican control. But I recognize that at this point in the ball game, you need more friends than enemies when you are trying to build momentum for a 2008 presidential run. There is plenty of time for his positions on those issues to be worked out."
At RedState, however, the anonymous blogger Augustine sees Huckabee's presidential aspirations as the sign of a "weak bench."
Even as he praised Huckabee, the chairman of the National Governors Association, as "one of the best Republican governors in the country," he dubbed him a "marginal candidate" for president and complained about the "sorry lot of GOP governors we've got" who could even seek the presidency. "[T]he current crop of governors has produced little in the way of policy advancement -- and a lot more in the way of tax increases and federal government payouts," Augustine wrote.
Andy Roth, who did not attend the bloggers' session with Huckabee, was even more critical at The Club For Growth, and he took his shots directly at Huckabee. Roth pegged the Arkansan as one of those governors who likes tax hikes and chastised his fellow bloggers for not calling him on it. "I'm sorry, but he is not one of the best Republican governors in the country, and he's not presidential material. Period."
Posted by at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
|
Every Tuesday, Daily Kos and "The Majority Report" at Air America Radio profile a new congressional candidate. They also steer readers and listeners to the ActBlue Web site to contribute to the upstart campaigns.
All of the chosen candidates have two traits in common: They are veterans, and they are Democrats. Some call them the "fighting Dems," and these days the candidates rally under the Band of Brothers banner. Their ranks currently number 53 political soldiers from 51 districts in 23 states.
Every campaign has its engaging story lines, and the Band of Brothers is the first prominent one of 2006. In addition to Daily Kos, blogs like Blue Force and MyDD have helped push the story into major media outlets. At least one blogger is on the board of the Band of Brothers political action committee, and two other PACs -- Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and Vet PAC -- also are behind the effort.
But weeks before the nation's first primary (in Texas on March 7), the band already has been broken: Three fighting Dems have laid down their arms. The only question now is how much staying power their comrades will have.
The most significant blow came this month when a bitter Paul Hackett withdrew from the Ohio Senate race. He blamed the Democratic establishment in Washington for undermining his candidacy in favor of fellow Democrat Sherrod Brown, currently a member of the House.
Also this month, David Ashe ended his congressional quest in Virginia's 2nd District, opting instead for a job in the new administration of Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine. And Bryan Lentz halted his campaign in Pennsylvania's 7th District when another veteran, Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak, decided to run.
In New York's 29th District, meanwhile, state party leaders only recently rallied behind veteran Eric Massa, one of the organizers of the fighting Dems. They had tried to recruit businessman David Nachbar instead, but he decided not to run when concerns emerged about his party affiliation.
The Band of Brothers faced an uphill campaign climb even before such setbacks. Voters traditionally trust Republicans more when it comes to security, the battlefield where Democrats are trying to compete by touting ex-soldiers. And on paper, most of the fighting Dems are long shots for election.
Three of the incumbent Republicans they are challenging had no competitors in 2004. Seven more won 80 percent or more of the vote, and the average tally of the relevant GOP candidates that year was 67.5 percent.
In addition, four members of the Band of Brothers are repeat candidates. None of them won more than 36 percent of the vote in 2004, and one, Al Weed in Virginia's 5th District, has to outlast fellow fighting Dem Bern Ewert just to win the right for a rematch against Rep. Virgil Goode. Democratic veterans Pete Duffy and Peter Sullivan also will compete in a primary in New Hampshire's 1st District.
Now the loss of three candidates in days -- and particularly of Hackett, a hero to Democratic bloggers and the inspiration behind the current movement -- has raised new doubts about the prospects of the remaining candidates. One diarist at Daily Kos wondered: "Who is next among the remaining [53] fighting Dems to be 'redeployed' or shunted aside? ... Hopefully, Hackett, Lentz and Ashe are the exception."
The Band of Brothers strategy is not necessarily a bad one. "A movement is more powerful than a bunch of political campaigns," said Erick Mullen, who has been involved since the start and now works with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "Being part of a movement gives voters something beyond themselves to contribute to the nation this Election Day."
NationalJournal.com contributing editor Charlie Cook offered another good reason for the political game plan: "In the absence of a compelling, experienced elected official, going with a combat veteran is sound, helping to inoculate Democrats from damage on a historically weak spot," he said.
But Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia added that "it only works if it is part of a much broader strategy. The party as a whole needs to be aggressive on a wide range of national security issues" and act upon missteps by President Bush. Sabato said last week's united attack against the administration for giving a government-run company in the United Arab Emirates oversight of security at six U.S. ports was "a solid start."
For now, most of the focus is on one fighting Dem, Tammy Duckworth in Illinois' 6th District. She is running for the seat being vacated by GOP Rep. Henry Hyde and actually was recruited even though Christine Cegelis, who held Hyde to 56 percent of the vote in 2004, already was running.
To gain the same kind of traction, the rest of the candidates will have to hit "success metrics like cash on hand," Mullen said. "Success breeds success. Those who make the mistake of believing that door-to-door lit drops and lawn signs alone can carry the day will be very disappointed."
Bloggers may well be the key. They proved their fundraising prowess for Hackett in 2005 and the "Kos Dozen" in 2004, and lately, they have made a concerted effort to fill the war chest of non-vet Ciro Rodriguez in Texas.
The fighting Dems who win the bulk of their attention may be the ones in the best position to score upsets this fall. "No one knows for sure whether there will even be a Democratic wave in November, or if there is one, the size of that wave," Sabato said. "Yet in the event, however unlikely, of a sizeable wave or tsunami, the bloggers could potentially help to position a larger number of Democratic challengers to take advantage of the circumstance."
Posted by at 07:16 AM | Comments (0)
|
A Pre-Launch Plug For PoliticsTV
PoliticsTV hasn't debuted its Internet television service yet, but it already has received a plug from a blog that supports one of the Democratic candidates set to be featured on the site.
LamontBlog mentioned the forthcoming site in an entry about its favorite candidate, Ned Lamont, the businessman who is challenging Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in the Democratic primary. Lamont Blog, which is not affiliated with Lamont's blog-less campaign, reported that Lamont already has been interviewed by PoliticsTV.
The site bills itself as "an Internet TV network for progressives, independents, Democrats -- or any American opposed to the Republicans' radical right agenda." PoliticsTV plans to air interviews with candidates as well as elected leaders in Congress and at other levels of government. The site also will have a blog and a show dedicated to the blogosphere, plus channels focused on citizens, satire, pundits and issues.
Posted by at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)
|
In The Blog's-Eye: 'Alarmist Crap' From Sen. Clinton
The Senate campaign of New York Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton just learned the hard way that it doesn't pay to annoy the folks in charge of the most popular blogs -- even if those folks share your party affiliation.
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the man behind Daily Kos, took a shot at the Clinton campaign yesterday after having received a fourth unsolicited fundraising e-mail. Rather than just add the e-mail address to his spam filter, Moulitsas made sure his hundreds of thousands of daily readers knew just how much "alarmist crap" the Clinton campaign includes in its fundraising pitches.
He was particularly annoyed by Clinton's argument that she faces a difficult Senate re-election campaign this year, as opposed to the commonly held belief that she is raising money for a potential presidential bid in 2008. "If she wants to fundraise for 2008, all the power to her," Moulitsas said. "But she could be honest about it. Pretending to raise this money for a non-existent Senate contest is simply obnoxious."
Posted by at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)
|
When netroots hero Paul Hackett ended his brief bid for a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio two weeks ago, the frustrated Democrat said he was leaving politics altogether. "Thus ends my 11-month political career," he said.
A few days later, Hackett proved that nobody actually leaves politics altogether. He may yet prove true to his word and not run for elective office again, but he hasn't totally abandoned politics. He has agreed to join the board of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America political action committee, which is dedicated to electing other military veterans like Hackett.
"As a candidate for the House and Senate, I got a crash course in party politics that wasn't always pretty," he said of his contention that leading Democrats in Washington forced him out of the race. "IAVA PAC represents the best hope to get early institutional support to others who face the same challenges I did. I want to be sure that they do not suffer the same fate that I did by helping them build campaigns that can run strongly without party support."
IAVA PAC is one of a few groups touting the candidacies of veterans who are running for Congress as Democrats. I'll be exploring the prospects of that Band of Brothers in my biweekly Beltway Blogroll column, which will be published at NationalJournal.com tomorrow and reprinted here at the blog on Tuesday.
Posted by at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)
|
Rep. Sherrod Brown on Friday accused the Bush administration of outsourcing national security to a terrorist-friendly country and of putting profits over people.
His entry at The Huffington Post was the latest example of lawmakers taking to the blogosphere their opposition to a port security deal with the United Arab Emirates. The issue has been the hottest topic on blogs across the political spectrum for the past several days.
"Recently, the Bush administration approved the takeover of six United States ports' security by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned company controlled by the United Arab Emirates," Brown wrote. "The Bush administration has been outsourcing jobs for five years, and now they want to outsource our national security."
He noted that United Arab Emirates was one of only a few nations to recognize the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan and that two of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were from United Arab Emirates.
Earlier in the week at RedState Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., took a less combative yet cautious stand against the deal. "I'm not prepared to sign off on this agreement, and from what I've been hearing from my constituents, they aren't either," she wrote.
"I don't say this as a knee-jerk reaction against foreign investment and business. I've supported free trade for years, but the security angle involved in this matter adds a dimension that takes us beyond a simple matter of business."
UPDATE: GOP Bloggers and Real Clear Politics were not impressed with Brown's rationale at The Huffington Post. The former said Brown was "dishonest," and the latter accused him of "real nuttery."
Posted by at 02:33 PM | Comments (0)
|
Freeing Information From The Pentagon
The author of the Outraged Moderates blog used the Freedom of Information Act to make public some handwritten notes of aides to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The notes were made after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which included a commercial airplane crashing into the Pentagon. The Guardian has the full story.
Law student Thad Anderson scored the FOIA coup. I suspect that Mark Tapscott would like to see more bloggers follow in Anderson's footsteps. He regularly uses Tapscott's Copy Desk and his position as the head of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation to sing the praises of FOIA.
The debate about strengthening FOIA also led to the first known reference to blogs from the Senate floor. That happened a year ago this month.
Posted by at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)
|
The blog Managed Care Matters has a new feature geared toward health policy wonks: a regular recap of the best content at health policy blogs.
"We've asked over two dozen health policy, infrastructure, insurance, technology and managed care bloggers to send in their best, provided to you in Cliff Notes style," Joe Paduda wrote. "We'll do this every couple of weeks or more often if the host wants to."
The first entry covers Medicare history, conflicts of interest between academia and the pharmaceutical industry, "pod slurping" (go read it if you want to know more) and pharmaceutical-related blogging, among other things.
Posted by at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)
|
Big technology firms are on the hit list of some members of Congress these days because of reports that the companies are aiding efforts to censor Internet content in countries like China.
