Tuesday - September 04, 2007

Congrats

It won’t happen often, but in this case, it is a clear win for all of us.

Bloggers Win Before the FEC

Ah, summer, the time for daydreams, like when BlogCritics.org’s John Bambenek believed he could haul DailyKos before the Federal Election Commission and have a hearing where he’d prove that we were violating the law by failing to register as a political committee.

Vacation’s over, and the FEC has unanimously determined that DailyKos qualifies as a media entity under federal law, and thus none of the site’s expenditures count under federal law for determining whether a political committee was formed.  Just like a newspaper isn’t charged with making a campaign contribution by editorializing on behalf of a candidate, neither is this site:

Kos Media qualifies as a media entity in its function of operating DailyKos. DailyKos is available to the general public and is the online equivalent of a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication as described in the Act and Commission regulations. Additionally, DailyKos is precisely the type of online media presence the Commission contemplated when revising the media exemption provided in 11 C.F.R. §§ 100.73 and 100.132.  An examination of DailyKos and other supporting materials demonstrates that the site’s primary function is to provide news and commentary to millions of viewers through its “blog” entries providing news stories with links to “breaking news,” original political commentary, and calls to action. Like traditional media outlets such as newspapers and magazines, DailyKos has a publisher, Moulitsas, who appears to retain editorial control over the content of the site, and a list of contributing editors, who along with Moulitsas appear to be “front page posters” and draft stories. Further, registered users of DailyKos may post responsive comments, which are similar to letters to the editors in traditional media outlets.

In addition, Kos Media’s creation and distribution of the DailyKos falls within the scope of the exemption. First, the complaint does not allege, nor does publicly available information indicate, that Kos Media is owned or controlled by a political party, committee, or candidate. Second, by creating and distributing the DailyKos, containing news stones with links to “breaking news,” original political commentary and calls to actions akin to editorials, Kos Media is acting within its legitimate press function that qualifies it as a press entity. As such, Kos Media’s creation and distribution of the DailyKos falls within Kos Media’s legitimate press. function. Moreover, Kos Media’s operation of DailyKos is the type of activity contemplated by the Commission during its rulemaking regarding the media exemption....

While the complaint asserts that DailyKos advocates for the election of Democrats to federal office, the Commission has repeatedly stated that an entity that would otherwise qualify for the media exemption does not lose its eligibility because it features news or commentary lacking objectivity or expressly advocates in its editorials the election or defeat of a federal candidate.

Blogging is just as much media as TV, Radio and newsprint.  Hopefully, no other bloggers will have to be dragged into court to prove it again. 

Congrats KOS, you did well in fighting this one.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/04/2007 at 10:06 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • News-Briefs •  
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   Sunday - August 19, 2007

The Blogroll

In my post below about a redesign of the site, it was suggested that the blogroll needs to be updated.  This thread is to capture your suggestions of who to include (and who to dump )

Have at it.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/19/2007 at 10:49 AM   
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   Saturday - August 18, 2007

Saturday Suggestion Thread

Since I’ll be flying the unfriendly skies today, I thought I’d open a thread for you all to give suggestions.

I’m working on a redesign of the site and want to hear from you, the awesome members, if you have any suggestions.  Are there features you’d like to see incorporated?  Things that are here now that you don’t care for?  The floor is open.  Waddayathink?

Posted by Drew458     on 08/18/2007 at 06:51 AM   
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   Thursday - August 02, 2007

Weekend Open Thread

Taking the kids to King’s Dominion tomorrow for a last summer hurrah.

I love roller coasters.

Will check in tomorrow night.

Chat amongst yourselves.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/02/2007 at 11:23 PM   
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   Tuesday - July 24, 2007

Bandwidth Hogs

I was looking at the bandwidth usage for the blog back on July 16th.  I was stunned that we, at the middle of the month, had already burned through 110% of our alloted bandwidth.  I knew I had to do something drastic to make sure Hosting Matters didn’t shut us down for overusing the service.

So I made the decision to delete all of the “Weekend Eye Candy” pics as they were showing an enormous percentage of the bandwidth usage (through direct links no less)

I decided to look tonight and see if it had an effect.  What do you think? 

This chart is the daily usage since June 1st.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/24/2007 at 11:40 PM   
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   Sunday - July 15, 2007

New Wind

Wow.

That is all I can say.  When I posted ”Ponderances” on Friday, my honest expectation was that there would be three or four comments says something like: “Yeah, we understsand, it hasn’t been the same since the Skipper died. Probably best to just let it go.”

I never expected that the little bit I was doing made even a little difference.  I am overwhelmed by your kind words.

In light of your excellent advice, I have just sent an email to all the BMEWS RECON team, inviting them, if they wish, to begin posting on the main site.  These are folks you all know and who Allan trusted with the keys to part of the kingdom.  I expect a few of them will respond in the affirmative.

