What's wrong with HuffPo is what's wrong with Arianna Huffington herself. Now that she thinks she's accumulated as much influence on the left as she once had on the right, she's ready to start peddling it again. As she always has.

I think it's clear that she wants to turn HuffPost into some sort of "liberal" Politico, staffed with all sorts of establishment journalists and the like. She raised a lot of money from investors and wants to build that into a profitable venture and apparently thinks that is the way to do it. Fair enough; I don't have a problem with that. I don't think it will be journalistically valuable at all, but that's her choice.

The only concern is that HuffPost is knowns to reporters and others - especially those who don't know the world of blogs well -- as a "liberal blog." My concern is that it's going to become the representative blog - what Liberal Blogs Believe -- and it will be staffed with the likes of Edsall and filled with stuff from the Jon Alters and we will see all sorts of things along the lines of: "Even the leading liberal blog, Huffington Post, posted a criticism of the liberal bloggers who argued X, calling them irresponsible, shrill and vulgar."

Things like that. It's fine if she wants to de-blogify HuffPost, but then what pours forth from it shouldn't be characterized as "blogging." It will be, as I said, the equivalent of Politico.

Speaking of anemic national media.......there is the AT&T whistleblower, Mark Klein, that very few have even heard of or care to seriously report on.

There is a lot in the Frontline program on Klein's discoveries, and the lengths to which EPIC has gone to verify their credibility. As you say, though, as extraordinary as that case is, it has largely been ignored.

You mention in your post that you "met with the program's producer, Rick Young, as they were identifying the issues they wanted to cover." Now don't be modest -- are you in/quoted in the documentary?

No. The point of the meeting was to do a preliminary interview in order to prepare for the on-camera interview, but they had a few months gap after that when they actually started filming, and we were never able to find dates when I'd be in DC to film the interview. So there is no on-camera interview included, but there is definitely material I gave them that's included, and James Bamford is prominently included and he's one of the best spokespeople on these issues, and makes most if not all the points that I think ought to have been made.

That Schiff-Flake amendment is as useless as a non-binding war resolution. What's the point of making a law that says another law can't be broken, especially when that law has been broken for years? Is that supposed to make investigations unnecessary? Is that supposed to make it all better?

I have very mixed feelings about that bill, to put it mildly. The only conceivable benefit is that it completely eliminates the administration's argument that Congress, with the AUMF, implicitly granted them statutory authority to violate FISA (since now Congress is explicitly requiring all eavesdropping in compliance with FISA).

But since the administration does not recognize Congress' power to compel eavesdropping in compliance with FISA, and since the current law already provides for EXACTLY that same language ("exclusive means"), what is the point -- other than pretending to act -- in enacting a law that the administraiton claims the power to violate, especially when their five years worth of violations have not really been investigated or resolved?

Here you are, complaining about the Democrats again. They have been in office for four months. They have had a lot to do in that period.

It's possible that they do some things well and some things poorly. I don't think the President should be allowed to break the law and spy on us in secret without accountability. If Democrats allow that, that is a ground for criticizing them, no matter how wonderful they are on other issues.

I know it's a standard part of the Salon LTE interface, and, I suppose, has some value for lurkers. But I really prefer the more democratic assumption that we all contribute to the discussion here. Unlike other Salon columns, Glenn's community has been about discussion and elaboration, rather than a contest that seeks editorial approval.

Just to be clear, I never use the red stars. I told Salon from the beginning that I found it unnecessary and counter-productive for several reasons. They said that they would try to do them every now and then when someone had time, so I guess someone has extra time today and doled them out.

In fairness, there are Salon readers who like the Red Stars and complain sometimes that with as many comments as there are here, they want the teacher to give them out to the best students so they don't have to wade through all the comments. But since this is really more of an ongoing discussion rather than a series of stand-alone letters, the stars don't seem to serve the same purpose here, other than to give the selected commenters something to show their proud parents.

Clinton did NOT commit perjury.

Who said he did? The post excerpt you cited was about obstruction of justice, not perjury. And Thompson argued that Clinton was guilty of perjury but it was not serious enough to rise to the level of impeachment. He voted to acquit on the perjury charge, but to convict on the Obstruction of Justice charge.