The topic was the subject of the first live-blogged hearing on Capitol Hill last week. And this week, Pajamas Media interviewed Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., who has been among the chief critics of Big Tech.
Posted by at 09:23 PM | Comments (0)
|
The Hacking Of Michelle Malkin
Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin has been all over the story about the publication of controversial Muslim cartoons that sparked rioting in some European countries. Now cyber troublemakers are all over her blog.
Last week she noted that "The Islamists' War On The Internet" had spread to her site. "Last night, my hosting service notified me that it is receiving ongoing threats from individuals vowing to take down this site -- and others along with it -- which will presumably continue until I take down the cartoons," Malkin wrote. "For now, we are on guard and continuing with business as usual."
But today, hackers hit her site with a denial-of-service attack that briefly forced Malkin to do her blogging at Pajamas Media. She has contacted the FBI about the attack.
Posted by at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)
|
Mike Krempasky of RedState reports that decision day at the Federal Election Commission on whether to regulate blogs will be March 16.
"Oddly," he added, "it's almost exactly a year to the day from the formation of The Online Coalition -- organized in response to then-Commissioner Brad Smith's warning to the Internet community of the possibility of impending regulations."
The FEC may hope that the rulemaking will be its final word on how campaign finance law should apply to the Internet, but the courts already have kicked the issue back to the agency once. Odds are good that someone -- whether bloggers, campaign reformers or free-speech advocates -- will be unhappy with whatever rules the FEC writes and initiate another legal challenge.
Posted by at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)
|
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., at The Huffington Post: "If we had 100 Iraqis and seven Americans killed in the last couple days, that's just an indication of how bad things have gotten: We've lost the hearts and minds of the people."
Posted by at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)
|
Candidate Blogs: Indiana
Fifty-one candidates have filed to run for Congress in Indiana, but only one of them, Democrat Barry Welsh in the 6th District, has a blog.
Rep. Mike Pence, the Republican incumbent in the 6th and a favorite of some conservative bloggers, has a blog at his congressional site. But House rules prohibit the use of campaign-related materials on Web sites, newsletters and other outlets covered by taxpayer funds.
The political world in the Hoosier State also includes these blogs: In The Agora, Indiana Politico, Liberal Indiana, Masson's Blog and Taking Down Words.
Here are entries on other states in my running tally of candidate and political blogs:
-- Kentucky
-- Illinois
-- New Mexico
-- Ohio
-- Texas
-- West Virginia
If you are aware of blogs or diaries that I have missed, please shoot me an e-mail at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by at 07:34 AM | Comments (0)
|
Only one of the 11 candidates for Congress and governor who filed by New Mexico's deadline last week has a blog. The lone candidate blogger is Democrat Patricia Madrid, who is challenging Republican Rep. Heather Wilson in the 1st District.
However, at least one state senator, Dede Feldman, also has a blog, and The Land Of Enchantment has a few blogs where political junkies can keep tabs on the 2006 campaign. The list includes Roundhouse Report, a blog authored by staffers at The Albuquerque Tribune, as well as independent blogs like Democracy for New Mexico, New Mexico Politics, and New Mexico Politics with Joe Monahan.
Here are entries on other states in my running tally of candidate and political blogs:
-- Kentucky
-- Illinois
-- Ohio
-- Texas
-- West Virginia
If you are aware of blogs or diaries that I have missed, please shoot me an e-mail at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by at 07:18 AM | Comments (0)
|
Candidate Blogs: Ohio
More than a dozen of the candidates who filed to run for either Congress or governor in Ohio have blogs.
The big news in the Buckeye State earlier in the week was the decision of Democrat Paul Hackett, whose campaign Web site included a community blog, to end his Senate bid. But of the 100 congressional and gubernatorial candidates who met the Thursday filing deadline for the May 2 primary, 14 have campaign blogs and two more, Democrats Richard Sifer in the 4th District and Charlie Wilson in the 6th District, plan to have them. That's the most candidate blogs in any state to date.
All but three of the candidate bloggers are Democrats. Three incumbents have blogs, but all of them -- Democratic Reps. Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland, and Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican -- are seeking higher office.
In addition to the blog at his campaign site, Brown also is behind the Grow Ohio effort, and he has blogged periodically at sites like The Huffington Post and TPMCafe. Plus there is the unofficial and independently run Sherrod Brown Blog.
Brown's Republican opponent, Sen. Mike DeWine, has neither a campaign blog nor one at his congressional site. But maybe that's because his most memorable encounter with the blogosphere was an unpleasant one: About two years ago, he fired Jessica Cutler, the aide who published the racy Washingtonienne blog.
One candidate, Democrat Jim Parker in the 2nd District, maintains a diary at Daily Kos in addition to his campaign blog. And another Democrat, John Swords in the 12th District, only blogs at Daily Kos.
Here is the list Ohio candidate blogs:
-- Kenneth Blackwell, Republican, governor
-- Sherrod Brown, Democrat, Senate
-- David Fierst, Democrat, 3rd District
-- Richard Holt, Republican, 6th District
-- Mary Jo Kilroy, Democrat, 15th District
-- Nathan Martin, Republican, 4th District
-- Jim Parker, Democrat, 2nd District
-- Jeff Seeman, Democrat, 16th District
-- Richard Siferd, Democrat, 4th District
-- Jeff Sinnard, Democrat, 2nd District
-- Zack Space, Democrat, 18th District
-- Ted Strickland, Democrat, governor
-- Stephanie Studebaker, Democrat, 3rd District
-- John Swords, Democrat, 12th District
-- Charlie Wilson, Democrat, 6th District
-- John Wolfe, Democrat, 13th District
Ohio also has a thriving political blog community, as evidenced by the groundswell of support for Hackett in a special House election last August and his Senate candidacy before his withdrawal. At least three blogs -- BuckeyeSenate, Ohio 2nd (where Hackett ran last year) and Ohio13 Blog -- are focused on covering specific races.
Other political blogs in Ohio include Blue 88, Ohio 2006 Blog, Ohio Political Journal and Politics Extra by the Cincinnati Enquirer staff.
This is the fifth installment of my running list of candidate blogs. The other entries cover Kentucky, Illinois, Texas and West Virginia. If you are aware of blogs or diaries that I have missed, please shoot me an e-mail at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
|
War In The Era Of Blogs
The United States faces new challenges in fighting a war against terror in a new media era, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today, and blogs are part of the equation.
Rumsfeld made the comments in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He noted that in many ways the United States is ill-prepared for the first war in history that is being waged in an era of blogs, the Internet, e-mail, instant messaging, BlackBerries, digital cameras, cellular telephones and other technological advances.
Two particular references to blogs are worth noting. The first involves how the Pentagon is engaging them:
[G]overnment public affairs and public diplomacy efforts must reorient staffing, schedules and culture to engage the full range of media that are having such an impact today. Our U.S. Central Command, for example, has launched an online communications effort that includes electronic news updates and a links campaign that has resulted in several hundred blogs receiving and publishing CENTCOM content.
The second notes the role blogs are playing in spreading information, even in repressive countries:
I believe with every bone in my body that free people, exposed to sufficient information, will, over time, find their way to right decisions. Throughout the world, advances in technology are forcing a massive information flow that dictatorships and extremists ultimately will not be able to control. Blogs are rapidly appearing even in countries where the press is still government-controlled.
Posted by at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
|
The C-Span Of The Blog World
Atrios and I are on the same wavelength.
Last summer, after the History News Network started a blog focused on the presidency, I suggested that the time for a blog on Congress also had arrived. Atrios, whose given name is Duncan Black, pitched a similar idea at Eschaton in the wee hours this morning.
"Something that's missing is a blog-like shadow of C-Span, essentially explaining what's going on in the House/Senate at any given moment," he wrote. "Sure it isn't exciting most of the time, but often when it is exciting, the viewing public isn't really sure why. And, in between interesting moments, it'd be the perfect place for more gossipy stuff."
His idea comes on the heels of "RedState's Call For A Capitol Hill Blog." The two proposals combined provide further evidence that bloggers are getting serious about watching what happens in Washington. It should be interesting to see how Washington reacts to being watched.
Posted by at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)
|
The former federal election commissioner who sparked the first major blog swarm in Washington has agreed to enter the blogosphere himself. His forum of choice: RedState.
Brad Smith sparked the blog swarm about a year ago, when he warned that the Federal Election Commission might be forced to regulate political speech on blogs because of a federal court ruling. The agency quickly distanced itself from that notion, however, and last fall the FEC granted one network of blogs a media exemption from campaign finance rules.
Though Smith left the FEC last August with both fierce critics and loyal defenders of his tenure, he left as a hero to bloggers across the political spectrum.
Smith made a virtual return to Washington late last year. At RedState, he defended the decision of President Bush to appoint three FEC members, including his replacement, during a congressional recess, thus bypassing Senate confirmation. Now Smith has agreed to contribute to RedState on a regular basis.
Mike Krempasky made the announcement. "At various times, Brad has been described as everything from the most effective defender of the First Amendment in Washington to an unlikely hero for conservatives within the machine of government. ... Look for regular coverage and analysis of Washington's coming campaign of 'reform' and keep checking back to see why, no matter how well-intentioned or lofty-sounding many of the legislative 'fixes' may be, you can bet one thing: Almost all of them will decrease your freedom at some level."
Posted by at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
|
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds and Instawife Helen Smith started The Glenn and Helen Show podcast early this year.
It didn't take them long to score a major "get": Their latest show includes a podcast with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, which also happens to be where the Instaclan lives. Frist "talks about the threat of avian flu and new government programs to prepare for epidemics of all sorts," Reynolds wrote at Instapundit.
"I know that you've been interested in the evolving relationship between blogs and politicians," Stephen Smith of VOLPAC, Frist's political action committee, wrote in an e-mail to me, "and as far as I can tell, Senator Frist is the first prominent political figure to have ever been interviewed specifically for a podcast."
The latest Glenn and Helen Show also includes interviews with various bloggers who were at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Reynolds attended the event in Washington last week to promote his forthcoming book, An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths.
Posted by at 09:03 AM | Comments (1)
|
The Live-Blogging Is Under Way ...
... at the House International Relations subcommittee that is examining the role of U.S. technology companies in aiding limits on Internet content abroad. You can get the news by clicking on the links below:
-- Rebecca MacKinnon of Harvard University, who has been leading the pack in covering this story, is blogging up a storm at RConversation -- even though she'll be in and out of the hearing because of a previous speaking engagement in Washington. See her multiple entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
-- Clayton Wagar is covering the hearing for RedState. Wagar's day job is with Cisco Systems, one of the company's testifying at the hearing. He smartly disclosed that fact at RedState. UPDATE: Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for subcommittee Chairman Chris Smith, R-N.J., said in an e-mail that Wagar "disclosed the fact that he worked for Cisco to me as well in advance of today's hearings."
