It sounds like they are shilling for Wes Clark's campaign. Every quote in the Drudge report was accurate and, in light of the entire testimony, not at all a distortion of what Clark said.

Name seven bloggers, with an appropriate range of political views, who could link their sites to form a campaign press criticism "war room" similar to what CJR is setting up.

It's late, so I'll forego suggesting a list myself. But I'll be those foundations could have done better with the bloggers. Cheaper too.

Ah yes, but did anybody apply for the grant? That's the real secret. If you know how to ask, you get grants if you're the best request they receive. If you don't ask, you won't get grants no matter how much better your nonrequested use for the money would have been.

“Thanks to generous funding from foundations -- mainly the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Revson Foundation, and the Open Society Institute”

Dan Drezner should realize that there is always grant money available if you are a liberal intellectual slut. The above foundations are dedicated to destroying President Bush. No funds will be handed out to those who do not share this goal.

“Why the hell didn't anyone tell me? The Columbia School of Journalism can just waltz in, rake in the cash, and set up some fantsy-pants blog? [Well, they do have reputation and experience, and they seem to be all over this Drudge/Clark business--ed.”

Roger L. Simon has something to say about this Drudge/Clark business:

http://rogerlsimon.com/archives/00000617.htm

Dan,

I suspect it would require a full-time commitment?

And I think you can't overestimate the benefits of editors for something like this.

Then again this may all be in vain.

If there are still people that don't understand how badly Drudge mischaracterized Clark, it's not clear what more can be done.

Not only did Drudge used ellipses to create a 'quote' that did not exist, leaving crucial qualifiers out, but he did soemthing even worse. He took some quotes, jumped several thousand words ahead and THEN WENT BACK to get more quotes.

As Josh Marshall says:

This is a big no-no. Ellipses (the dot, dot, dots) are one thing. But you don't take ellipses out of their order when the reordering changes the meaning.

David Thomson seems to have it right - three extreme left-wing foundations give money to a left-wing school to set up a blog ededicated to defending Dean, Clark, and other left-wing candidates. Is this really surprising? I mean, really, do you really think that an outfit funded by GEORGE SOROS is going to be fair? Please.

Seems to me that, with the shutting down of "soft money", we're going to be seeing a lot of innovative ways for all kinds of groups to support their candidates. And George Soros seems to have found another way - a less noisy way than MoveOn - to support his guys...

This doesn't seem to be any different from other political advocacy groups, on either side of the liberal/conservative divide. both sides have foundations and think-tanks which give money to people who will defend candidates and policies they support.

This is interesting as I think its the first time anyone's given a grant to set up a professional blog with a particular political slant. But other than that I dont see much thats new here.

Though we will probably see something like this set up by conservative groups some time soon.

I am new to the internet and I am surfing here and this is so neat. I did a search in the search engines on "a professional blog" and I found your web blog.
I am a chartered accountant in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and thus my interest in searching for "a professional blog" on the WWW.
I just wanted to see how the rest of the world thinks and see what trends and technology are happening in the world. I also was interested in a blog for myself, that is if I figured I could handle the technology of operating a blog. The different things discussed on a website found by searching for "professional blog" in the search engine is very amusing reading.

Respectly yours
Stephen J.
A Halifax Chartered Accountant