Let me jump briefly back to one of my posts from this past Friday:

So, in other words, the US media is not at an all-time low because of it’s liberal bias, but because it was too “pro-war” on the issue of Iraq. Yeahhhhh, righhhht!

You know, I’m a believer in competition. Let al-Jazeera compete head-on-head with the likes of CNN and Fox News. It’s freedom of the press on an international scale.

I wrote that in response to an article I had found in the Guardian Unlimited which reported that al-Jazeera hosted a transparently biased “conference” to critisize the US media for being too pro war! That alone is laughable, but if people at al-Jazeera think they are ready to take the US media on, they are sadly mistaken.

I never really said that in my last post, but this is certainly the case. I agree that the US media is at an all-time low. But it’s also at an all-time high, in the form of new competition from media companies such as Fox News, internet-based news services, and the Blogosphere.

And one shining example of the expansion and normalization of the Blogosphere could be seen today in Washington, as Pajamas Media and Powerline Blogger Paul Mirengoff took the opportunity to question Senators Kennedy and Durbin, both of whom soon grew too flustered to handle further questioning and fled the spotlight.

Here’s a bit of what happened as told by Paul himself:

Durbin presented the usual Democratic line, which assumes that the the intercept program violates FISA and proceeds from there. I pointed out that the Attorney General had just explained how FISA contains an exception for surveillance authorized by another act of Congress, and that (in Gonzales’ view) the congressional authorization of force (AUMF), by authorizing all means necessary to prevent another attack, provides authorization independent of FISA for the administration to listen to al Qaeda calls into the U.S. Durbin allowed that I had accurately recited the Attorney General’s argument.

I then asked why, if the Democrats disagree with the administration’s understanding of what AUMF authorizes, they don’t present clarifying legislation telling the administration that its interpretation is incorrect. This would enable the Senate to vote on whether it thinks listening to calls from al Qaeda to the U.S. is a necessary and proper measure to prevent another attack.

Apparently peeved at the thought of having to vote on that issue, Senator Durbin asked what organization I was with. I told him I was respresenting Power Line and Pajamas Media. Durbin said he wasn’t familiar with this group, and then proceeded to address my question. His answer was (I quote from memory) that “this is not how things work” and that (if I understood him correctly) the issue is whether the president’s actions are constitutional.

Here you can see the obvious difference between the way Paul questions Kennedy and Durbin and the kinds of softball questions these two normally receive from the media. For Paul, this was a great opportunity to get to the heart of a vital issue. For journalists in the MSM, this is their career, which won’t last very long if they press too hard on officials in Washington.

Remember CNN’s admission a few years back that, in order to continue to report “news” from Iraq they were forced to ignore the obvious atrocities that were going on there? Other news agencies admitted the same, and they’ve behaved in a similar manner in other repressive regions of the world.

Well, if they were willing to slant their coverage in Iraq to prevent being thrown out by the likes of Saddam, how much more likely is it that news organizations will slant coverage in order to remain in the good graces of those whom they admire in DC? Career liberals in Washington love career liberals in the MSM, and vice versa.

Which is why Democrats rarely face the kind of questioning that Kennedy and Durbin faced today. How did they react? They got the hell out of there; probably outraged that they should have to field tough questions from an outfit they never heard of before. I can imagine Kennedy’s reaction to staffers once he was back in his office:

“Who the hell was that?! Why wasn’t I warned about this? Who set this up for me?! This is an outrage! I’m a senior member of Congress, nobody treats me like that!!”

Okay, back to reality.

Definitely, this was a very telling moment. Today, the Open Source Media announced its arrival in Washington. I couldn’t be more thrilled, though, some liberal bloggers out there were less than happy with today’s result. Here are a few comments found posted to the Pajamas Media page where the video of a portion of the Q & A can be found:

CheezNCrackers Feb 6, 2006 02:09 PM

You guys all deserve to have Abu Gonzales justify Bushy declare himself “president for life”.

Bushy? How old are you? You sound like a pouting, petulant child that got on Mum and Dad’s computer.

Donzi Feb 6, 2006 06:36 PM

LizDexic

You had better be damn thankful, we aren’t Islamists. For if we were, your attitude and mouth, would have been on the floor, looking up at the rest of you…Now that truly is funny.

But then you seem just exactly the dhimmified kind of person, ‘they’ desire….and THAT fact is really hilarious.

Hmmmm… Is that last comment a threat? Sounds like this person should be working for al-Jazeera.

David