-- Tim Chapman is there for Townhall.com, and he already has video of the hearing at Capitol Report.
-- Human Events Online is live-blogging, too, but I don't see any posts on its blogs yet.
-- And The New York Times has a blogger there. But as I noted yesterday, the paper's blogs require a subscription, so there will be no link love here. Curiously, the paper already has a story about the hearing online that includes links to the other blogs. What are folks at the Times thinking?
Posted by at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)
|
Former Hotline editor and columnist Howard Mortman has staked his claim in the political blogosphere at Extreme Mortman.
Yesterday he posted the first of what he promises will be a series of interviews with "top bloggers from early presidential caucus and primary states." The first interview is with Thomas Niblock of Hawkeye Republican from Iowa.
Mortman is heading a new public affairs division at New Media Strategies, a firm whose specialty is online market intelligence. Extreme Mortman is now on the blogroll to your left.
Posted by at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
|
First Hill Hearing To Be 'Live-Blogged'
The rise of blogs within Washington made this breaking news inevitable: A House subcommittee for the first time will make room for citizen journalists to "live-blog" a congressional hearing.
The International Relations Subcommittee on Global Human Rights, Africa and International Operations will hold the hearing Wednesday at 10 a.m., and the topic is most appropriate. The panel will examine the role that U.S. companies like Google and Yahoo play in filtering Internet content in countries like China.
"Modern communications have empowered individuals to get their news from different sources," said subcommittee Chairman Chris Smith, R-N.J., "and blogs have become a regular news source for many Americans -- particularly students and younger people. Live-blogs from different events in Congress will enable more Americans to hear their elected representatives, allow for increased transparency and encourage greater civic participation."
The hearing also will be webcast via the committee's Web site for bloggers who want to cover the event remotely.
UPDATE: Brad Dayspring, a spokesman in Smith's office, said three organizations so far have confirmed their plans to live-blog the hearing. Two of them, Human Events Online and TownHall.com, are more traditional online media outlets that also have blogs. RedState is the only pure blog on the list for now, though Dayspring said he is waiting to hear from at least two others.
All three are conservative publications. Dayspring said the blogs that have not yet confirmed would fall elsewhere within the political spectrum but declined to elaborate or name the blogs.
UPDATE II: Dayspring just e-mailed with another follow-up. "At this point," he said, "our logistical ceiling is five blogs, so that will be our maximum. Also invited were Tapped from The American Prospect and Slashdot."
UPDATE III: Mark Tapscott, a blogger and media expert at the Heritage Foundation, asked me a good question about connections for the bloggers in the hearing room, so I forwarded it to Dayspring.
The answer: The subcommittee is going beyond just making room for the bloggers at the press table and instead "will be setting up a connection for them."
UPDATE IV: The subcommittee has finalized the list of bloggers, Dayspring said on Tuesday. The last two slots will be filled by Rebecca MacKinnon of Harvard University and The New York Times.
Yes, that stodgy, old media stalwart -- the one that keeps its blogs behind a subscription firewall -- gets a choice seat in what otherwise is a groundbreaking moment for citizen media. I'm not sure of the logic in giving the Times a seat at the bloggers' table, but hey, it's still progress.
The list of witnesses, as reprinted in a press release from Smith's office, is below:
Panel I
-- James Keith, State Department senior adviser for China and Mongolia
-- David Gross, deputy assistant secretary of State for international communications and information policy
Panel II
-- Mark Chandler, vice president and general counsel for Cisco Systems
-- Jack Krumholtz, director of government affairs and associate general counsel at Microsoft
-- Michael Callahan, general counsel for Yahoo
-- Elliot Schrage, vice president of communications and corporate affairs at Google
Panel III
-- Lucie Morillon, head of the Internet freedom desk at Reporters Without Borders
-- Harry Wu, publisher of the China Information Center
-- Libby Liu, president of Radio Free Asia
-- Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley
-- Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China
Posted by at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)
|
As the governor of Virginia, James Gilmore was fond of calling his state the Digital Dominion because of its technology prowess. That innovation was on full display in the state legislature earlier this month, as a young blogger and a state delegate interacted online during a legislative session.
Blogger Waldo Jaquith has been traveling to Richmond periodically this winter to cover the activities of state lawmakers. He has attended committee meetings and covered floor debates from the gallery by closed-circuit television.
On Feb. 2, Jaquith quoted a wisecrack that House Speaker Bill Howell made about fellow Republican Delegate Bob Marshall (who happens to represent part of my home county, Prince William). Delegate Kristen Amundsen apparently was reading Jaquith's blog while on the floor at the time and responded in the comments.
The two then traded comments, with Jaquith noting, "How funny to sit here and watch you on TV and write about it while you sit and read what I'm writing about what I'm watching on the TV."
"Amazing" is the word I would use -- and "commonplace" is the one I hope we all can use someday to describe such interaction. What better way to welcome the people into the people's houses of government than to interact online while discussing the issues of the day.
Hat tip to The Connection Newspapers.
Posted by at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)
|
Sometimes it takes an unrelenting blog swarm to push an issue onto the public stage; other times, it just takes a blogger with a penchant for publicity stunts. The latter approach worked brilliantly for John Aravosis of Americablog in his quest to ignite a debate about cellular telephone privacy.
Aravosis began his crusade a few weeks ago, after reading a Chicago Sun-Times article about how easily cell-phone records can be bought online. The story moved him to buy some of his own records, but when that didn't stir enough outrage, he bought the records of a political celebrity: 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark.
That move did the trick. Suddenly, important people wanted to talk about cell-phone privacy -- and do something quickly to protect it. Major media outlets covered the story, members of Congress started their 2006 session by filing multiple bills on the topic, and law enforcers announced steps to halt the sales and punish violators.
"The serious traction," said Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, "started with Frank Main's article in the Chicago Sun-Times. ... But then, Aravosis' blog post made the story national."
Aravosis, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has a knack for driving issues -- and himself -- into the public eye.
Just last week, his blog entry about a wounded soldier who had to pay for his own body armor -- and the $5,400 raised for that soldier via AMERICAblog -- sparked coverage on CNN. Last year, Aravosis also fought for gay rights against both Microsoft and Ford.
Like many bloggers, Aravosis regularly builds on the work of others, often taking his cues from media coverage. But Aravosis' aggressive, sensational tactics tend to draw more attention than the work of conventional operations in Washington.
In the case of cell phone privacy, Aravosis joined the battle months after it began. EPIC took the lead last July by filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Internet firms that sell phone records fraudulently obtained via "pretexting," or acting under false pretenses. The group supplemented the filing in August with a list of 40 such Web sites.
Then in November, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., urged the FTC and Federal Communications Commission to investigate consumer privacy violations and whether phone companies are doing enough to prevent them. That same month, the FCC responded to another EPIC petition by subpoenaing several prominent data brokerages about how they obtained phone records.
The debate was moving along fine, albeit slowly, without Aravosis and might well have continued to do so.
When asked about Aravosis' role in furthering the cause, EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said: "Who is John Aravosis? I've never heard of him." And when Rotenberg listed blogs that he thinks influence public policy -- ACSBlog, Balkanization, Concurring Opinions, Think Progress and The Volokh Conspiracy -- Americablog was not among them.
But Aravosis had at least an indirect influence in making cell privacy one of the hottest topics of the past month. The Sun-Times wrote a story about Aravosis' purchase of Clark's records, and other news outlets, including ABC, the Associated Press and MSNBC followed suit. One newspaper, the New York Daily News, even copied Aravosis' tactic. It bought the mobile records of one of its editorial writers -- and then opined against the practice.
After Aravosis called attention to the issue, the liberal activist group MoveOn.org started an online petition "to prohibit phone-record buying," noting the purchase of Clark's records and linking back to Americablog.
And when Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced his privacy legislation, Clark attended the press conference to announce the bill. Schumer's press release also noted that Clark's cell records had been bought online.
The Senate has been in session 16 days so far this year and the House only five, but both chambers already have held hearings on cell phone privacy. Neither hearing was scheduled until after Aravosis started blogging about the issue. Since mid-January, eight bills designed to protect mobile records have been introduced, and others are planned.
Congress' focus on the issue also has helped wake the FCC from what Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., called its "blissful slumber" since EPIC first raised the subject last summer. On Friday, the agency responded to EPIC's petition by starting a process that could toughen privacy rules. "I support this notice because I am deeply concerned about reports of companies trafficking in personal telephone records," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in a statement.
The wireless industry is taking action, too. Steve Largent, head of the wireless group CTIA, said at a Feb. 1 House hearing that all four national wireless carriers -- including Cingular Wireless, which Aravosis accused of lying -- have filed complaints against Web sites that sell mobile records. He added that the industry supports legislation designed to punish such fraudulent sales.
A clear consensus on mobile privacy has developed over the past several weeks, much like it did around a "do not call" list against unwanted telemarketing in 2003. In that instance, Congress and President Bush moved quickly, and almost unanimously, to enact a law mandating the list.
Don't expect Aravosis, an avowed Bush-hater, to be invited to the Rose Garden anytime soon. But if a bill does become law, or if the FCC and FTC start punishing firms that sell mobile records or the industry starts hauling them into court, Aravosis certainly would be justified in patting himself on the back.
Posted by at 07:26 AM | Comments (0)
|
Your Portal To Blog Stories
I regularly link to commentary and articles about blogs, whether pro or con. I'd like to have them all in one place for easy access, and I thought my readers could benefit, too, if I compiled my list into a blog entry. That's what I'm going to do here.
I'll start with the most recent items, with new links posted in reverse chronological order, and I'll bump this entry to the top of the blog anytime I add new links.
If you know of articles that you think should be included, e-mail me at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
-- New York Magazine dedicated its latest cover story to blogging -- specifically, how a select few people get rich doing it. The success stories cited at length in the article included two leading liberal blogs, The Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo. The article also mentioned Daily Kos, Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan in passing.
Sullivan's take: "After reading it, I should confess to some sadness. I miss the days when it was just one dude writing his thoughts to whoever wanted to read it. ... If your goal is chasing readers and revenue, rather than just venting to whomever, you risk losing what makes blogging so fresh. Perhaps, alas, we already have."
-- Jim Brady of washingtonpost.com vented about his experience with "Blog Rage." "What's distressing about my recent experience is that a small number of highly partisan, energetic bloggers poisoned the debate instead of contributing to it," he wrote.
-- The German media blog Davids Medienkritik translated into English and posted online an excerpt from an interview that Spiegel Online conducted with German television reporter Thomas Leif. Leif clearly is no fan of blogs; the interview was titled "Bloggers Are Often Narcisstic Egocentrists."
-- BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds sees blogs a bit differently. He listed numerous examples of how blogs have helped him do his job and said those examples "show the collective strength of blogs. They have an army of what Sherlock Holmes called his 'Baker Street Irregulars,' that is an almost unlimited number of people around the world, many of them expert on the subject under discussion, scouring sources and sending information in to an easily accessible, central site which can disseminate it instantly."
