Free Republic

Dan is back from Afghanistan, and is now in Kuwait...

1600 READING [Rod Dreher]We had White House communications director Dan Bartlett in today for an editorial board meeting. I asked him if blogs fit into the WH's communications strategy. He said he has people on his staff whose full-time job is to monitor the blogs to keep up with what's going on. I asked him what the most important blogs to read, from the White House's point of view, are. He said that in terms of what influences the mindset of the Washington media, Kausfiles, the Slate daily roundup of the papers, and Andrew Sullivan were crucial ones to keep...

Authorities have ordered all China-based Web sites and blogs to register or be closed down, in the latest effort by the communist government to police the world of cyberspace. Commercial publishers and advertisers can face fines of up to 1 million yuan ($120,000) for failing to register, according to documents posted on the Web site of the Ministry of Information Industry. Private, noncommercial bloggers or Web sites must register the complete identity of the person responsible for the site, it said. The ministry, which has set a June 30 deadline for compliance, said 74 percent of all sites had already...

WASHINGTON — The Federal Election Commission is considering whether to require political bloggers to disclose whether they are receiving funds from a political campaign, the latest step in a larger debate over whether political activity on the Internet should be regulated by the government. Friday is the deadline set for the FEC to receive public comments on a number of proposed regulations dealing with Internet activities. The commission will hold hearings on June 28-29 in Washington, D.C., before deciding on final action. One of those new rules, the disclosure requirement, has many bloggers bristling, accusing the government of unfairly targeting...

In one of the most dramatic stories to date of blogger influence, an American blogger listed the details of inflammatory testimony in a Canadian government corruption case-testimony that was under a publication ban enacted by the judge. Soon the blogger's website was inundated with hundreds of thousands of hits from Canadians hungry for information, but shut out of the story by the ban. It was a unique case of a lone blogger disseminating information the media were unable to publish. Ed Morrissey, the writer of Captain's Quarters blog, started reporting on the testimony on April 2 in an entry titled...

Online confessors are like flashers. They exhibit themselves anonymously and publicly, with little consideration for you, the audience. Browse some of the confessionals on the Web: grouphug.us (a simple log), notproud.com (organized by deadly sin) or dailyconfession.com (where you can barely find the confessions for all the promotional stuff). You can see for yourself. One online confessional, though, breaks the mold. At PostSecret, found at postsecret.blogspot.com, the confessions are consistently engaging, original and well told. How come? The Web site gives people simple instructions. Mail your secret anonymously on one side of a 4-by-6-inch postcard that you make yourself. That...

The Gang of 14, Blogged Down In the Middle By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 29, 2005 It was the perfect storm for the blogosphere, an issue on which both right-wingers and left-wingers could rise up in rare unison and smite the craven offenders. Both sides hated, castigated and otherwise took a dim view of the last-minute deal this week that averted a nuclear showdown over Senate filibusters. Let the mainstream media praise as bipartisan statesmen the mushy moderates who cobbled together the compromise. Many bloggers were infuriated, castigating the so-called Gang of 14 (and especially John...

The media industry (a.k.a. MSM) has been accused of bias. But now that Roger Simon is leading the formation of Pajamas Media the possibility of falling into the same hole arises. So he asks Bloggers how they would do it again if they could. Toward that end I would like to start a conversation on the subject on here spread over several days. And I thank those in advance who would be kind enough to participate. Let's start with the "Big Kahuna"... What does "fair and balanced" mean anyway? There are probably two answers to this question, one for those...

From the website of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), internet users can access three blogs managed by three prelates who talk about a variety of issues such as catechesis, today’s society and Christian life. Each blog is different but all are regularly updated—even on a daily basis. Mgr Jose R. Manguiran, Bishop of Dipolong, manages The Meaning, whose subtitle is ‘Life is meaningful only when it begins and ends with Christ’. And for this, he focuses on how one can lead a Christian life in an ever-speeding society. He also develops arguments on various philosophical issues and...

IN the spring of 1712, the British essayist Joseph Addison rambled from pub to parlor seeking the pulse of his countrymen regarding rumors (false, it turned out) that the king of France, Louis XIV, had died. The St. James coffeehouse, Addison reported in The Spectator, was "in a Buzz of Politics." In the 18th century, "buzz" was part of what social theorists called the emerging - and powerful - bourgeois public sphere. In the 21st century, the buzz is in the blogosphere. Or at least, that's the popular mythology. As a result of their influence in incidents like the "60...

Journalism professor Chris Hanson begins his piece in the Washington Post by taking Newsweek to task for its handling of the Koran-gate story. However, he quickly shifts his criticism to conservative blogs, and then implies that Drudge (which he calls a blog of sorts) is the real cause of Newsweek's error. Hanson's attempt to portray bloggers' handling of the Dan Rather and Eason Jordan stories as particularly noteworthy instances of the rumor-mongering that got Newsweek into trouble is preposterous. In the case of Rather, bloggers carefully examined every facet of the document-authenticity issue -- the document format, style, and substance...