If there are others of you who would like a shot, send me a sample post.  Write it just like you would if it were going to be live.  My crack staff of editors (OK, probably just me and Christopher) will pour over it and determine its overall quality.  Should it pass, you will be granted access for a trial period.  I ask that those who would like to be considered commit to at least one post per week.

I will limit the number of posters, simply to keep down the confusion, but for now am taking all applications.

Thank you again, I feel rejuvinated in the effort to combat the tinfoil-hatted, nutrooted moobats out there.  And its all because of you, the fine readers and participants in this small corner of the intarw3bs.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/15/2007 at 12:30 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Personal •  
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   Friday - July 13, 2007

Ponderances

Folks,

As you’ve noticed, I have not posted for a couple of days.  I have been keeping up with the comments and reading the fine posts at the Member Blog, but to be honest, I’m in a funk.  I used to get jazzed about a good political fight. I would enjoy going head-to-head with a pinko, liberal, betwetting, birkenstock-wearing, lice-infested socialist as much as the next guy.

But that has changed.

Maybe its fatigue.  It might be that I’m so tired of waging this uphill battle that I’m just worn out and defeated.

Where is the conservative leadership?  Where are those whove sworn to uphold the constitution and defend it from every enemy, foreign and domestic?  I fear we have reached the tipping point where the politicians no longer fear the people they serve and have given enough booty to the victim class that there is no turning back.  Government has become the 800lb gorilla and there is little we can do to stop it now.

Allan started this Blog out of frustration with the political climate and in response to the attacks of 9/11/2001.  He was a great thinker and a great writer. 

I’m neither.

I struggle to come up with content for you all to chew on.  It’s not that I don’t see plenty out there, but rather, it is all someone else’s.  I could put up 100 links per day to great commentary and analysis, stories of heroism and folly, but it would be jsut that: links to places elsewhere.  As I’ve said before, Allan and I used to joke a lot that he was the thinker and I was the linker.  A blog that just links to other blogs is pretty useless.

So, I’m taking a break to really ponder if it is worth keeping this thing running any longer.  I know there is a community of good people that visit here to talk about life and politics, but even that has dwindled to a trickle. 

I think you deserve better. 

So let me take this weekend and think through what I think is best. 

I’ll be back in a few days, either revitalized, or ready to close up shop.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/13/2007 at 10:50 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Personal •  
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   Wednesday - June 27, 2007

Going to Ground

May be light posting activity today.  I have three hot projects I’m working on at the day job and all require a good bit of concentration.

How ‘bout you Recon Patrol members?  Got anything good this week?  Sure been quiet over there.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/27/2007 at 09:02 AM   
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   Thursday - June 21, 2007

Google Reader Rocks

For years, I have used the Newsgator Outlook plugin (no longer available) to get my RSS feeds into Outlook.

Our company recently upgraded to Office 2007, which has a built-in RSS reader, but it is not configured properly for our firewall, so feeds were sporadic at best and completely broken at worst.

So last week, I tried Google Reader.  Now I’ll admit, I’ve not tried a lot of the online news readers, but I am sold on this one already.  I’ve removed almost all of the feeds in Outlook and now have them all in this reader.  Even though its not in my Outlook folders, this is much more manageable in that it shows the newest links first, marks them as read by simply scrolling over them, and parses the XML much better than Outlook does.

Am I missing an even better product out there?  What do you all use?

Posted by Drew458     on 06/21/2007 at 10:19 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff •  
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   Tuesday - June 19, 2007

Technical Question

For those of you are Expression Engine gurus.  When I post a story, I get the following message:

Any idea where the error is?

Posted by Drew458     on 06/19/2007 at 12:42 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff •  
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   Thursday - June 14, 2007

Outage

If you tried to get to the site earlier today, you may have gottten a message about a configuration file missing or some such thing.

What actually happened was an attack on the site from places unknown.  We were receiving over 300 messages (spam, trackbacks, comments) at a time, which overwhelmed the processes.  Hosting Matters jumped on it before I even noticed and worked to smack down the offender and got us back online.

I should have some posts up later on today.

Thatisall.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/14/2007 at 01:44 PM   
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   Tuesday - June 12, 2007

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

I am pleased to report that you have given over $600 to help cover the expenses for Allan’s family. 

I sent the entire balance to Allan’s son, Sean, this morning.  Thank you again.  You don’t know how much this means to them.

Click Here is a complete accounting of the funds received.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/12/2007 at 08:20 AM   
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   Monday - June 11, 2007

Welcome to The Navigator

Give a warm welcome to “The Navigator”.  As you’ll see in his first post below, he will be steering us toward moonbattery with clear and insightful stories.  He resides in Grand Forks, ND and has been a BMEWS member for a couple of months, lurking in the shadows.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/11/2007 at 06:28 AM   
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DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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