Left blogosphere often gets it right — and first

by David Safier
Tedski over at R-Cubed gave himself some well deserved credit for being right about the federal investigation into Rick Renzi's wrong doings back in 2006. The Bush administration was scrambling to keep the investigation quiet, at least until after the election, and the Republic bit on the White House spin.

If the left side of the blogosphere were a hit and miss place that sees its job as carrying the Democratic Party's water, I wouldn't pay any attention to it any more than the traditional media seems to. But as a regular, intense reader of some of the best national blogs that come from the left, I know that they're very careful about getting it right and scrupulous about admitting quickly when they got it wrong, which isn't often. Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo was all over the Justice Department firings while the MSM kept saying, "Nothing to see here." He was right, and today, the story, implicating Rove and the rest of the rogue's gallery, is the story of the day. I see this again and again. Months later, sometimes years later, the MSM "discovers" a story that had been explored at length on the lefty blogs.

It happens at the national level, and it happens here in Arizona. It's time that the rest of the media assigns someone to look through the blogs for real stories — not just the often nonsensical right wing blather on Drudge (that's where you find the pure spin the Rs want to get into circulation, and manage to get into the discussion with maddening success) — and send someone out looking to see if there's anything to the stories they haven't seen fit to cover. More often than not, there is.