1 Boring Old Man

Geoffrey R. Stone has a very helpful series of articles on The Huffington Post concerning the constitutionality [or lack thereof] of the president’s evasion of judicial review in his N.S.A. surveillance of American citizens

• King George’s Constitution
• Bush’s Spy Program and the Fourth Amendment
• Bush’s Spy Program and FISA

Like the extensive review of the Niger Yellowcake Uranium forgeries on The LeftCoaster [mentioned below], Stone’s argument is grounded in a broad understanding of his topic. I think the increasing number of series like this is a sign of a maturing ‘blogsphere.’

The great power of the Internet is in disseminating massive amounts of information to a broad audience. And, as Jane Hamscher [of firedoglake] said recently:

Series like these two educate us on the specifics of a given issue in a way no newspaper can, even if they try. It’s even more important in the dark days of this Administration which has directly and indirectly influenced what appears in the mainstream media [A.K.A. "the news"]. So, besides Jane’s point that the bloggers have time and energy to pore over the news and put it into a broad context, I would add another reason the political/news blogs are coming into mounting prominence. There is an almost infinite databank of expertise that can be brought to bear on the issues of the day, and the blogs are increasingly able to get that input quickly on the table.

Personally, there’s another more specific thing that attracted me to the political blogs. For the last five years, we’ve lived with something that seems different, at least quantitatively different – ‘spin’, ‘talking points’.  I’m not naive. I know that politicians have been dreaming up rhetoric since the toga/agora days, but no one has ever generated it so quickly, been so facile at removing the truth and replacing it with contempt, and built a machine to get it on the streets and airways so effectively as Karl Rove.

So, for me, the political blogs were a discovery. At last there was something to help me see through the Fog of Rove and keep up with what was actually happening. In a strange sort of way, Karl Rove, master of misinformation, is responsible for the rise of our political blogs as a specific antedote to his fogs.