Links to older stories are below:
-- The Washington Times on blog power from left to right.
-- American Journalism Review on the split political personalities of blogs.
-- My piece in National Journal on "The Rise Of Blogs," plus a sidebar on lawmakers who blog.
-- Citizen Magazine, a publication of the Family Research Council, on the impact of "Pajamas Warriors."
-- The Lexington Herald-Leader on the the bid by bloggers to get press passes for covering the Kentucky legislature.
-- The "Lord Of The Blogs" rant by columnist Kathleen Parker.
-- Two pieces on Daily Kos proprietor Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, one by Newsweek and Washington Monthly.
-- The Rocky Mountain News on the decision by Colorado's government to ban comments on blogs by government workers via state-owned computers.
-- Forbes magazine's pitiful cover piece on the "Attack of the Blogs."
-- The Christian Science Monitor on attempts by powerbrokers in Washington to woo bloggers.
-- The Online Journalism Review on the difficulty in defining blogs.
-- The San Francisco Chronicle on an effort by San Francisco to apply campaign finance law to blogs.
-- The New York Times on ethics in the blogosphere.
Posted by at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)
|
As Congress ponders the future of telecommunications policy, a new line of debate has opened over the concept of "network neutrality," and advocates of that neutrality are making their case to bloggers.
Under a system of net neutrality, dominant cable and telecommunications companies could not charge their competitors extra to offer certain high-bandwidth services over high-speed Internet networks. BellSouth and Verizon Communications have proposed doing just that, arguing that they should be able to charge more for higher quality service. But critics contend that unless networks remain neutral, the flow of commerce and information will be hindered.
Free Press is among the proponents of net neutrality, and it created an online letter-writing campaign at Net Freedom Now to push the concept. The group also spearheaded a conference call with bloggers on Friday. The speakers included Timothy Karr and Ben Scott of Free Press, Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy, and law professor Lawrence Lessig, who has a blawg.
I didn't get a chance to join the call, but Craig Aaron of Free Press provided the details after the fact. About 25 bloggers, including those from Mediageek, The Jeff Pulver Blog, Sandhill Trek and Wi-Fi Networking News, were on the one-hour call.
Bob Morris addressed the subject at Politics in the Zeros after the call. "This would destroy the Net as we know it," he said of the plan for tiered pricing by telecom and cable giants. "For example, great blogs like Crooks and Liars that do videocasting would not be able to afford top-tier prices and thus would be relegated to a slower-download-speed lane (if they weren't blocked altogether.) Technology exists now, in the form of new routers, for this to happen."
Mediageek also posted commentary on the call, as well as a related podcast. And Sandhill Trek offered some thoughts.
Posted by at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
|
Mining For Terrorist Data In The Blogosphere
The Christian Science Monitor published a story last week on plans for a new government computer system that will search blogs and other information sources to pinpoint patterns of terrorist activity. TalkLeft took note of the story on the left, and Hugh Hewitt did on the right.
It sounds like the kind of news that might spark outrage among bloggers of all stripes, but Hewitt warned against a knee-jerk reaction. "Before you object, read (or reread) Lawrence Wright's 'The Terror Web' from the August 2, 2004, New Yorker."
Posted by at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)
|
Wiley Publishing owns the trademark to the phrase "for dummies" as part of the firm's popular book series, and they take their ownership of that intellectual property seriously -- so seriously that they are admonishing bloggers about how they should use the term.
Jason Calacanis, who became a multimillionaire last year when he sold his Weblogs Inc. network to America Online, reported on the controversy last week after receiving a letter from a Wiley lawyer. The lawyer suggested that TVSquad, one of the Weblogs properties, had diluted the "for dummies" trademark by using it in a headline without attribution to Wiley.
Calacanis fired off a letter to the lawyer, Kathleen Robbins, that wondered whether she was joking. "Now, there is a longstanding tradition of publications using slogans and trademarks in headlines (think of all the 'Empire Stikes Back' headlines about Microsoft in tech magazines)," Calacanis wrote. "That is not a trademark violation, and it does not require trademark attribution -- it's a news headline."
The lawyer's response: "No, I'm not kidding, and yes I realize it is a blog post. To clarify, we're not saying you can't use the FOR DUMMIES trademark in a headline. We're asking that if you do use the FOR DUMMIES trademark in a headline or elsewhere in a posting that you include the attribution language as outlined in my previous e-mail." (Visit Calacanis' blog entry for that e-mail.)
When Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine heard about the legal spat, he dubbed the lawyer "dork of the day" and decided to lead an online intellectual property revolt. He invited readers to create blog headlines with "for dummies" in it, and some bloggers did just that.
The Trademark Blog, written by another lawyer, also tackled the subject. It noted that Wiley technically did not allege a trademark violation by Weblogs but merely requested that future headlines with "for dummies" in it give credit to Wiley.
"If you write a letter asking someone to do something they do not have to do, then you are asking them for a favor," Marty Schwimmer wrote. "When asking for a favor, if you do not use magic words such as 'please', 'thank you' and 'we respectfully request,' then do not be surprised when your letter gets posted on a Web site."
Posted by at 08:17 PM | Comments (1)
|
Jim Brady of washingtonpost.com had a run-in with liberal bloggers last month over their visceral and often vulgar reaction to a column by Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell.
Saturday was payback time for Brady. He penned a column about "Blog Rage" and how it felt "to be mugged by the blogosphere." The difference between Brady's behavior yesterday and that of some of the bloggers who attacked him mercilessly a few weeks ago: Brady managed to act like an adult while still criticizing those with a difference of opinion.
Brady downplayed the conflict between blogs and the mainstream media, and he conceded that "blogs play a crucial role in the national conversation." But he decried the behavior of some of the bloggers who recently engaged him and other Post officials.
"What's distressing about my recent experience is that a small number of highly partisan, energetic bloggers poisoned the debate instead of contributing to it," Brady wrote. "Some of those angry about Howell's error didn't bother to present all the facts on their own sites. Instead, they picked the facts that conveniently fit their worldviews and ignored anything that didn't."
The column is sparking more critical chatter about Brady and the Post in the blogosphere -- from blog pioneers like Dan Gillmor and Jeff Jarvis, as well as liberal blogs like MyDD that targeted the the Post a few weeks ago.
Posted by at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)
|
Tempest In A Barrel
Reprinted with permission from the Feb. 11, 2006, issue of National Journal magazine.
By David Baumann
For $495, an outfit called TheCapitol.Net will teach you how to feed at the trough. The firm, which does training seminars on how Washington works, is offering a one-day course on how to get an earmark. If you sign up, the folks at TheCapitol.Net will even teach you how to counter "public criticism of pork."
Like the Redskins and Beltway snarls, earmarks have become part of Washington. A whole lobbying community has grown up around this relatively new form of pork. Members of Congress now routinely direct appropriations to specific projects, with amounts of money attached. Constituents have come to expect members to bring home the bacon -- and to brag about it afterward. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., a co-founder of the anti-spending Republican Study Committee, issued a news release in December touting the $500,000 that he got into the Transportation-Treasury bill to renovate the Memorial Coliseum in Marion, Ind. "Developing and assisting communities throughout Indiana's 5th Congressional District," Burton declared, "is one of my main responsibilities in Washington."
Suddenly, however, "public criticism of pork" is all the rage, and earmarks are the target. Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, R-Calif., resigned from the House and is going to prison for taking bribes to use appropriations bills to steer defense contracts to his corporate friends. Lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to operating a favor factory that depended on getting members of Congress to help his clients in a variety of ways. Reformers have vowed to send earmarks the way of such other once-familiar Washington institutions as Duke Ziebert's restaurant and The Washington Star.
Critics argue that earmarks -- although a tiny part of the federal budget -- are unseemly and out of control. Lawmakers aren't allocating money based on need but on connections. "We believe that the process of earmarking undermines the confidence of the American public in Congress, because the practice is not open, fair, or competitive and tends to reward the politically well connected," Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., declared in a letter to colleagues last month.
President Bush called for "earmark reform" in his State of the Union address last month, "because the federal budget has too many special-interest projects." Several scholars at the Heritage Foundation have suggested banning earmarks outright. But because the Constitution gives Congress full power over appropriations, there is no way to directly prevent legislation from ordaining how federal funds should be spent. Lawmakers have offered a number of partial reforms, such as limiting the number of earmark requests, making them more public, and making members more accountable. Even members of the Appropriations committees, who are in general the most jealous defenders of their power to steer funding, have called for changes; they say they are in danger of being overwhelmed by their colleagues' demands for earmarks.
But earmarks are convenient. As party discipline decreases, congressional leaders can use earmarks to reward loyal members. So far, Bush has not vetoed any bill because of earmarks. And while new House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, doesn't ask for earmarks himself, he is not crusading against them. On the other side, local officials have become masters in manipulating the system to get their share of the pork.
One congressional analyst is skeptical that the brouhaha about earmarks will accomplish much. "Every new change has its flip side," said Lawrence Dodd, a professor of political science at the University of Florida and the author of a standard reference book, Congress Reconsidered. "There always are going to be ways to favor special groups. That's what the whole game is about." Congress should be spending its time investigating the misdeeds of individuals and groups, Dodd said, rather than reforming the practice of earmarks.
Pork-barrel politics isn't new. But as budget limits -- such as those imposed by the Gramm-Rudman rules of the 1980s -- tightened, people seeking money gradually learned to grab it sooner in the legislative process. They could not wait until a federal department or agency got the funds, because it might not get enough -- so they made sure that Congress told the executive branch exactly where to spend the money. Coburn and McCain contend that earmarks in appropriations bills grew from 4,126 in 1994 to 15,268 in 2005. With that growth, some have slipped by that might not pass the smell test, such as $100,000 for the Tiger Woods Foundation or $250,000 for the Country Music Hall of Fame.
"They grew because members of Congress believed the appropriations bills represented the best way to get things through Congress," said James Dyer, the longtime Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. Dyer is now a lobbyist at Clark and Weinstock, and his practice includes appropriations. He adds that party leaders have increasingly turned to earmarks as a way to enforce discipline. "Leadership has to have enough carrots in their arsenal," Dyer said. A political scientist agrees. "Leaders use pork-barrel projects to assemble the votes," Diana Evans, a political science professor at Trinity College in Connecticut and the author of the 2004 book Greasing the Wheels, told National Journal last year.
That power was on naked display in December 2001, as the House prepared for a showdown vote on trade legislation. Dyer, then Appropriations staff director, and then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, approached Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, with a piece of paper. Hinojosa had not taken a position on the bill. DeLay signed the piece of paper, shook hands with Hinojosa and left. Hinojosa voted for the bill and got an earmark (which everyone involved in the process later declined to identify) in the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill.
