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On Marcotte and Edwards

ArchPundit February 7, 2007 2 Comments

While it isn’t resolved, Josh Marshall makes the point I’d like to see taken away from this:

Given how edgy blog writing is (some more than others), it seems inevitable that bloggers who go to work for campaigns will get their past writings scrutinized and then have their employers dogged to fire them. If there’s anything that surprises me about this dust-up with the Edwards campaign, it’s this. Is it really possible that they hadn’t figured out who they were hiring, figured something like this would happen and planned for how they would react if and when it did?

That said, the ‘incendiary’ quotes I just heard referenced on CNN didn’t really strike me as all that incendiary. And second, Bill Donohue? Chief rabblerouser and bullyboy of the ‘Catholic League’? Please. I think he gave up his ‘incendiary’ language complaint rights when he said that ” “Hollywood likes anal sex” or that “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.” I can’t wait till he comes with the dig that gets Jews, Christians and anal sex all into one long smoldering sentence.

Please. Please. Please. Let’s get someone on the right to complain who’s not a complete nutball and Jew-basher and then we can talk.

If you are a campaign hiring a blogger you have to do your due diligence and that includes ensuring what they have written is something you can live with. This might entail looking at the writings and insisting on something apologizing for some over the top language/idea, it might be simply getting ready for the inevitable right wing smears, or it might be deciding to go a different direction.

The Edwards campaign could have quashed this days ago and earned points doing it by having Amanda make a statement concerning the posts in question and preemptively dealing with it. When the whines started, it’s a dead story and simply don’t comment on it again. They didn’t and now they have let it languish and build up steam to get on cable news. That’s mismanaging the story and it has a lot in the blogosphere on edge largely because they see it as a betrayal to Amanda. Killing the story would have been easy, but now by being wishy-washy, the story continues taking away from the day’s message and getting coverage for loons on CNN and Fox.

Being prepared means preempting the idiots. But once you screw up, don’t back down.

Interesting FEC case

ArchPundit January 31, 2007 0 Comment

Via Cal

The FEC ruled against an Illinois Republican Party complaint against the 10th District Blog which claimed it was like the 17th District’s Victory Fund in which campaign operatives funded hard money activities for Lane Evans out of soft money funds.

The difference being a blog is simply a website and the funds went directly from donors to ActBlue to the fund. The web site simply provided a link as to where the funds should go. It’s a really silly complaint and I’m surprised IRP went after them and not others such as AM or me.

It’s pretty simple how this is covered. If the blog owner were taking money and then sending it on directly, the owner would have to register as a committee. If the blog owner was paid by a campaign, that would have be disclosed. Simply posting a suggestion and link to donate money isn’t operating a political committee. Offline this would be like someone who calls around to friends to encourage them to donate to a campaign having to register as a committee.

Why Would You Hire The Law Firm of Peter Francis Geraci When They Don’t Understand Even Basic Law

ArchPundit December 13, 2006 1 Comment

Apparently because the Illinois Review used the name of the law firm in a post, the Law Firm of Peter Francis Geraci warned them to stop using the name as it is trademarked.

Never hire the Law Firm of Peter Francis Geraci because that’s a really stupid interpretation of the law. Greg lays it out pretty well.

You can also use your trademarked name for comparing two products or as a parody. For example, to say that you are a poor firm compared to Dowe, Cheatem & How is legal. To say that you are better than they is also legal. It’s appropriate to report on the law firm of Peter Francis Geraci in conjunction with employees or partners making campaign contributions or for that matter not making campaign contributions. We can also say, for example, that last year’s bankrupcty reforms were a good thing for firms such as Peter Francis Geraci, or we can say it was a bad thing for firms such as Perter Francis Geraci. We can also say, Nike, Proctor & Gamble, Exxon and any other number trade names all damn day and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Mr. Stoolmaker, with the number hits on blogs and their power to shape news, break stories you do your brand identity no good by threatening political activists engaged in political speech. It’s the kind of thing that can make you infamous in a hurry.

Actually, he has pulled off something–getting me to defend the Illinois Review. We’d call that cats and dogs living together in Ghostbusters’ terminology.

The ultimate outcome of this ridiculous claim is that anyone seeking to hire the Law Firm of Peter Francis Geraci now knows that they are incompetent lawyers. Congratulations.

No Monday?

ArchPundit December 12, 2006 0 Comment

Monday Night Football took precedence. Back in a bit with our regular schedule.

