From the State Department, All the News for Inquiring Minds

From the Washington Post, Al Kamen writes:

Fox News, launched with such high hopes 11 years ago as the "fair and balanced" network, apparently hasn't lived up to its billing. CNN never had a chance. The other networks? Please. No citizen could dare trust the agenda-driven print media -- The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times -- to figure out, let alone accurately tell, the "real" story.

But now the State Department is in the blogosphere, and says it "offers the public an alternative source to mainstream media for U.S. foreign policy information." The blog, launched last week and called "Dipnote," is "taking you behind the scenes."

This is what we've all been waiting for! No more media filters and distortions. Unbiased news directly from the federal government, a news source long noted for truthful, unbiased reporting. The Clinton administration and most all its predecessors vowed to end-run the media, and they finally have the new electronic media to help them to do it.

One of the first diplo-bloggers last week was the assistant secretary for international organizations, Kristen Silverberg, who blogged from the United Nations.

"Another busy day in New York!" she gushed Tuesday. ("I'm exhausted!" she wrote in a later dispatch that day.) "First thing this morning, President Bush met with President Karzai" to discuss progress in Afghanistan.

"We have a lot of hope," she wrote, "for the future of Afghanistan," where child mortality has declined 20 percent in the past five years and 80 percent of the public has access to basic health care and "primary school enrollment for both boys and girls has increased by five hundred percent over the past five years."

But that's not all! "Later in the morning," Silverberg reported, "Secretary Rice attended a meeting" and "issued a joint statement calling on the government of Burma to end violence against the peaceful demonstrators."

"The Security Council this afternoon issued a statement of concern about the events in Burma, which were also discussed at today's G8 Foreign Ministers lunch," Silverberg reported, and Rice "raised the issue of Burma when she met this afternoon" with India's foreign minister. She also met with the Korean foreign minister about North Korea's nukes.

"While Secretary Rice will be back in Washington, D.C., for part of the day tomorrow to open the President's meeting of major economies on energy security and climate, I'll still be in New York and will keep you updated!" Thank goodness.

Public diplomacy czarina Karen Hughes's blog from the United Nations yesterday gave us a real insider's view of diplomacy in action.

"This morning I spoke live with hundreds of thousands of people in the Arab world by appearing on Al Arabiya," she wrote, "one of the leading television networks in the Middle East. Whenever I visit a country, and I've been to about 40 during the last two years, I usually do television and radio interviews (I've even appeared on what was described as the Indonesian version of 'Oprah')."

Would the conservative or liberal media give you that insight? Hardly.

Meanwhile, the blog appears to be getting a tremendous response worldwide and -- with the exception of people complaining that the type is too small and that the white print on a black background makes it hard to read -- readers have been overwhelmingly positive.

The first comment to one of Silverberg's blogs was refreshing. "Wong in China writes: 'Hello, I come from China. I hate such countries: North Korea, Iran, Burma, Cuba and Iraq (before liberated by US army).' " Well, thank you, Wong, for your informed perspective. Please report immediately to the embassy in Beijing for your free visa and green card.

State Department folks may be feeling good about their official blog, but the Pentagon, as is usually the case, has been working that venue for a while. In fact it has, within the New Media Directorate, an office that's being called "Blogosphere Initiatives," and one of the truly unsung heroes of the Bush Florida recount machine has been tapped to help out.

He's Michael Allan Leach, who, "it could be argued, played a more direct role" than most anyone else in George W. Bush's victory in Florida in 2000, the St. Petersburg Times reported at the time. Leach, an Air Force veteran, then-recent Florida State graduate and state GOP field worker, "used a laptop computer to salvage hundreds of Republican absentee votes which were in danger of not being counted because they didn't have voter identification numbers."

The Times reported that Leach blamed President Clinton and media liberals for a decline in morals, and wrote in a 1998 Internet posting: "I can no longer sit idly by while liberals in Washington with seven brain cells drag this country into the muck and mire of stupidity."

So, after the election, Leach spent six years as a political appointee as special assistant to the administrator of the Agriculture Department's rural development office, minus time out to handle press duties for the CPA in Iraq. He also picked up a master's degree in international affairs from Georgetown and worked most recently in public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security.

Soldier's Blog of Post-War Iraq Wins Lulu Booker Prize

For AHN, Jacob Cherian writes:
A U.S. soldier describing his experience in war torn Iraq has walked away with the $10,000 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize. This comes amid the U.S. government's campaign to restrict soldiers' blogs that have not won prior approval from the government.

The award for books based on blogs went to "My War: Killing Time In Iraq," by Colby Buzzell.

"My War may be the last frank and open military blog blook," said Paul Jones, chair of the Blooker judges, reports BBC news.

"Endlessly surprising... delightfully profane," Arianna Huffington, a Blooker judge this year, commented on the winning selection.

She added it was "an unfiltered, often ferocious expression of his boots-on-the-ground view of the Iraq war."

Buzzell said he had blogged from an army cyber café during his posting in Iraq.

The U.S. army had requested the blog be shut down, but by the time Buzzell had won the interest of several publishers.

"My War tells what it's like to be a grunt fighting in the Sunni Triangle with more power and authority than the best 'embedded reporter' could manage," Blooker judge Nick Cohen, told BBC.

"It's something of a triumph for blogs over traditional media," added Cohen.

"The success of books like My War reflects the growing recognition of 'trickle-up writing', or writing that starts online," Bob Young, chief executive of the Blooker's sponsor, Lulu.com, told BBC.

Military Bloggers Wary of New Policy

The Washington Post reports:
President George W. Bush -- appearing via remote broadcast on two large television screens -- on Saturday thanked a roomful of military bloggers in Arlington, Va., for their service to the country.