Just last year, appropriators stood on the Senate floor and threatened revenge on senators who supported anti-earmark amendments that Coburn was offering on spending bills. If senators supported Coburn, the appropriators warned, their own projects could be in jeopardy. The appropriators said they would take names.
Such threats amount to "internal bribery," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. Earmarks are sometimes justified, he said, but he opposes using them to buy votes on legislation. "It turns the appropriations process into an ATM."
Reformers claimed a major victory last year when Congress agreed to rescind money for the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" that Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, had tucked into the massive highway reauthorization bill. The bridge was to connect the town of Ketchikan with Gravina Island, home to only 50 people. The $315 million set aside for the bridge was not returned to the pot of transportation money, but as Heritage Foundation scholar Ronald Utt notes, the money went to the state of Alaska to use for its transportation priorities. And when Gov. Frank Murkowski released his budget proposal last month, it included funding for the bridge.
Many members of Congress steadfastly defend earmarks, insisting that they know what is best for their districts and that they do not want to leave those decisions up to "green-eyeshade bureaucrats at OMB," in the words of House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.
Earmarking has grown so prevalent that even groups lacking high-paid lobbyists have been forced to get into the act or risk losing their piece of the pie. "We were originally getting about $14 billion a year" in federal funds for specific projects, said Wes Watson, executive director of the Florida Public Transportation Association. That was far below what Florida should be getting based on its population. In 1998, he said, "we went up to Washington to get on the radar screen of our representatives and their staffs." In short, Watson said, the group was on the prowl for earmarks. By 2003, the association was bragging about its $36.9 billion in earmarks.
If earmarks were abolished, federal transit money would be distributed through formulas. "We would be willing to go into a formula program as long as we got our fair share," Watson said. But he doubts that earmarks will disappear. "I think they're going to be there forever," he said. "You might as well accept that fact."
The impact on federal programs is measurable. Take the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, which pays for projects at colleges and universities to encourage reform in higher education. In 1998, FIPSE received a total of $25.2 million, which included two earmarks accounting for some $4.5 million, according to figures compiled by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The rest was distributed through competitive grants. In 2005, the program received $163.6 million, with 419 earmarks directing where $146.2 million, or 89 percent of the funding, should go. Education Department officials canceled the competitive grant process in 2005, saying that the program did not have sufficient funding to make awards.
For fiscal 2006, appropriators -- short of money to fund programs -- eliminated all earmarks from the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. FIPSE funding fell to about $22 million, close to what it had been getting in 1998, when earmarking made up 18 percent of the program's funding. Now the department has revived the competitive grant process. For fiscal 2007, Bush is seeking $22 million for FIPSE, the same as it got last year.
Congressional proposals to reform the earmarking process generally try to respect Congress's power of the purse while relying on "transparency" and internal rules to tamp down temptation. It's been common practice, for example, for lawmakers to slip earmarks that have not been considered by either chamber into conference reports at the last minute. Senate Rules Committee Chairman Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have endorsed a plan by Coburn and McCain that would prohibit the Senate from considering any provision in a conference report that had not been part of a House or Senate bill.
Meanwhile, McCain and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., have proposed a requirement that earmarks be placed in the text of legislation rather than in the committee reports that accompany bills. Under current practice, committee reports direct federal departments and agencies to spend money on particular earmarks -- and the agencies have learned that congressional appropriators will retaliate if their instructions aren't followed.
Requiring earmarked projects to be part of actual legislation would make it easier for legislators to challenge them by offering amendments. It also would, however, require the president to approve every earmark -- even the porky ones. The president does not sign committee reports, so he does not now directly approve earmarks. He does sign bills. Including earmarks in legislation also would preclude federal departments from attempting to "reprogram" earmarked money, as they sometimes do.
Presidents have railed against earmarks in the past, to little avail. President Carter found his entire agenda threatened because he vowed to ignore designations for water projects. This year, Bush's budget simply states that there is a public perception that earmarks are out of control and that he will work with Congress to reform the process. He also asks lawmakers to restore the line-item veto, which Congress granted to President Clinton in 1996 but the Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional.
Rep. Lewis has his own set of recommendations. He would like to sharply limit the number of earmarks that members can submit. (The House Appropriations Committee received almost 35,000 requests last year.) He wants to require that each request be submitted in writing and included in the Congressional Record. Lewis also wants to ensure that the earmark rules apply to other committees. The Appropriations Committee is not the only panel that deals with earmarks. The huge transportation reauthorization bill contained thousands of earmarks, and tax bills often include targeted tax breaks that some consider to be earmarks.
Flake scoffs at those proposals. "The problem isn't an unwillingness by members to identify themselves with their earmarks -- just read their press releases -- it's the inability of any other members to challenge the spending."Short of reform legislation, critics hope that publicity will be sufficient to embarrass porky congressmen. In recent years, McCain and Flake have begun issuing statements to highlight what they consider to be egregious earmarks. But given the choice between being embarrassed or disappointing the folks back home, members of Congress generally like to keep their constituents happy.
Lewis disputes the contention that a huge scandal lurks behind the earmarking process. "You can't protect yourself from people who are dishonest," he said, referring to Cunningham. "Because one member of Congress took a bribe doesn't mean that every member of Congress is a crook."
One House Republican aide pointed out that while the Cunningham case involves earmarks, the much broader Abramoff scandal doesn't center on appropriations bills. Dyer predicts that at the end of the day, Congress will limit the number of earmarks in funding bills and will take some action to require members to identify themselves with specific project requests. But the University of Florida's Dodd said he worries that imposing arbitrary limits on earmarks would do more harm than good; sometimes, he said, earmarks are the best way to address a local problem.
Presumably, if you take the course offered by TheCapitol.Net, you'll learn how to get an earmark without having to bribe someone. If you successfully complete the class, you can earn 0.6 continuing education credits from Virginia's George Mason University. And who knows? If you convince someone in the Virginia delegation to earmark federal funds for a new building on campus, maybe they'll give you a full credit.
Posted by at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)
|
Reprinted with permission from the Feb. 11, 2006, issue of National Journal magazine.
By Peter Cohn
"Earmarks have become the currency of corruption," Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., wrote to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., after the guilty pleas of ex-Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, R-Calif., and lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "We can't allow this to continue."
But the road to earmark reform is potholed with definitional booby traps. Take these examples: $1.7 million to rehabilitate historic buildings at White Grass Dude Ranch in Grand Teton National Park, Wyo.; more than $1.5 billion to support "ultra-deepwater" drilling, largely directed to the Texas Energy Center in Sugar Land, Texas; a $44 million break from import duties for makers of ceiling fans, spearheaded by hardware mega-chain Home Depot.
All of the above could be considered earmarks, yet none qualify under the usual definition -- that is, a project inserted into an appropriations bill by a member of Congress. The dude-ranch funding, for example, was not a request from the Wyoming congressional delegation but a line item in the White House's 2006 National Park Service budget.
"What's an earmark? If there's a ship in there the administration wants, is that an earmark?" asked Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H. "The definition of how you get into this is going to be difficult."
Veterans of the House and Senate Appropriations committees say that critics are looking in the wrong places. "The earmarks people are talking about are $5 and $10. The real money is in the tax bills or the mandatory spending bills" such as the $286 billion highway bill enacted last year, said James Dyer, who served for nearly a decade as Republican staff director for the House Appropriations Committee.
The ceiling-fan provision, for example, was stuffed into a $140 billion 2004 tax bill designed to bring the United States into compliance with a World Trade Organization ruling. The offshore-drilling money was included in last year's $80 billion energy bill.
Even within traditional congressional appropriations, the definitional problem for anti-"pork" crusaders remains. Gregg, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, declares that he has included no earmarks in his spending bills since his panel was created in 2003. But the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service counted nine earmarks worth $33 million in the $30.6 billion 2005 Homeland Security appropriations bill. The advocacy group Citizens Against Government Waste found 64 earmarks costing $1.72 billion in the same measure.
"One of the principal challenges to measuring earmarks in appropriation bills is defining the term and applying it consistently," CRS said in a January 26 report. "There is not a single definition of the term 'earmark' accepted by all practitioners and observers of the appropriations process, nor is there a standard earmark practice across all appropriation bills."
The Office of Management and Budget considers an item an earmark if it was not in the president's budget request or if Congress added it to proposals in the president's budget.
Citizens Against Government Waste uses similar criteria, but it also includes project funding that is not authorized in prior law. Rival watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense pulls in line-item funding requests in the president's budget, such as the Army Corps of Engineers' water projects.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has developed his own definition, which includes items added to a conference report that were not in either the House or Senate version of a bill and provisions that transfer or dispose of federal property in contravention of existing law.
Another challenge is that earmarks can turn up in places that generally don't get attention even from critics. The CRS classifies most of the annual foreign-aid spending bill as earmarked, divided into "hard" earmarks (spending limited to a particular nation or institution) and "soft" earmarks (language urging or recommending where money should be spent). According to CRS, annual military and economic aid for Israel and Egypt can be considered an earmark. All told, between both hard and soft earmarks, CRS concludes, 73 percent of the $19.8 billion 2005 foreign-operations bill was earmarked.
Then there are policy riders, targeted to specific industries or interests, which often appear in legislation late at night, just before a final floor vote. House Appropriations Committee ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., called it a "blatantly abusive power play" when Republican leaders inserted 40-plus pages of legislation shielding vaccine makers from liability into the 2006 Defense appropriations bill, after House and Senate negotiators had already signed off on a final package.
Dyer, who now works as a lobbyist with Clark and Weinstock, has his own definition of an earmark. "An earmark is something that flows into 434 congressional districts and not yours. When it comes into your district," he said, "it's a federal investment in jobs and education."
Posted by at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)
|
Reprinted with permission from the June 25, 2005, issue of National Journal magazine.
By K. Daniel Glover
This year's debate over transportation spending may be decided by presidential veto -- or by Congress's override of the veto threatened by President Bush. If such a battle over roads ensues, it will not be the first. Andrew Jackson vetoed the Maysville Road bill in 1830, and he killed it for reasons similar to those underlying opposition to the current measure: concerns about federal spending in general and federal aid for "local" infrastructure projects in particular.
This year's highway bill includes earmarks for thousands of such projects -- and has raised complaints about the costs. But Jackson's veto remains one of the most noteworthy in U.S. history, not only because it strengthened presidential prerogative but also because it deterred lawmakers from funneling money back to their states. "It stopped 'internal improvements' for quite some time," said historian Robert V. Remini, who has authored numerous books on Andrew Jackson.
The conflict over the Maysville Road pitted the president and two future presidents, Martin Van Buren and James Polk, against a wannabe president, Henry Clay, and it was rooted in the nation's long-standing division over whether Congress possessed the authority to fund roads, canals, and other internal improvements. Many leaders of the early Republic, including Presidents James Madison and James Monroe, argued that the Constitution reserved that power to the states. But Clay, whose political career included stints in the House and Senate, advocated such expenditures as part of his "American System" for promoting national progress and unity.
