Awards

As a new blogger I have been vaguely aware of the Koufax awards process and heartily congratulate the winners.

But I think it is worthwhile to pay special notice to the work of two blogs in particular of late for their yeoman work on Social Security and Gannon-Guckert respectively. They are Josh Marshall's TPM and John Aravosis' AmericaBlog, the latter of which I only recently heard of and added to my blogroll when the WH press scandal began to break.

While TPM was always good, his content was random depending on the day until he emerged to give a lazer beam focus on the issue of Social Security "reform", identifying position stances of elected representatives, calling their offices for comments, picking apart the nuances of their responses and media coverage, chasing down leads as to the origins of the various front groups posing as SS "reformers" and generally providing minute by minute coverage of the administration's efforts to take down the program. He's done a great service in strengthening the forces for protecting the program from its ideological opponents and encouraging a solidification in Democratic responsiveness in Congress and throughout the country.

As to the continuing Gannon scandal, the relentless coverage of John Aravosis (and his fantastic TV appearances) has made this about the most embarassing conservative escapade in recent memory. He's provoked the normally ready for TV, cocky folks at Powerline to sputtering profanities and hissing at their website's passersby like some trapped-in-its-cage, deranged dead-alive character out of Salem's Lot or 28 Days Later. AmericaBlog's efforts have finally caused Ann Coulter to crawl up from her sewer to cry about how everyone in the world who gets into the White House briefing room and gains access to classified materials uses a pseudonym and runs sex-fetish websites, as the spittle flies from her mouth and runs down her chinny-chin-chin.

To TPM and AmericaBlog I express my deepest appreciation and admiration.