"America's military bloggers are also an important voice for the cause of freedom," Bush said in the taped message to the group, which was gathered in Northern Virginia for the 2007 MilBlog Conference. "You understand that defeating the terrorists requires us to defeat their ideology of hatred and of death with a more powerful vision, a vision of human liberty."

This compliment came just days after some bloggers lamented that a new U.S. Army regulation might hinder military blogging from combat zones. On April 19, the Army issued Regulation 530-1, an updated policy on operational security that requires soldiers to consult with a commanding officer before posting information in a public forum. Army OPSEC Program Manager Maj. Ray Ceralde told washingtonpost.com Wednesday that the policy would have no effect on blogging.

But Bloggers at the convention remained skeptical.

"It has the potential for great mischief," said blogger John Donovan of a blog called Argghhh!. Donovan said he worried that commanders might interpret the new policy to mean that they have to read every blog post before it goes online. This could swamp commanders to a point where they will no longer allow blogging, he said.

Bloggers only would be required to register their blogs once, according to Ceralde, not to vet every post with commanders. This, though, is a point of contention, according to Donovan and milblogger Matthew Currier Burden of Blackfive.net.

Burden said he talked to several soldiers blogging from Iraq who said they were unsure of how to deal with the updated policy. Describing the policy as badly written, Burden said he and other milbloggers on the home front would try and clear up any confusion.

Ward Carroll, editor of military.com, one of the sponsors of the conference, said the president's willingness to appear via videotape at the conference, along with Rear Admiral Mark I. Fox's appearance via Web cam from Iraq, shows a positive change in how the civilian government and the military are reacting to the milblogging community.

"There have been initiatives, direct outreach to milbloggers," Carroll said. "Again this is evidence of a community that is growing of import and of impact."

Roxie Merritt, director of new media operations at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, stood up during one of the four panel discussions and offered every blogger her contact information so they could participate in the blogger roundtables her office hosts. These conference calls connect bloggers with high-ranking U.S. military officials.

Blogger Bill Roggio of "The Fourth Rail" said the milblogging community has gotten a lot bigger since their first conference, held in April 2006. "It shows that there is a medium here that has a real influence," Roggio said.

However, Roggio too feared the new Army policy might have done some damage.

"It has a chilling effect," Roggio said.

GOP Aide Busted For Fake Blog Posts On Liberal Sites

Liberal bloggers have uncovered a staff member to Rep. Charles Bass (R-NH) using government computers to make fake posts on liberal blogs in New Hampshire, today's ROLL CALL reports.

Heard on The Hill columnist Mary Ann Akers has authorized RAW STORY to reprint the full registration-restricted item below:

Liberal bloggers in New Hampshire busted an aide to Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.) who was posing as a liberal blogger on such blogs as Blue Granite, NH-02 Progressive and others. Bass’ office admitted culpability to HOH and said the staffer would be “appropriately disciplined.”

Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.)

The unnamed aide to Bass — who, like many others in his party, faces a tough re-election fight — was routinely trolling liberal New Hampshire political blogs calling himself “IndyNH” and more commonly IndieNH, pretending to be a progressive.

Finally, after noticing that lots of things he said just didn’t add up, a couple of the bloggers traced IndieNH’s IP address to the House of Representatives.

And they thought, “How many offices in the U.S. House would be interested in one race in New Hampshire?” The answer: Very few. Probably only one.

Laura Clawson, who runs the Blue Granite blog and writes as “Miss Laura,” told HOH that she and another blogger easily traced IndieNH’s IP address to the House server. They could even see the searches Mr. or Ms. IndieNH was doing to gather opposition research on Bass’ challenger, Paul Hodes (D), such as “Hodes and gay marriage” and “Hodes and taxes.”

The poseur had raised suspicions among liberal bloggers after he pooh-poohed a recent poll showing Bass tied with Hodes and suggested that Democrats should not waste any more time or money on the Hodes race and instead should invest their resources in other races.

“I am going to look at the competitive race list to figure out where to send another mydd.com/netroots donation and maybe help out in other ways,” IndieNH posted. “Maybe CT or NY for me — they are at least close by. Anyone interested in pooling NH efforts for some of those races? Maybe we could even go help out for a few days in buses or something in November?”

After Clawson posted a notice on her site informing IndieNH that he (or she — Clawson wasn’t sure) had been rooted out as a GOP aide in Bass’ office, the postings ceased.

The aide’s job could cease, too. John Billings, a spokesman for Bass, acknowledged that “we have questioned the staff and found that a staffer in this office did indeed post to some blogs under the pseudonym ‘IndieNH.’ There was no good reason for this, just a serious lapse of judgment, and the staffer will be appropriately disciplined.”

Billings, who would not identify the offending staffer, said the office issued a memo “clarifying that posting messages to blogs or other web sites from government computers is a violation of office policy. Congressman Bass will not tolerate this sort of activity in his office.”

The incident follows a string of cases in which Capitol Hill aides have been caught modifying entries on Members in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

Billings added that while the action was certainly a violation of office policy, “whether or not it was a violation of House rules and what disciplinary action is necessary or appropriate is under review.”

No one was more disappointed to hear of the transgression than the folks on the Hodes campaign. (Yeah, right.)

“It’s a safe bet that Bass staffers are the only people on the House network who spend their days reading blogs on the district and running Internet searches on Paul Hodes,” said Hodes spokesman Reid Cherlin. “I guess when you roll over on the big issues you end up with a lot of time on your hands — but I’m pretty sure the taxpayers meant those computers to be used for legislating, not campaigning.”