Clay was not in Congress when the Maysville Road bill was debated, but his ally and fellow Kentuckian, Robert Letcher, wrote the House measure. The road was to start at Maysville, Ky., along the Ohio River and run south to Lexington. The legislation authorized spending $150,000 to buy stock in the company that was building the road.
When the House began debate in April 1830, Letcher described the measure as "some minor bill that would occupy but little time." He characterized the road as "a national work," because it was one piece of a larger road plan designed to run from Zanesville, Ohio, to Florence, Ala. He also argued that the road would "more than compensate" the government for its investment by reducing the cost of transporting mail through Kentucky.
Letcher's optimism proved naive, however. Reps. Thomas Foster and Charles Haynes of Georgia challenged the bill, with Foster attacking Letcher's characterization of the road as national because it would be well traveled and impassable in certain seasons. "If these are the characteristics of a national road," Foster said, "our country abounds with them."
Then-Rep. Polk, a Democrat from Tennessee like Jackson, offered the most vigorous opposition, even though the road eventually was supposed to run through his state. Polk said that the bill would undermine efforts to pay the public debt, and he ridiculed the American System as a failed philosophy that had led to votes for "every proposition that comes before us."
"Each gentleman here who has a road or a canal, or expects one in his section of country, votes for every other, however useless it may be, for the purpose of keeping up the alliance, so that all others may, in like manner, support his favorite project when it comes up. And this is what you call a system," Polk scoffed.
Opponents of the Maysville Road forced the House to debate the legislation for three days, but Clay's "system" ultimately prevailed. The chamber passed the bill on a 102-86 vote, and the Senate soon sent it to Jackson.
In his May 27 veto message -- urged and drafted by then-Secretary of State Van Buren -- Jackson restated the principle that such projects must be "general, not local, national, not state," and said even then that the spending must be fiscally responsible. "He was really a man who wanted to preserve the rights of the states" to do such work, Remini said.
The House listened to the veto message "with great attention," according to the congressional journal, and lawmakers convened the next day to try to override it. The debate featured pointed attacks on Jackson's motives, as well as spirited defenses of his character and his right to wield the veto pen in such circumstances. Although few votes changed from the original House tally, the 96-90 vote fell far short of the two-thirds necessary to override the veto.
Jackson later vetoed another road bill and "pocket vetoed" measures related to canal and lighthouse construction after Congress adjourned. While Clay hoped that the Maysville Road veto would help him defeat Jackson in the 1832 presidential election, Old Hickory's stance boosted his popularity in key regions and helped catapult him to another victory.
Remini said the backlash against federally funded internal improvements lasted until the Civil War era. But in light of the number of projects planned under the current transportation bill, friends of public works like Rep. Joel Sutherland of Pennsylvania, who in 1830 predicted a "slow but certain process by which the system of improvements would universally prevail," won in the long run.
Posted by at 11:31 AM | Comments (1)
|
A day before conservative bloggers gathered for CPAC 2006 in Washington this week, their liberal counterparts were busy touting a rally of "fighting Dems" in the capital city.
The phrase describes the collection of military veterans who are running for Congress as Democrats. The fighting Dems have their own Web page, and they are regularly featured at Air America and Daily Kos. They also are known by other monikers, including "Band of Brothers," "Capitol Brigade" and "Security Dems." Their ranks currently total 60 candidates in 56 races.
Forty of them stormed Washington this week for a rally in defense of Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who last year became a focal point of sometimes-vitriolic Republican criticism when he called for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
Clark Community Network, an offshoot of the WesPAC: Securing America group founded by 2004 presidential candidate (and former Army general) Wesley Clark, was among the blogs to take note of the event. "The Democrats gathered in Washington vowed to 'take the Hill,'" Howard Park wrote after the morning rally. "If they are [to be] successful, there must be some surprises in November among the candidates who are fighting, virtually alone, without help from the powers that be in the Democratic leadership."
The Democratic National Committee also posted commentary and photos about the event. Other blogs covering the event and the fighting Dems phenomenon included Backbone Minnesota, Danger Democrats, DemNotes, James Patrick's Blog, SoapBlox Colorado and Swing State Project.
Not long after the event, one of the fighting Dems ended his bid for Congress. Rather than seek the seat in Pennsylvania's 7th District, Bryan Lentz has decided instead to run for a seat in the state House. Another veteran, one of higher rank, joined the race last week: former three-star Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr.
Posted by at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)
|
The American Conservative Union was one of the first organizations to invite bloggers to cover an event in Washington. The event was last year's Conservative Political Action Conference.
CPAC 2006 was held this week, and bloggers were back again. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit spoke at the event and promoted his forthcoming book, An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths. Blogger Michelle Malkin also was there to promote her recent book, Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. And several "credentialed" bloggers covered the event.
The blogs covering the event included:
-- The American Mind;
-- Anchor Rising;
-- Ankle Biting Pundits;
-- The Autonomist;
-- La Shawn Barber;
-- Cam Edwards;
-- Girl on the Right;
-- HughHewitt.com;
-- JunkYardBlog;
-- Little Miss Attila;
-- Metroblogging DC;
-- A North American Patriot;
-- The Right Angle;
-- Save the GOP;
-- The Shape of Days;
Both this year and last, bloggers have worked themselves into a frenzy over happenings at the conference.
Last year, some of them were irked at John Fund of The Wall Street Journal for invading the bloggers' corner and, in their minds, showing "complete disrespect" to the bloggers. This year, some bloggers, as well as conservatives at the event, are ticked at columnist Ann Coulter for calling Muslims "ragheads" in a speech. Barber, however, thinks its "much ado about nothing."
Posted by at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)
|
The National Association of Manufacturers and the Edelman public relations firm will host a blog conference Feb. 15. The event will cover the basics of blogging, as well as information on online monitoring and research.
Check the Manufacturers' Blog for details. "Blogger-in-chief" Pat Cleary hosted a similar event for NAM members last fall, and the end result was the start of at least one blog: Salt Sensibility, which is published by the Salt Institute.
UPDATE: The agenda for the conference is available now. Speakers will include National Journal's own Bill Beutler of The Blogometer, Pat Cleary of ShopFloor (the new monikor for the Manufacturers' Blog), and Mike Krempasky of Edelman and RedState, among others.
Posted by at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)
|
Jimmy Carter As Embittered Lefty Blogger
The blogosphere is abuzz with chatter about yesterday's funeral for civil rights activist Coretta Scott King. Conservatives decried the event as a political rally, while liberals played the race card.
But one of the most biting lines in the blogosphere came from Bull Moose Marshall Wittmann, who took former President Jimmy Carter to task for his comments at the funeral. Wittmann clearly expected better of an ex-president who has earned a reputation for great humanitarian works since leaving the White House.
"President Carter spoke as if he were an embittered diarist on a well-known, left-wing blog site," Wittmann wrote. Zing!
UPDATE: Three Democrats in the House offered their take on King's funeral at The Huffington Post: Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.
UPDATE II: Rep. Major Owen of New York joined the ranks of Democrats at The Huffington Post commenting on King's funeral. He argued that the speakers found a "reasonable balance" in their attempt at somber commemoration and political revitalization.
UPDATE III: Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., also has posted an entry at The Huffington Post. She believes King would have approved of the "critical remarks" at the funeral.
King "not only talked the talk but walked the walk," Watson wrote. "She knew better than most that it is long past time for America to begin anew the dialog and to walk the walk. It's exactly the message that President Bush needed to hear in Atlanta and needs to hear again and again."
Posted by at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)
|
Sen. Evan Bayh is itching for a political war over security issues with President Bush and the Republican Party, and yesterday, The Huffington Post was his weapon of choice.
The Indiana Democrat has been talking about security and politics ever since White House adviser Karl Rove urged Republicans to make the 2006 elections a referendum on which party is best suited to keep the country secure. The strategy worked for the GOP in 2002 and 2004, and Rove senses victory for his party again.
Bayh disagrees -- and he is working hard to convince his fellow Democrats that their party is just as strong when it comes to national security as it is on domestic issues. "George W. Bush's saying he wants the 2006 election to be about national security is like Herbert Hoover proudly claiming that the 1930 election should be a referendum on the economy," Bayh wrote. "And if the Democratic Party can get its national security act together, the result should be the same."
Posted by at 09:12 PM | Comments (0)
|
Bloggers In The Corridors Of Power
Bloggers have made their presence known in various corridors of Washington power over the past several days -- from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon and the White House. One conservative blogger's name was even floated (in a friendly and unofficial forum, mind you) as a potential judicial nominee.
The most noteworthy episode, or at least the one that generated the biggest response among his fellow bloggers, pitted Paul Mirengoff of Power Line against a couple of senators.
Mirengoff attended a Capitol Hill press conference where Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts addressed a domestic wiretapping program by the National Security Agency. The Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Durbin and Kennedy are members, held a critical hearing on the program this week, and Mirengoff attended along with filmmaker Andrew Marcus of Pajamas Media, an online service that includes blogs.
Mirengoff, a lawyer, was not impressed by either Kennedy, who "was rehearsing his current talking point that the administration has impaired our security by operating behind the back of Congress," or by Durbin, who "presented the usual Democratic line, which assumes that the the intercept program violates [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] and proceeds from there."
As Mirengoff has written about the NSA wiretaps regularly since late last year, he was well-prepared to grill the senators about their views.
Tapscott's Copy Desk has the scoop on what happened, as well as commentary about what the "Mirengoff Miracle" could mean for the future. "It is exactly the kind of aggressive, don't-let'em-off-the-hook questioning by Mirengoff that I have long lamented as being a thing of the past among establishment media journalists," Mark Tapscott wrote. "They are either afraid to ask the tough questions, or they don't know the tough questions. So come on up to Capitol Hill, bloggers!"
A few days earlier, a horde of bloggers swarmed against the U.S. Army in defense of one of their own, milblogger Michael Yon, to help him fight a copyright battle.
The technical firepower of the U.S. military may be enough to "shock and awe" countries like Iraq. But when it came to the war of words over Yon's photograph of a U.S. soldier cradling a wounded Iraqi girl, the rhetorical firepower of angry bloggers proved to be too much for Pentagon brass.
Yon prevailed, and bloggers claimed victory. Pundit Review Radio has the details, including a list of the blogs that took up arms.
At Talking Points Memo, meanwhile, Joshua Micah Marshall unearthed evidence that identifies White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan as a TPM reader.
In the daily press briefing, McClellan cited "some story" about the mysterious disappearance of photographs of President Bush with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The story was published at TPM, though McClellan apparently got his facts wrong when citing it.
And finally, Instapundit reader Glenn Bass, noting the number of vacancies on the federal bench, suggested Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy for an appeals court slot.
