…I was trying to play with the “dog” and “race” meme, and that lame-ass head was the best I could do on short notice.

Anyway, the interesting thing is that the coverage of the Scooter Libby/leaking of Valeria Plame’s identity trial is being led by the team over at Firedoglake … and that their efforts have garnered the interest of the stuffiest of MSM solons, to the tune of a front-page story in the New York Times.


All day long during the trial, one Firedoglake blogger is on duty to
beam to the Web from the courthouse media room a rough, real-time
transcript of the testimony. With no audio or video feed permitted, the
Firedoglake “live blog” has offered the fullest, fastest public report
available. Many mainstream journalists use it to check on the trial.

But the bloggers’ fun is almost over. Libby’s lawyers rested
their case Wednesday shortly after the judge said he had been misled
about whether Libby would take the stand.


For blogs, the Libby trial marks a courthouse coming of age. It is the first federal case for which independent bloggers
have been given official credentials along with reporters from the
traditional news media, said Robert A. Cox, president of the Media
Bloggers Association. Cox negotiated access for the bloggers.

This is the type of story that plays to a blog’s strength – since there is no mound of newsprint to thump on the doorstep every morning (and clog up the recycling bins at night), the bloggers can provide all the information that the vindictive political junkies might want. Which, in my case, varies.  Some days I want to just skim to see what the latest howler from the defense is.  Other days I want to trudge through the utterances of all the tainted Pulitzer Prizewinners, as they detail just exactly how they bent over and grabbed their ankles in return for access. 

I think the spate of articles in the LA Times and elsewhere put it best: nobody’s coming out of this one unscathed. There are no heroes here. The politicians and press alike look cynical and contemptuous of the “rube” public who they purportedly serve.

Which is why more and more of said public are catching on, and spending their eyeball capital on blogs and New Media.

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