Stay Tuned Tomorrow

Tomorrow should be a big day in the US Attorney General firings- there will be hearings on Capital Hill. I will be checking Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo during every class break to keep up.

TPM was the first blog I ever started reading religiously. As I have mentioned before, back in September 2003 I stumbled on this brilliant piece he wrote called, "The Post-Modern President" about politicians, lying, and Bush for the Washington Monthly. Howard Dean's campaign was just really starting to heat up and like other people I started seeing how progressive politics and the Internet could have a mutually beneficial relationship. Previously I had read Slate and Salon- but they were not much different than print magazines. Something about the piece by Marshall struck me as new and different. The whole piece is brilliant, and I remember being hooked at the second paragraph:

George W. Bush has a forthright speaking style which convinces many people that he's telling the truth even when he's lying. But in under three years, Bush has told at least as many impressive untruths as each of his three predecessors. (See The Mendacity Index, p.27) His style of deception is also unique. When Reagan said he didn't trade arms for hostages, or Clinton insisted he didn't have sex with "that woman," the falsity of the claims was readily provable--by an Oliver North memo or a stained blue dress. Bush and his administration, however, specialize in a particular form of deception: The confidently expressed, but currently undisprovable assertion. In his State of the Union address last January, the president claimed that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and a robust nuclear weapons program, and that therefore we needed to invade Iraq. Even at the time, many military and intelligence experts said that the president's assertions probably weren't true and were based on at best fragmentary evidence. But there was no way to know for sure unless we did what Bush wanted. (emphasis mine)

Now there are thousands of things like this written everyday. 2003- not so much. I am so pleased that Marshall has been able to grow and now in addition to blogging he is doing real investigative journalism. The US Attorney story is just the latest example. He and his staff have been on it from day one- even though wankers like Jay Carney from Time magazine wrote things like this from the Time "blog" swampland:

Running Massacre?

That's how Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo describes a story that his blog and its offshoot, TPMMuckraker.com, have played a laudable role in uncovering: the resignations of more than a dozen United States Attorneys across the country, and their replacement, under an obscure provision in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, by "interim" candidates hand-picked by the attorney general without the consent of the Senate or any constraint on the duration of their service....

...Of course! It all makes perfect conspiratorial sense!

Except for one thing: in this case some liberals are seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist. (emphasis mine)

Yes, the Mainstream Media S-U-C-K-S.