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds isn't so sure Volokh could "give up blogging for the bench." I'm even less convinced that Volokh, or any blogger with a volatile paper trail, will ever be nominated as a judge, let alone confirmed.
Posted by at 07:13 AM | Comments (0)
|
Two Takes On John Bolton
On Sunday, TPMCafe and The Washington Note jointly launched a new blog focused on John Bolton. Bolton Watch casts a wary eye on the "pugnacious nationalist" in his role as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Yesterday, Bolton and Iran investigator Kenneth Timmerman were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for their role in exposing Iran's secret nuclear weapons.
Life is funny that way sometimes.
Posted by at 09:23 PM | Comments (0)
|
Jim Geraghty, a blogger for National Review Online (and a former co-worker of mine at the now-defunct VoxCap.com), authored a piece in The Washington Times yesterday about blog power from the left and the right.
The bottom line of his column: Conservative blogs are good for the Republican Party, but liberal blogs are bad for the Democratic Party.
Jim made the case by highlighting the reaction of bloggers to the two most recent Supreme Court nominations -- the withdrawn nomination of Harriet Miers and the successful confirmation of Samuel Alito. He argued that conservative blogs helped prevent President Bush from making a mistake with the Miers nomination. On the other hand, he said, Democrats embarrassed themselves by embracing the liberal bloggers who advocated the unsuccessful filibuster of Alito's nomination.
"In the Miers case," Jim wrote, "it could be argued that bloggers on the right saved the president from making a critical mistake, and nudged him onto the path that ultimately led to [an] enormously significant part of his presidential legacy. But bloggers on the left are pushing their party into a difficult wilderness. ... Republicans can find strength and success by listening to their like-minded bloggers; Democrats can find strength and success by ignoring theirs."
The column prompted a curious retort from John Aravosis of Americablog.
Aravosis actually opposed a filibuster of Alito for much the same reasons Jim noted in his column. "[I]t is bad politics, and dangerous," Aravosis argued. But he dismissed the column, and without linking to it, on the grounds that it appeared in the Times -- "a Republican Party rag, yellow journalism at its best."
"If the Moonie paper is suggesting the Democrats run from the blogs," Aravosis wrote, "then it's because the Moonie paper thinks the blogs are an incredible asset to the Democratic Party and pose an incredible danger to the Republicans."
Posted by at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)
|
In The Blog's-Eye: The Kings (And Queen) Of Pork
The Truth Laid Bear, one of the blogs behind the PorkBusters campaign to curtail earmarks by lawmakers in federal spending bills, has added a feature to the effort: a Pork Hall of Shame.
Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican most closely associated with the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," leads the early polling. But West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, the senator long known as the "King of Pork," is not far behind. As of tonight, Stevens has 23 votes to Byrd's 21.
Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., is the only female member of Congress currently in the running. She has five positive votes and one negative vote.
The other lawmakers who have received votes so far are: Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., (10 votes); Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska (5 votes); Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (4 votes); Reps. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., and John Murtha, D- Pa. (2 votes each); and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. (1 vote).
Posted by at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)
|
As the creator of the blog yoco: College Basketball and a columnist for FoxSports.com, Yoni Cohen knows all about the full-court press. In his new job with Rep. Pete (Fortney) Stark, Cohen will learn about another kind of press -- the one that operates inside the Beltway.
CongressDaily reports that Cohen is the new press secretary to Stark, D-Calif. Although sports has been one of his primary interests of late, Cohen is a political junkie, too. He co-founded Generation Dean, the blog that linked then-Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean to youthful field operatives.
There's no word yet on whether Stark will take advantage of Cohen's talents and start a blog. But one one of Stark's Democratic House colleagues, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, now has a blog on his congressional site.
Posted by at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
|
A Warning About Blogger Conference Calls
Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation has participated in numerous conference calls as a blogger at The Washington Note, which he publishes independently of the foundation, and he finds them both fascinating and educational. But he sees some "landmines" in the calls, which are becoming increasingly popular with members of Congress.
I addressed the topic here a few weeks ago, after Republicans welcomed a handful of bloggers into the Beltway inner circle. Clemons' critique of the blog calls is worth reading, too, because he has the perspective of a Democratic blogger who has been a regular participant -- and one who has been criticized by some like-minded bloggers for revealing too much from one call with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
The money quote: "[I]t seems increasingly clear to me that those on the call -- both the member of Congress and the bloggers -- are engaged in an informal collusion of interests."
And this section is worth reprinting in its entirety:
I think it's fine that senators or House members annoint some "favored bloggers" as ones they want to reach out to, but the bloggers have an obligation to maintain some distance and objectivity in the process. Otherwise, the blogs will be seen as mouthpieces and noise machines of that member's operation, and as part of the "explicit" operation of a political organization.Last night, I heard a disturbing rumor that I have not confirmed ... that there has been one organizer of liberal blogger conference calls who imposed a "publish or perish" rule requiring all participants in a call to write about that call, and favorably. This person apparently required bloggers on the call to report and write about the meeting with some respective member of Congress or not be invited back in the future.
Why would anyone impose such a rule? Why would a senator or representative and his or her staff put the member in a position of making it look like they are trading access for manufactured Web press? If this rumor is true, then bloggers are being put in the position of being "agents" of that member -- and there are serious legal consequences to that.
The bigger issue for me with the blogger conference calls is the sycophancy that seems to be developing in these meetings -- and the unwritten norm that those bloggers on the call are the running dogs for that particular senator. There is clearly a "community" of interests where the line between the journalistic and reporting objectives of the blogger and the interests of the senator or representative are becoming practically invisible.
One side note: Clemons has heard that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat considered to be a potential presidential candidate in 2008, will not do blog calls.
Read the whole entry. It's chock-full of great insights.
UPDATE: Matt Stoller of MyDD has more thoughts on blog calls and blogger ethics. His is an influential voice in the blogosphere, so I'm glad to hear him broaching the subject. Hopefully more bloggers will join the conversation.
Posted by at 04:05 PM | Comments (6)
|
Praise And Prejudice For Majority Leader Boehner
House Republicans elected John Boehner of Ohio as their majority leader yesterday, and his upset victory over Roy Blunt of Missouri was greeted with a round of cautious Republican praise and predictable Democratic prejudice in the blogosphere.
Boehner won the battle by a vote of 122-109. The victory came on a second ballot conducted after the third candidate, John Shadegg of Arizona, dropped out of the race.
Shadegg had been the favorite of a coalition of center-right bloggers, and Augustine, a blogger at RedState, dubbed Shadegg the "kingmaker" in the race. "Shadegg didn't have enough support to win -- one wonders if an earlier entry would've changed that -- but he did have enough support to ensure that the party went in a different direction than they would under the old leadership," Augustine said. "For that, he deserves our gratitude."
Bloggers also patted themselves on the back for their role in the race. One writer at RedState cited Blunt as the latest victim of an active and influential blogosphere, lumping him in with the likes of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and withrawn Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers.
"Without John Shadegg, Congressman Blunt would be Leader Blunt," he wrote. "Without conservative blogs pointing out the gaping chasm between public and private committments and political sanity, John Shadegg very possibly does not draw 40 votes."
Though many Republican bloggers were less enamored with Boehner than Shadegg, they rallied behind him after the vote -- but cautiously. Instapundit Glenn Reynolds referred to Boehner as "The Diet Coke of reform. One calorie -- not reformist enough!" And Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters called Boehner "The Middle Choice."
Pejman Yousefzadeh of RedState added that Boehner had better remember both Shadegg and the bloggers who helped him win the race. "[H]e will need to understand that those who are his benefactors have done him a favor not just through the delivery of votes but, more importantly, through the generation of ideas," Yousefzadeh said.
GOP Bloggers, Power Line, The QandO Blog and The Truth Laid Bear are among the other center-right blogs who have commented on the election. Pat Cleary of the Manufacturers' Blog also explained why the National Association of Manufacturers is behind Boehner, as it would have been either of the other two candidates.
Democrats, on the other hand, no doubt would have found reasons to criticize anyone Republicans chose as their next leader. They certainly were quick to highlight Boehner's perceived flaws, with two leading liberal bloggers going so far as to publicize "Ten Things Every American Jew Should Know About John Boehner."
To Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos Boehner's election represents the kind of corruption he has come to expect of the Republican Party. "So keep an eye out on stories that pretend Boehner's election means some sort of 'cleaning house,'" Moulitsas warned. "[Republicans] got a corrupt Ohioan, part of the corrupt Ohio Republican Party, to head the corrupt Republican caucus in the House."
Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo also noted Boehner's ethical scars, including the episode that had Boehner, a smoker, distributing checks from the tobacco industry on the House floor. But then Marshall resurrected the story of a Democratic lawmaker linked to an eavesdropping case involving Boehner's cell phone -- a curious move considering that a fellow liberal blogger, John Aravosis of Americablog, is the catalyst behind a push for cell-phone privacy.
At Talk Left, Jeralyn Merritt focused on Boehner's voting record as reason to worry about his leadership. She highlighted his votes on religious issues, abortion, the war on drugs and immigration, and she found only "one admirable vote": his support for language to require DNA testing before all federal executions.
The Stakeholder, meanwhile, posted a lengthy entry with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's many gripes against Boehner.
Posted by at 06:58 AM | Comments (0)
|
Candidate Blogs: Kentucky
Kentuckians who want to get to know their congressional candidates might have to do it someplace other than the blogosphere. Of the 19 people who filed to run for Congress in the Bluegrass State this year, only one, Democratic challenger Mike Weaver in the 2nd District, has a blog.
On the positive side, that's one more blog than candidates in neighboring West Virginia. Plus political junkies in Kentucky have a decent selection of non-candidate blogs to keep them well-informed. Those blogs include:
-- BlueGrassRoots;
-- The Bluegrass Democrat;
-- Bluegrass Report;
-- The Bridge;
-- Change for Kentucky;
-- Conservative Edge;
-- Draft Ken Lucas, which suceeded in its missions of recruiting the former congressman to run again in the 4th District;
-- The Kentucky Democrat;
-- Kentucky Politics Blog;
-- Kentucky Progress;
-- And N. Ky. Politics.
Wonkier readers also might want to check out The Bluegrass Policy Blog, a work of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions.
This is the fourth installment of my running list of candidate blogs. In addition to West Virginia, the others are Illinois and Texas. If you are aware of blogs or diaries that I have missed, please shoot me an e-mail at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by at 07:44 PM | Comments (0)
|
The days of the canned minority response to presidential State of the Union addresses may be numbered thanks to the blogosphere.
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine gave the official Democratic response to Bush's speech on Tuesday. But the better, more conversational commentary was found on three blogs that welcomed several Democratic lawmakers: The Huffington Post, The Stakeholder and TPMCafe.
The Huffington Post had the biggest cast of blawgmakers. The dozen who post-blogged the speech included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
The other Huffington Post bloggers were:
-- Rep. John Conyers of Michigan;
-- Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin;
-- Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey;
-- Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. John Tierney of Massachusetts;
-- Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington;
-- Reps. George Miller and Hilda Solis of California;
-- Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania;
-- And Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York.
