Politics

Daily Kos Shoots Down Anti-Gun Control Diary

I skim through 50-100 stories a day published on Daily Kos as I consider items for Watching the Watchers. To minimize bandwidth use, a Java application that I wrote saves a cached copy of each story on my server. Because of this cache, I end up seeing stories that were deleted from the site. I'd heard for years that a lot of user-submitted stories are deleted from Daily Kos because of the viewpoints they espouse. So far, I'm not finding that to be the case. I've seen around 30 stories that were ... (read more)

2009/07/20

Anderson Cooper: 'I Don't Know Anything About Sports'

As the media grappled with Sarah Palin's explanation that she quit the Alaska governor's office because she's not a quitter, CNN host Anderson Cooper had a hilarious exchange with Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton. Stapleton tried to use Palin's analogy that in basketball, a good point guard passes the ball and runs off the court in the middle of the game, never to return. The analogy was completely lost on Cooper, for reasons he makes apparent: Anderson Cooper: You say this is leadership, but ... (read more)

2009/07/06

Watching the Watchers Makes Use of Creative Commons

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, ... (read more)

2009/07/02

Sarah Palin Violates the U.S. Flag Code

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 ... (read more)

2009/06/30

Relaunching Watching the Watchers

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 ... (read more)

2009/06/16

Andrew Sullivan, Iran News Sites Under Denial of Service Attack

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 magazine 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 ... (read more)

2009/06/15

Conservative Blogs Doing Better Under Obama

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 ... (read more)

2009/06/14

Andrew Breitbart's Mad About Hollywood (Or Just Mad)

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 ... (read more)

2009/06/12

Groups That Pursued Tiller Share Blame for His Murder

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 ... (read more)

2009/06/01

Chuck Todd is Hurting America

In the latest story about how Republicans are in trouble and we're in for 1,000 years of one-party rule, NBC News political director Chuck Todd unintentionally reveals one reasons most political news coverage sucks big rocks: There are a number of ugly debates going on inside the Republican Party right now. There is the debate over whether or not there is even something wrong; there's the debate over whether or not RNC chair Michael Steele should be trusted with making financial decisions for ... (read more)

2009/05/14

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