We've recently learned that Google News is seeking technology patents to rank stories on its news site "based on the quality of the news source." Naturally, this has caused concern among bloggers that their sites will be ranked lower -- or perhaps not ranked at all -- by Google News, but as blogger Jeff Goldstein notes, this decision by Google will open up a niche for Blogospheric aggregators like Pajamas Media. What is Pajamas Media? Well, as co-founder Roger Simon explains, Pajamas Media has a twofold purpose. The first is to give bloggers access to more advertising revenue -- in...

For a glimpse of the blogosphere's growing power, witness the brouhaha now afflicting PepsiCo (PEP ) over comments earlier this week by President and CFO Indra Nooyi before the graduating class of Columbia University's B-school. Her comparison of the five major continents to the five fingers on her hand -- with the U.S.(not a continent, mind you) being the controversial middle finger and Africa the often-ignored pinkie -- will strike many as entirely innocuous. As she put it: "Each of us in the U.S. -- the long middle finger -- must be careful that when we extend our arm in...

Claiming invasion of privacy and humiliation, a staff attorney for a United States senator has filed suit against a woman who published details of their sexual relationship on her blog, or web log. Robert Steinbuch, a counsel for Republican Senator Michael DeWine, filed the civil suit on Monday against Jessica Cutler, whose brief employment on DeWine's staff was terminated by revelations about her graphic journal of her sexual escapades. Writing under the nom de plume "Washingtonienne", Cutler last year briefly kept an X-rated online diary of her simultaneous relationships with up to six men around town, including an unidentified Bush...

Almost from the moment Arianna Huffington's blog (huffingtonpost.com) went live last week, it became the epicenter of digital snarkiness. Seemingly everyone with access to the Web—and more than a few spitballers from mainstream media—took a shot at the socialite pundit's site, a compendium of the views, opinions and random remarks of 350 actors, pundits, writers and politicos, ranging from genuine celebrities (Gwyneth Paltrow, Larry David, Walter Cronkite) to the niche-famous (wonky speechwriters, people cranking out television scripts for "Alias," Jon Corzine). Bloggers complained about its cluenessness, lack of focus and self-aggrandizement. One writer called it "the box-office equivalent of Gigli,...

In one of the early Star Wars movies, it was famously said, “Beware of the Borg.” The Borg was this mass that subsumed everything like a black hole. It was an ominous warning — of another time and place in history, in which the collective and universal intelligence was to be feared and struggled against because it threatened our individuality in a seemingly increasing world of impersonality and anonymity. On the other hand, The Blog is just us — what we all make of it and contribute to it, and once it gathers critical mass, takes on a life of...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Claiming invasion of privacy and humiliation, a staff attorney for a US senator has filed suit against a woman who published details of their sexual relationship on her blog, or web log. Robert Steinbuch, a counsel for Republican Senator Michael DeWine, filed the civil suit on Monday against Jessica Cutler, whose brief employment on DeWine's staff was terminated by revelations about her graphic journal of her sexual escapades. Writing under the nom de plume "Washingtonienne," Cutler last year briefly kept an X-rated on-line diary of her simultaneous relationships with up to six men around town, including an...

Sam from the Hammorabi Blog is the most Elusive, Passionate, and Mysterious of Iraqi Bloggers to share his thoughts on his country of Iraq, the Middle East, Terrorism, and Geo-Politics. We really don't know who he truly is, but appreciate his contributions to the Blogosphere, and are presented with the opportunity to learn more about his views on Blogging, Iraq, Sistani, Childhood, Islam, Food, Terrorism, Muqti al Sadr, and more in: The In T View: Sam From Hammorabi... MG: Now Sam, should al-Sistani, unelected and not chosen by the Iraqi people to govern them or even represent them, be...

May 15, 2005 Blogging, as in Slogging By DAVID GREENBERG "YOU should have a blog."Apparently I push my opinions on my friends rather aggressively, because I often hear this remark.Last week, I had my chance. My wife and I agreed to be "guest bloggers" - the online equivalent of what David Brenner used to do for Johnny Carson - for Dan Drezner, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, who runs a popular libertarian-conservative blog, DanielDrezner.com. How hard could blogging be? You roll out of bed, turn on your computer, scan the headlines, think up some clever analysis...

Labour's solid lead in opinion polls has prompted the media to dub the UK election race "boring" but in cyberspace it's anything but, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald. The campaign has sparked an explosion of web logs - "blogs" - ranging from candidates and journalists to voters sending up politicians and their media machines. It's open season. Britons fed up with dull political broadcasts and endless spin are heading to online weblogs to vent their frustrations. The main issues range from the economy and taxation to asylum, immigration and Iraq. Many bloggers cruelly satirise the party...