Some of the lawmakers did double duty in the blogosphere. In addition to blogging at The Huffington Post, for instance, Holt cross-posted a separate entry at The Stakeholder, which is the blog of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and at TPMCafe. Conyers also posted multiple entries at The Stakeholder.
Others who posted at the DCCC blog included McDermott and Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington. And Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey authored multiple entries that covered everything from education and crime to the response to Hurricane Katrina. His responses are here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
UPDATE: Bob Burnett, a blogger at The Huffington Post and one of the founding executives of Cisco Systems, said Kaine fell prey to "the weenie effect" with his response to Bush's speech. "Kaine may be a dynamo as governor of Virginia," Burnett said, "but as the national spokesman for the Democratic Party he was instant weenie."
Posted by at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)
|
Soon after Reps. Roy Blunt of Missouri, John Boehner of Ohio and John Shadegg of Arizona announced their bids to become majority leader, Beltway Blogroll requested e-mail interviews with all three lawmakers. Each of them eventually agreed to participate, and the questions were e-mailed to their offices.
However, Blunt, the frontrunner in the race, was the only one to return his answers by yesterday, and the vote for majority leader is this afternoon. A spokesman for Shadegg said yesterday that the lawmaker would not be able to answer the questions because of his schedule; Boehner's spokesman did not return calls or e-mails yesterday or today about the status of the e-mail interview.
The inability to finalize the Boehner and Shadegg interviews seems worth noting here for two reasons: 1) I mentioned the expected interviews when I posted the Q&A with Blunt on Tuesday, and 2) some blog supporters of Shadegg have made an issue of Blunt not answering questions posed by the Republican Study Committee and limiting questions in a conference call with bloggers.
Interested readers can see the questions I sent to Boehner and Shadegg in the extended entry.
Questions for Boehner
As a House freshman, you were part of the "Gang of Seven" Republicans who made a name for themselves by taking on the establishment amid congressional scandals. Fifteen years later, you are seeking a slot at the top of that establishment amid another major scandal. How would your experiences between those bookends of your House career shape your work as majority leader?
What impact do you expect the current scandal to have within Congress? What lobbying reforms would you advocate as majority leader?
What involvement have you had with GOP's "K Street Project," and what would become of it under a Boehner majority leadership?
What are your thoughts on some of the "institutional reforms" that have been proposed? Specifically we are thinking about the use of conference reports to include/exclude language, late-night votes and bills going to the floor that have not been viewed by members.
Given the political importance of spending earmarks to members, how much can you really curb them? And will you deny them (take them out of bills) to the appropriators who put them in?
What would your legislative priorities be as majority leader in 2006?
You played a key role in writing the No Child Left Behind Act, a law that has faced consistent criticism from some corners. In hindsight, what is your assessment of the law? As majority leader, would you push for any changes in the law? Why or why not?
As a lead sponsor of the 27th Amendment, which bans lawmakers from increasing their pay during their current term, what is your view of the recent practice of annual, automatic cost-of-living adjustments for members of Congress? Have you accepted those raises, and if so, why? Would you push legislation to end that practice and to require up-or-down votes on pay raises?
In the mid-1990s, you were involved in a controversy surrounding the taping of one of your mobile telephone conversations. Cellular privacy is back in the news again now, with reports that people's calling records can be purchased easily online. Looking back on your own experience, what would you advocate as majority leader to address the current concerns?
What is your view of the controversy over eavesdropping on Americans? As majority leader, would you seek changes in the law to limit such activities?
What are your political priorities as a leader of the Republican Party headed into a mid-term election? If elected, what 3-4 specific ideas for increasing the GOP majority would you offer to National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds?
What role should moderates play in the Republican Conference?
In National Journal magazine, I recently wrote a piece on the growing influence of blogs within Washington. What is your assessment of their influence? Are they like a virtual Gang of Seven, always agitating for reform, and is that a good thing?
What blogs do you read regularly? How would you reach out to bloggers as majority leader? Would you start a blog as majority leader? If so, how would you use it? If not, why not?
Questions for Shadegg
Washington is embroiled in a lobbying scandal right now. What impact do you expect that to have within Congress and on Republicans in the House in particular? What electoral impact will the scandal have? In other words, would your reign as majority leader be a short one?
Are there too many lobbyists in Washington? Do they have too much influence on Capitol Hill? What lobbying reforms would you advocate as majority leader?
What involvement have you had with the GOP's "K Street Project," and what would become of it under a Shadegg majority leadership?
What are your thoughts on some of the "institutional reforms" that have been proposed? Specifically what about the use of conference reports to include/exclude language, late-night votes, votes that are held open well beyond the normal time, and bills going to the floor that have not been viewed by members?
As a newcomer to the House, you took numerous stands against the GOP leadership on issues like a balanced budget, domestic spending and defense spending. Those stances reportedly cost you a seat on the Ways and Means Committee in 1997. As majority leader, how would you react to Republicans who bucked the leadership line? Should they lose or be denied committee chairmanships or seats?
Given the political importance of spending earmarks to members, how much can you really curb them? And will you deny them (take them out of bills) to the appropriators who put them in?
Your position on the Medicare bill in 2003 has sparked some criticism, with one liberal blogger saying you were "for the Medicare boondoggle before [you were] against it." Could you explain what your position was back then and where you stand on the prescription drug benefit now? Should it be altered or repealed, and if so, how?
What would your legislative priorities be as majority leader in 2006?
What is your view of the recent practice of annual, automatic cost-of-living adjustments for members of Congress? Have you accepted those raises, and if so, why? Would you push legislation to end that practice and to require up-or-down votes on pay raises?
What is your view of the controversy over eavesdropping on Americans? As majority leader, would you seek changes in the law to limit such activities?
Cellular privacy is in the news, with reports that people's calling records can be purchased easily online. What would you advocate as majority leader to address privacy concerns involving that practice?
What are your political priorities as a leader of the Republican Party headed into a mid-term election? If elected as majority leader, what 3-4 specific ideas for increasing the GOP majority would you offer to National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds?
As the candidate that many people consider the most conservative in the race, what is your view on the role of moderates in the caucus, and what kind of relationship do you have with them? Has the leadership given too much ground to moderates in the past?
In National Journal magazine, I had a recent piece on the growing influence of blogs within Washington. What is your assessment of their influence?
You have been the favorite leadership candidate of conservative bloggers. What impact, if any, have they had on helping him win support in the Republican caucus? Has their interest in the race changed anyone's mind?
What blogs do you read regularly? How would you reach out to bloggers as majority leader? Would you start a blog as majority leader? If so, how would you use it? If not, why not?
Posted by at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
|
RedState's Call For A Capitol Hill Blog
RedState moved its group blog to a .com online address at the start of the year, and the site's next move, at least figuratively, will be to Capitol Hill.
Co-founder Mike Krempasky announced yesterday that part of RedState's ongoing redesign includes creating satellite sites like the existing Confirm Them blog for judicial nominations. Assuming that enough people answer Krempasky's call for volunteers, one of those new sites will offer an inside look at Congress.
"[H]ere's the pitch: Do you work on Capitol Hill? Would you like an outlet? Do you like phrases like 'current inflationary adjustment' and 'they're not going to whip this vote as a favor to Chairman X'? Send me an e-mail. Yes, you have to identify yourself to the directors of RedState -- but confidentiality is a required non-negotiable. We'll have a pretty slick process in place to take reports from the Hill and scrub them into a form that protects the writers."
Media observer Mark Tapscott of the Heritage Foundation praised the effort and said it is "an important step forward in the slowly developing capacity of the blogosphere to report what is going on in Congress." But he also sees the potential for problems.
"[I]t could prove to be a useless repository of hoary bromides about how great are our representatives, or a short-lived career killer for some imprudent young aides," he wrote at Tapscott's Copy Desk. "More likely in my judgement is this new Hill blog will go through several iterations before eventually becoming an important inside source for getting candid accounts of who did what to whom and why."
Posted by at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)
|
My home state of West Virginia is indeed "almost heaven." But to get there, you'll have to take the country roads I love so much because the information highway sure ain't gonna get you there.
When it comes to technology, the great Mountain State provides plenty of proof that the "digital divide" is still wide in some parts of America. The latest evidence: West Virginia's candidate filings were finalized Saturday, and as of this week, not a single congressional candidate in the state has a blog. In fact, some of them, including incumbent members of Congress, don't even have campaign sites yet.
There is a Hiram Lewis for U.S. Senate blog run independently by one of Lewis' fans. Lewis, however, isn't even the hot name in the bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd. Millionaire businessman John Raese gets that nod -- and he doesn't have a campaign site.
Granted, Raese is a latecomer to the contest, but I can't say his lack of a Web presence surprises me. I once worked for the Dominion Post, one of the media properties in Morgantown owned by the Raese family. The newspaper is so behind the times that its Web site is just a promotional tool for the dead-tree edition and a subscription-based electronic edition.
The paper should take a cue from Don Surber, the Charleston Daily Mail columnist who also has a blog. (Full disclosure: I also interned one summer at the Daily Mail.)
Hopefully, a few candidates (and state media outlets) will awaken to the potential of blogging before Campaign 2006 is over.
This is the third installment of my running list of candidate blogs. The first two were Illinois and Texas. If you are aware of blogs or diaries that I have missed, please shoot me an e-mail at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)
|
Marc Fisher, a columnist at The Washington Post, takes a a critical look at political blogs in the February/March issue of American Journalism Review.
While acknowledging that such blogs are capable of some "aggressive and original reporting," he also said some of them serve as agents of "spin" and "stealth identities" for political operatives. "The new political blogs sometimes look and act like purveyors of journalism, but at least as often, they play the roles of propagandist, gossip, campaign clubhouse and vehicle for personal attacks," Fisher wrote.
The article focuses on Virginia, a state that Fisher said had more than 50 blogs commenting on last year's gubernatorial campaign. "Virginia's blog roll included an elected county prosecutor, a former candidate for the legislature, several newspaper reporters, a lobbyist, a paid operative from Dean's former campaign and a 14-year-old boy, who everyone agreed was among the best of the bunch," Fisher said. And he argued that the bloggers had an impact on the race -- enough that candidates Jerry Kilgore and now-Gov. Tim Kaine granted them special access.
Political blogs are still in their "toddler phase," Fisher said. He divided them into three categories -- soap-opera characters, secret society/budding fraternity brothers, and envelope-pushers -- and "journalists" was not one of them.
Fisher's conclusion: "Blogs -- an amorphous mix of opinion and fact, grassroots and establishment that is already changing the dynamics of politics in the Internet era -- are not journalism as we've known it, but they will be an essential tool in the transformation to whatever comes next."
Posted by at 07:22 AM | Comments (0)
|
