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Matthew Scully, a White House speechwriter from 2001-2004, has a different take on Harriet Miers from some of what we've heard from another speechwriter, David Frum. Scully's opinion piece appears in today's New York Times, and has these tidbits: When you know Harriet Miers, it's funny to think of her as the subject of such controversy. Yet already her notoriety is such that even the most innocent of virtues can be thrown back at her as inadequate - "not even second-rate," as a National Review Online posting said, "but third-rate." She's a detail person. Diligent and dependable. Honest, kind, modest,...

INDIANAPOLIS Bloggers would "probably not" be considered journalists under the proposed federal shield law, the bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), told the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Monday afternoon. Lugar emphasized, however, that debate is not yet closed on how to define a journalists under the proposed law. "As to who is a reporter, this will be a subject of debate as this bill goes farther along," he said in response to a question from Washington Post Deputy Managing Editor Milton Coleman. "Are bloggers journalists or some of the commercial businesses that you here would probably not consider...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Yahoo Inc. (YHOO)'s online news search tool on Monday added Internet journal entries as a supplement to professional media offerings - an experiment that figures to test the public's appetite for information from alternative sources. Under Yahoo's new approach, a keyword search for online news will include a list of relevant Web logs, or "blogs," displayed in a box to the right of the results collected from mainstream journalism. Google Inc. (GOOG), which runs the Internet's leading search engine, so far has treated blogs differently. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company last month introduced a specialty search...

"If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country." "Start an Impeach Bush Committee" These statements didn't come from the "liberal mainstream media" or the "wacky left." They didn't come from Dick Durbin or Ted Kennedy. No, it wasn't Barbara Streisand or Sean Penn. The above statements came from conservative icon, Ann Coulter. Many conservatives, myself included, are hesitant about the president's recent Supreme Court pick. However, that concern does not have to translate into divisiveness and mudslinging. The other night, at the Sean...

Martha Stewart Syndrome Days are Approaching... Yes, as fall's crispness begins to touch the air, I begin to nest. My hubby calls it "Martha Stewart Syndrome". Now don't think for a minute that he is upset by this. Rather, there are two times of the year my hubby is downright ecstatic: fall and spring. There's something about crisp mornings that makes me want to paint, clean, cook, bake and all RIGHT NOW! My favorite comedic author, Erma Bombeck, used to get the syndrome as well. She wrote that when she "came to" there was usually oxtail soup on the stove...

So GWB has nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers as the next associate Supreme Court Justice. Is Ms. Miers qualified for this position? Does she have the temperament to serve the country well in the important position? As I sit here today I cannot answer that question. Before I could make a judgment on that question I would certainly have to consider her education and her professional history and one might think that all of our elected senators.......

Well, I asked, and asked again - and I surmised an answer, but I never thought we'd get such a succinct and complete answer from the horse's mouth, as it were (forgive us, readers, but we have to link to Daily Kos, just this once): "It's become more and more apparent to me over the past five years that all the activism and non-violent protesting in the world will do precisely squat. When you're dealing with evil people who have no shame, the old rules of the game don't and, indeed, can't apply if you have any hope for success....

The finalists are up, and voting is going into the stretch for Hugh Hewitt's weekly Blog of the Week Contest. Every week, bloggers submit a post associated with a subject discussed on Hugh Hewitt's radio program. The submission are linked over at RadioBlogger's site and the finalists are selected for open voting. There are some great submissions there to choose from. So head over and vote! VOTE HERE!

This blogger, Global Cop From D.C., has been posting live from DC all weekend with photos starting Friday night of the counter Code Pink demonstration at Walter Reed Friday night through today. Check out all the pictures here: http://globalcop.us/

Here is a quick photo tour of this week's headlines...from a child's perspective. Enjoy! Dad's big meetings start. How cool that I get to be here! --- He's gonna be the strongest man in the world after this. --- Great start, dad. They're scared of you now. --- Those guys are mean and not very smart, dad. --- This is really boring. Is it time to go home yet? --- Good job, dad.

A lot of liberal bloggers are commenting on this picture. Apparently Bush didn’t button the top button of his shirt in the correct position. Is it just me or is it a bit hypocritical for Democrats to be commenting on people’s clothes after this:

A Good Speech by a Good Man September 15, 2005 06:45 PM PST Perfect pitch returned tonight, and the president's looks backward and forward were on target. As Chris Matthews observed, it sounded a little LBJ/FDR-like in its vows about the underclass of the recovery region, but that is exactly why it worked so well: That is what needs to happen, and he identified the best approaches in the empowerment of entrepeneurs and the retraining of the evacuees. The enterprise zone could prove a turbo charged motor to the effort, and the promise of innovation was well delivered. So too...

