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Denial of service attacks on pro-war blogs

by Mark Gisleson

Living so close to Chicago (seven hours by Interstate), you'd think I'd read the Chicago Tribune a little more often. That rarest of media creatures, a Republican newspaper that's ideologically consistent (i.e., anti-Bush at times), the ChiTrib is one of the great American dailies. Thanks to Jim Romenesko, here's a link to Emily Nunn's fantastic write-up on a recent Al Franken book signing in Skokie.

[Franken] calls his wife several times a day ("To ... Franni," he wrote in the book's dedication, "who's been screaming about this stuff for years and believed in the book. I love you so much. And even more importantly, you love me"). And he has two kids whom he obviously adores. One teaches grade school in the Bronx; the other has just started his first year at Princeton.

When I pointed out that he was becoming the mouthpiece of the left, he demurred.

"There are plenty of other voices. ... There's Paul Krugman, who been out there from the very beginning, God bless him, he is a blessing, and there's Molly Ivins who is wonderful, and Joe Conason [from Salon.com]. ... people keep saying you're the one, but it's just because I'm the No. 1 best seller. The book is funny and says the same that they're saying but says it in a way that [makes you laugh]."

Another Romenesko link took me to Al Kamen's "Nothing Negative, See?" from today's WaPost. Not quite as funny, but reeking of irony, Kamen sums up Ashcroft's latest assault on open government.

The Justice Department, after stonewalling media requests for more than a year, has finally posted an outside consultant's study of the agency's efforts to ensure diversity in the workplace.

Reporters, who had filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act for the 186-page report by KPMG Consulting -- a report that mostly likely cost taxpayers a few hundred grand -- at last got a chance to see it.
And there it was, in stark black and white: half white, the other half blacked out by department officials, who noted the law permits concealing "pre-decisional deliberative information."

The cuts were made, we are told, by a career "senior department FOIA officer" using that legal interpretation. Officials say this exemption allows them to receive critical reports without worrying about negative publicity.

"The bureaucracy run amok," one stunned political appointee said yesterday of the nifty rationale for cutting such a mundane report.

So in the contents section, under "Recommendations," we find . . . nothing.

How about under "the key findings of the study"? The first five are blacked out. But the sixth paragraph says, "The department's attorney workforce is more diverse than the U.S. legal workforce." Somehow, that critical "pre-decisional deliberative information" was left in.

Thanks to Counterspin I had a chance to read this Winds of Change post about denial of service attacks on pro-war blogs. Is there anything quite so tired and clichéd as rightwingers huffing about freedom of speech? Losing a few hours of access is hardly a major 1st Amendment issue, while hacking a bunch of tools who parrot pro-war propaganda is, credibly, a blow against empire building. Now if the hackers managed to shut down some of these windbags they might have a case, but seeing as how I read about it on one of their blogs, you gotta wonder how much damage was done? Hell, I'm just a liberal weenie and I've got to cut them some slack: with Rush in treatment, life's got to be tough for the hard right. No more denial of service attacks, OK guys? If you keep interrupting these pro-war circle jerks, these bloggers might have to leave their rumpus rooms and start interacting with normal Americans, and then we'd all suffer. 'Nuff said.

UPDATE: As with the Terri Schiavo case (see yesterday's post), nothing is ever quite exactly what it seems. Turns out that denial of service attack also shut down TalkLeft and Calpundit, two prominent lefty blogs. So while it may have been about the shutting down of pro-war blogs, it might have been just the opposite, or possibly just apolitical hacking.

Posted by Steve Perry at October 22, 2003 10:37 AM

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