State Political Blogs

David All at Tech Republican takes a look at The New Guards: The Players, identifying ten conservative or libertarian groups that might make good contributions to the online space in the months and years to come.

David’s piece is a response to Jon Henke’s New Guards. Henke says the three components of being effective in the online space are messaging, money and mobilization.

The Sam Adams Alliance hosted Denver Samsphere over the weekend, an event to promote and build the Colorado center-right blogosphere.

The Tennessee ConserVOLiance is settling into a strong rhythm, with 20 participating bloggers.

Conservativa in Virginia is a great example of local conservative blog aggregating.

Blogger Warner Todd Huston did some original investigative reporting this morning. He interviewed some of the students who had been interviewed for a segment on CNN, and learned from them that CNN host Rick Sanchez:

…was so virulently skewed to the left that he berated and bullied students who held a differing point of view. It was reportedly so bad that CNN crewmembers even apologized to several students for Sanchez’ incivility.

Complete post here:

CNN’s Rick Sanchez Accused of Pushing Left Agenda in College Interviews.

In California, Democrats are staging a recall election on June 3 aimed at Jeff Denham, a Republican from the 12th state senate district. They are punishing Dillon for voting against the 2007 budget bill pushed by big government, big-spending interests in the state.

In Michigan, the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance is collecting signatures to force a recall of Andy Dillon, the Democratic leader of the Michigan state assembly. Last October, Dillon voted to increase the income tax rate in Michigan from 3.9% to 4.35%.

In the Denham recall in California, pro-recall forces have been dogged with allegations that their petition circulators collected signatures illegally, ignoring the district’s residency requirement.

In the Dillon recall in Michigan, pro-recall forces are also subject to a residency requirement. They seem to be honoring it. On the other hand, here the allegations are that petition blockers from outside the district are coming in to harrass and shadow petition circulators, along with employees from Andy Dillon’s office, who may or may not be doing this on their time off.

You couldn’t ask for a more stark contrast. In California, the forces of big government seek to punish a legislator who tried to hold the line on government spending. No amount of illegality in their petition-collecting process results in any action. In Michigan, a small citizen’s group seeks to punish a legislator who pushed for a huge tax increase. No amount of illegality and corruption perpetrated against them by thugs results in any action.

Blogs covering the story:

Here Come Da Judge.

Dillon’s removal a must.

Tax them til they bleed…anyone got tea?

Breaking News: Robocalls from policy lobby attempt to protect Dillon from recall.

More on House Speaker Andy Dillon recall.

Outrageous: Redford Township Supervisor wants to Shred First Amendment.

Thug life, Godwin’s Law, and the recall of Andy Dillon (Redux)

Meet Speaker Dillon’s best friend: Supervisor Miles “Bull Conner” Handy.

Is the post office a public or private monopoly?

Recall of tax-hiker going well.

The South Dakota blogosphere made national headlines (at least in the blogosphere) back in 2004 amidst allegations of astroturf blogging in the Thune-Daschle U.S. Senate race.

Once the spotlight passed on, South Dakota’s bloggers continued on. Some of my favorites:

On March 14-16, the New Organizing Institute hosted 40 lefty bloggers at a “Blogger Summit” in Washington, D.C. As it says, “All expenses will be paid for during the Summit - including , travel, meals and accommodations.” Most of the invitation-only bloggers focus in their states on state-level political blogging.

The co-sponsors of the “Summit” were:

These sponsoring groups are known to have the same donors, the group known as Billionaires for Big Government.

Check out the list of participating bloggers.

Now, here’s the interesting thing. I clicked through to a few of the participating bloggers, Left in the West and Oliver Willis. What I found were two bloggers who blog and blog and blog and blog…but (unless I missed it) didnt say one word about the conference, or their participation in it.

How odd. What’s up with that? Is it that whole “I don’t want people to know I’m part of the VLWC thing”?

Recent laughably biased stories in the New York Times about John McCain reminded me of Media Mythbusters.

We’re going to need it a lot this year. I think that’s a safe prediction.

The great thing about Media Mythbusters is that it easily enables citizen journalists across the country to sign up and start adding their content.

There is an approval process to ensure the reasonableness and integrity of the site’s contributors, but it is not burdensome.

Still at risk: the shocking ignorance of our young reminded me of the shocking ignorance of the typical lefty blogger. Sign up at Media Mythbusters to start the education process.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Washington, is a free-market, limited government think tank. During each legislative session, they publish a Hey! Big Spender! index that is chock-ful of bloggy goodness. They keep careful track of the “total increased taxes and fees proposed by each individual legislator” as primary or co-sponsor, over the next ten years, if their sponsored legislation all passed.

It ain’t chicken feed. The biggest spender right now, Democrat senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, would like the good people of her state to pay $214,269,175,298 in additional taxes over the next ten years. You know, that is a lot of money. Billions. $214 of those billions.

Do the bloggers of the state of Washington use this information in their blog posts? I did a Technorati search for Jeanne Kohl-Welles and came up dry.

Why is this? Could it be that, as with so many blogs published by organizations with paid staffs, like the EFF’s Liberty Live blog, they don’t link out to the homegrown, native, volunteer bloggers in Washington? Like Sound Politics or the Mad Blogger or the Parkenfarker Group?

Blogs: Give them some link-love, and they’ll give you some coverage. It’s not that hard.

Categories and tags, in my opinion, are an extremely important part of your blog. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always a good idea to try and add fresh content to your blog on a daily basis. But, admittedly, this can sometimes be impossible considering the amount of time it can take to create an original, well thought out post. Read the rest of this entry »

Former Ohio Governor Ken Blackwell and former U.S. Congressman Tom Delay announced a new organization this week, Coalition for a Conservative Majority.

Checking out their good-looking website reminded me that when the other new conservative action group, Freedom’s Watch came online a month or two ago, their website was baaaad. It has improved enormously since last I looked.

The Coalition for a Conservative Majority website looks good.

Most of the conservative and libertarian organizations are “legacy” organizations that haven’t figured out the internet or blogging. Let’s see if these new groups have a better understanding of online organizing.