I've completed the second phase of the Watching the Watchers relaunch, which I began in late May. The site has become a digest of interesting news and commentary from sites that permit redistribution. As you can see, the traffic graph's become a lot more fun to look at lately. The site now includes stories that were published under a Creative Commons license that permits reuse. If you're unfamiliar with Creative Commons, it's a popular way to allow your copyrighted work -- whether it's text, photos, audio or ... read more

The August 2009 issue of Runner's World includes a Q&A with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin about her lifelong interest in jogging. The interview reveals that she took an unreported fall while running with the Secret Service before the vice presidential debate and describes how Sen. John McCain loves being up a creek: I used to joke around with John McCain during the campaign about coming jogging with me. And once I asked him what his favorite exercise was, and he said, 'I go wading.' Wading. He lives on a creek in ... read more

I recently relaunched Watching the Watchers as an Utne Reader-style digest of interesting political news and commentary published on sites that permit redistribution. In the first phase, most of the content is coming from Daily Kos, which has the following license: Site content may be used for any purpose without explicit permission unless otherwise specified. Hundreds of diary entries roll through Daily Kos every day, and a lot of interesting stuff falls through the cracks. I only consider Kos diaries that ... read more

The political weblogger Andrew Sullivan, who has been covering the protests in Iran around the clock for several days, reported early Monday that his site appears to be suffering a denial of service (DOS) attack intended to knock it offline: The Atlantic is struggling to keep the site up despite what seems to be a digital attack. Please be persistent in trying to reload. Sullivan's site, which has been passing along updates from the election protests in both English and Farsi, has been unusually slow to load ... read more

Blogger Simon Owens is tracking the traffic of the 20 largest liberal and conservative blogs to see how they've fared since the election. The blogs have collectively dropped 109 million unique visitors from October 2008 to May 2009: Right of center blogs weathered the post-election season a little better, falling only 37%, while blogs that were left-of-center fell by 64%. Some blogs did better than others. Instapundit, for instance, was the only blog to show a slight increase in page views between the two ... read more

Andrew Breitbart's a right-wing journalist in Los Angeles who coauthored the Drudge Report for years without getting any credit. He now runs Breitbart.Com and Big Hollywood and writes columns for the Washington Times. Breitbart.Com, which consists primarily of wire content, receives 1.7 million unique visitors a month, an audience he built by linking to the site frequently while working for Drudge. All external indicators would suggest that Breitbart has a lot to be happy about, but I've followed his work for ... read more

With the murder Sunday of George Tiller, a Wichita, Kansas, doctor who performed abortions, some anti-abortion groups that targeted Tiller's clinic, home and church for protest have moved swiftly to distance themselves from the killing. Jenn Giroux, the executive director of Women Influencing the Nation, posted this message on the group's web site: Women Influencing the Nation condemns all form of murder. The murder of George Tiller is in direct contradiction with the beliefs and morals embraced by those of us ... read more