Some background to all the new serious media business, like the Whiskey Bar Times, coming up:
Groups Weigh In on Web Politicking FEC Urged to Exempt Most Activists From New Regulations

A raft of lawmakers, campaign finance watchdog groups, election lawyers and bloggers urged the Federal Election Commission on Friday to exempt the vast majority of — if not all — individual political activists on the Internet from new regulations.
The comments, submitted hours before an agency deadline, came as the FEC considers whether and how to regulate online political activities, including blogging, advertising and e-mail. The commission had proposed shielding virtually all online political activities from government restrictions. But two sponsors of the campaign finance reform legislation approved in 2002 successfully sued to overturn that and some other policies. The court’s decision left it to the FEC to decide which activities to regulate.
That has worried bloggers, in particular, who fear they will have to consult lawyers to ensure they do not run afoul of any new rules. The FEC, which is scheduled to decide the issue later this year, released a draft of its proposed regulations this spring that indicated it intended to take a relatively light hand. The agency also invited public comment on its proposal.
…
The lawmakers complained that current rules allow state parties to use large, unregulated contributions of “soft money” to pay for federal election-related communications on the Internet while also allowing corporations and unions to buy and coordinate online ad campaigns with candidates. The lawmakers said the FEC’s proposal to restrict such activities is not aggressive enough and ought to be expanded.
“The Commission must tread very carefully in this area so as not to stifle the virtually limitless potential of this exciting medium,” their statement said. “At the same time, there is no reason to believe that moneyed interests will not attempt to use the Internet to influence policies and policy as they attempt to do with other modes of communications. Indeed, there is every reason to expect that they will.”
…
Other election lawyers and bloggers filed remarks urging the FEC to adopt far fewer regulations. Several asked it to grant bloggers the same broad legal protections that allow traditional news media companies that are incorporated to endorse political candidates without those endorsements being equated with financial contributions to campaigns. Some suggested that the agency regulate online advertising spending only above certain thresholds.
The FEC has scheduled public hearings later this month and is slated to announce final rules in the fall.

As you see, blogs and bloggers are not real media like the M.o.Alabama Post or The Whiskey Bar Times. Blogs should not be able to endorse candidates without a penalty and if they link to a candidates site this should naturally be counted as a campaign contribution.
Of course editorials in serious media, like MoAP and WBT, are free to offer their opinion and never count as campaign contributions.

Posted by: b | Jun 30 2005 21:01 utc | 4

Please Billmon. More on Sun Myung Moon. He’s my favorite right Wing Nut case and a cult leader and a trillionaire. They should do an ABC miniseries on how he bought the Republican Party and the Religious Right. Think of the hours of fun we’ll have when Bush and Rove deny that any Bush has had any relationship with any organization Moon has formed at any time! C’mon. Its more fun than a barrel of chimps! Maybe his coronation “King of the United States” outfit will end up at the Smithsonian…that is after Moon buys the Smithsonian!

Posted by: Diogenes | Jun 30 2005 21:11 utc | 6

Billmon is great today.. I’m betting that he’s chanelling Orwell while watching Fox News. But don’t we all do that?
Speaking of Fox News.. I was down in Florida last weekend visiting my fiance’s relatives… they happen to be millionaire conservative Republicans.. and they were just hanging out watching Fox News in the middle of a beautiful Saturday afternoon. They were fixated on the shark attack and the missing girl in Aruba. It was enough to make us shoot ourselves… but what exactly can one do in that situation except totally ignore the TV and avoid any talk of politics??? Especially when you are being offered delicious, expensive wine and there are small babies and children around…

Posted by: TIm | Jun 30 2005 21:44 utc | 8

More seriously, what B said.
If they decide to make bloggers sit at the little folding media table with the other children, no doubt it won’t matter what Billmon or anyone else calls themselves – they’ll establish rules that exclude you if your site runs on Moveable Type, Blogger, TypePad etc. Always remember – this administration doesn’t operate on Universal Principle, in spite of how Conservatives always holler about Liberals and Situational Ethics. Everything they do is Outcome-Based (e.g., Bush v Gore).

Posted by: OkieByAccident | Jun 30 2005 21:57 utc | 10

Shouldn’t it be “All the Shit That’s Fit to Drink”?

Posted by: Dick Durata | Jun 30 2005 22:09 utc | 12

I want stories about missing white sharks and of attacks by monster white women!