All the PDFs are Screwed Up

ArchPundit October 16, 2006 0 Comment

Not sure why, but I’ll work on it.

UPDATE: Should be working–mostly

Yearly Kos in Chicago for 2007

ArchPundit October 3, 2006 4 Comments

Meaning a month with the State Fair and Yearly Kos. A month that will be very, very hard on my liver.

Some of the local blogging community–not necessarily the same nor different as Chicago Kos folks should put their heads together on some ideas.

Stoller Calls for A Blogger Ethics Panel

ArchPundit June 28, 2006 8 Comments

To discuss me.

Only if there is free beer

For those who followed the debacle about the guy who posted a comment making fun of Tammy Duckworth being an amputee with an offensive video, check out Sirota’s comment and the follow-up. Hilarious.

UPDATE: Advertising Liberally Members Disagreeing–Zengerle is foiled again!

Blogospheric Navel Gazing

ArchPundit June 23, 2006 0 Comment

Harkening back to the good old days of the great delink wars of 2002, TNR decided to suggest Kos is somehow controlling the blogosphere.

Because herding cats is so much fun.

I’m not on Townhouse so I can’t shed much light on all of this other than to say that coordinating message amongst activists is nothing new and is one of the true weaknesses Democratic activists have.

For those who don’t understand Markos’ reaction, essentially TNR is attacking him for offering a suggestion as to how to coordinate that message and found the Advertising Liberally as some sort of leverage he exerts. The problem with that is some of the Members of Advertising Liberally can’t stand Markos and go out of their way to tweak him fairly often.

More to the point, it’s not so bad that TNR takes on Markos for his message, it’s the assanine attack that he, by coordinating message with other activist journalists, is influencing content through financial control.

Zengerle’s bullshit line is here in a later post

From these e-mails, it appears there was a good amount of concern among liberal bloggers about the Armstrong SEC story and the allegations of “pay for play” against Kos and Armstrong, and some of these bloggers wanted to address these issues forthrightly. And, yet, after Kos subsequently wrote the e-mail quoted in my original post asking the bloggers to “ignore” the story in order to “starve of it oxygen,” there was virtual silence in the liberal blogosphere about it. That, to me at least, suggests that Kos does indeed have a good deal of influence over what other liberal bloggers write.

Or perhaps because it didn’t become a big issue on the blogs, and it’s only a side issue even now. Who goes out of their way to report on a problem with a friend or ally? Sometimes, but it isn’t that frequent. Given not much information is known about the subject, it’s kind of hard to write much about it. Either the non-partisan press or the opposition makes it an issue and barring a big blogburst on the subject why would someone on Townhouse write about it? Assuming malice when the more likely answer is there was no reason to highlight Jerome’s problem is silly.

I know that in discussions regarding Advertising Liberally, when Chris Bowers set out some basic network standards, there were a couple bloggers who had grand conspiracy claims about what Jerome, Chris, and Markos were doing (Chris did it, Markos just argued for the changes). It was silly. This is the same thing.

Markos’ response goes a bit off the rails because he is talking primarily to people who understand the entire context and the frustration with TNR over it trying to tear apart burgeoning infrastructure with this kind of crap. It’s not that TNR criticizes the ideas coming out of the blogosphere, it’s that it attempts silly ad hominen attacks. In one sense, everyone is talking past one another, but I’ll put most of the blame on TNR for not even trying to understand the language.

I’m going back to my rolling waves of nausea, but I was a bit annoyed reading all of this.

Astro Turf Ad is back

ArchPundit June 15, 2006 8 Comments

For the real deal on net neutrality take a look at this recent post by Alex over at Congresswoman Schakowsky’s site

administrative

ArchPundit June 14, 2006 0 Comment

As you can see, for the next week or so, I have some help from some great guest posters who I want to thank. Be nice to them.

I also know a bunch of links are FUBAR, but for now, I don’t have the time to deal with it. I’m grading Advanced Placement Government & Politics exams for the week and it’s simply too exhausing to try and blog. On top of it, I have a cold from St. Louis.

Also, my E-mail access is FUBAR. If you need to get a hold of me, use the Yahoo! account (s). Even then I’ll probably be slow to respond. If I can, I’ll pass the interesting stuff on to the guest posters.

I do have two posts coming up that I’ve been meaning to do, but after that I’ll be pretty quiet for several days and let them have at it.

Finally, remember to support Rich’s proposed invasion of Missouri. Save me.