Thanks to Michelle Malkin and an army of bloggers we have prevailed in our fight to have Islamic symbols removed from the Flight 93 Memorial. Paul Murdock the designer of the memorial has said he will rework the plans to remove the crescent. From the Washington Times 'Crescent' not embraced By Jennifer HarperTHE WASHINGTON TIMESSeptember 15, 2005 It is unbuilt, but already under fire. The proposed memorial to United Flight 93 has a chorus of critics, irked by a single design element that ultimately might be reconfigured. The "Crescent of Embrace," a double arc of maple trees that will...

Hugh mentions Free Republic like it is a main stream media / news outlet. Cool! ===== The Three C's of Blogging What the blogosphere is doing to help in the aftermath of Katrina. by Hugh Hewitt 09/08/2005 12:00:00 AM IT IS TEMPTING to speculate about how the new Supreme Court will differ from the old (Senator McConnell might want to find another complaint to file against McCain-Feingold), but that debate will rage for months into the future, and the blogosphere has had a very interesting two weeks responding to Katrina and its aftermath. This has been the period when the...

INSIDE AIR AMERICA: AL FRANKEN'S LYING LIES By Michelle Malkin   ·   September 07, 2005 02:22 AM Inside Air America: Al Franken's Lying Lies Part of an ongoing investigative blog series by Brian Maloney and Michelle Malkin Sept. 7, 2005 (Part II of this installment is at The Radio Equalizer) *** Take a close look at this signature. It belongs to Air America host and crusader for truth Al Franken. It is contained in a legal document we have obtained that exposes the Grand Canyon-sized chasm between what Al Franken says and what Al Franken does. On July 27, our blogs...

It's not often I disagree with the first lady of the blogospere but Michelle Malkins rantings concerning the firing of FEMA director Michael Brown couldn't be further of the mark. Her arguments: -He admitted that he didn't act more aggressively because as late as last Sunday he expected Katrina to be a "standard hurricane" even though the National Weather Service in New Orleans was already predicting "human suffering incredible by modern standards." - He proved himself utterly clueless about the disaster unfolding in New Orleans. He claimed that the federal relief effort was "going relatively well" and that the security...

Hello Fellow Freepers, I am posting this because forum is the biggest, most active place I can think of to help out a fellow Texan and the Katrina survivors at the same time. I posting this letter from fellow Texan Scott Chaffin, a gentleman who lives just up the way from on the rambling river known as "the Arms of God", El Brazos de Dios, who would like to utilize the resources he has at his "tiny bidness." He writes : Dear Sweet, Clean Texas Members of the TFG Blogroll, You might or might not know that I have a...

Rebuilding the Gulf Coast, One Group at a Time The only way to rebuild the societies battered by Katrina is for specialized groups to find one another. The internet is ready to help. by Hugh Hewitt 09/02/2005 12:00:00 AM YESTERDAY America's emergency relief effort went into high gear and is likely to stay there for weeks, as all across the country citizens open their wallets to help out their fellow countrymen. Before long, however, the extreme needs will be met and the long-term rebuilding will get underway. At that point it will become much less obvious how ordinary Americans can...

It starts and ends with a photograph of a mustard-laden Pronto Pup, and in between, Brian Lebakken dutifully catalogs the eventful and not-so-eventful details of the Minnesota State Fair on his Web log. There are Web logs, commonly known as blogs, about sports and about politics. There are even blogs covering TV shows and celebrities. And tucked away in a little part of the World Wide Web is a blog about the Minnesota State Fair. An electronic scrapbook and rambling musings gathered from daily trips, it started as a means for far-flung family and friends to attend the State Fair...

An Arizona national guardsman serving in Iraq has been demoted for posting classified information on his blog, an army official said. Leonard Clark (40) was demoted from specialist to private first class and fined $1 640 said Colonel Bill Buckner, a spokesperson for the Multi-National Corps-Iraq, on Monday. Soldiers in Iraq are allowed to maintain blogs but cannot post information about army operations or movements. They also are barred from posting information about the death of a soldier whose family hasn't yet been notified. "The intent of the policy is not to violate soldiers' rights, but to safeguard soldiers," Buckner...