Posted by: DoDo | Jun 30 2005 22:46 utc | 14

I fancy meself on the shark beat. As one of the old Fox Trots once said. “The thing about a white pointer is it’s got a great sense of humor. There’s nothing it likes better than a good old leg pull”.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 1 2005 0:47 utc | 16

Dear Editor,
Reading the piece linked in the last feature of the ill-fated WBT, I was fascinated that the President refers to Iraq as a “key battlefield” in the War on Fatalistic Killing. I would like to thank the editors of the WBT (if they can still be contacted) for calling attention to this important trope. It is a moving illustration of why we have no choice and must press forward in this conflict. I am sure however that, like me, many readers would like to learn more; what, exactly, is this key meant to unlock for us?
Yours expectantly,

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Jul 1 2005 1:01 utc | 18

Here’s the latest breaking old news on AOL News: Bush and Co want to change the video at the Lincoln Memorial and cut out any scenes conerning Vietnam, homosexuals, Feminists, and other dangerous liberal immoral stuff and replace it with exciting things like Reagan eating breakfast and Jesus people doing their Jericho march around the Mall. Of course we discussed this about a month ago, but it seems the AOL wires aren’t humming tonight and Rove needs a distration so they put this crowd pleaser up! At first I was indignant, but then I saw it as an important face saving battle strategy Bush may actually be capable of winning with only a minimum of armed insurgency, so George, I’m talking to you!

You can’t win in Iraq, can’t win in Afghanistan, can’t get anyone to believe your lies on Social Security, your tainted with Saudi and Moonie money, and O most Holy Chimp you have finally found a target worthy of all your power: an 8 minute public monument video. Haul out the big guns George! Whale away at the dangerous liberals you neoclowns are always whining about. At last you found a jihad worthy of your great abilities! Go get ’em tiger! Change that video and put your “Mission Accomplished” banner across the Lincoln Memorial! Show Mom and Dad and Pastor Moon that you are capable of doing SOMETHING and that Yale education wasn’t just wasted on cheerleading and cocaine snorted at Chapel and Howe!

Posted by: Diogenes | Jul 1 2005 3:58 utc | 20

About Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon mentioned in the other blo…..er, news magazine:
I live in a town in Ohio where one of his plastic surgeons moved to.
I worked in an ER and a young girl had facial lacerations from a mauling by a family dog. This doctor came in to do the repair, and to take the little girl’s mind off the suturing I asked him questions about the famous people he’d worked on. He said he’d done “some work” on Elizabeth Taylor and, because a tabloid had already talked about it, he said he’d done one of Jackson’s nose jobs. But not the latest one, he wanted us to know.

Posted by: Margot | Jul 1 2005 5:02 utc | 22

Tim, you didn’t get the memo? Liberals are meant to eat babies alive!

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jul 1 2005 7:27 utc | 24

CJ, I’m pretty sure we stuff them with French cheese before we eat them.

Posted by: Colman | Jul 1 2005 8:32 utc | 26

@ Uncle $cam: Here’s one.

Posted by: beq | Jul 1 2005 12:53 utc | 28

Coded messages from the NYT –
Nation hijacked; can’t talk; KGB minding
[originally posted on wrong thread]
In the now-familiar coded message format, the New York Times, our psychically fractured national paper, once again sneaks in a warning to all that hostage takers with absolute contempt for international law can easily end up running entire countries. By long-established protocols of communication under KGB (Kommissariat for George Bush) surveillance the NYT’s story “about” an elected foreign leader of an Oriental country and his anti-American past will be understood to refer to our own national hostage situation. Hotheadedly ignoring standard dis/re-information procedures designed for his own protection, Krugman actually included the code key in naked format. Advice to Paul, don’t ride in ‘copters with sellout credit card company executives too often.
PaulK needn’t have bothered, the gray lady already included here own secret decoder ring with the familiar Oriental tag signal:

Told of the dark side of Mao’s record known to historians but not to most Chinese, some of the students grew defensive. “What do you expect us to do, drag him from his grave and flog him,” one asked. “The emperors of the past are regarded as great if they moved the country forward, no matter how much the people suffered. With Mao it is the same.”
Others, however, grew pensive. “You might say that China is a very different country in the way it deals with history,” said one young woman. “But you must understand, foreigners have much more information than we do. There’s no real freedom to discuss these kinds of things here.”

Posted by: citizen | Jul 1 2005 20:35 utc | 30