The Congressional Quarterly's Homeland Security - Intelligence section had an
article
focused on Juan Zarate, who became W's seventh terrorism czar this past May.
This is a rather complementary article about this young (34-year old) rising star who comes off as a dedicated public servant without necessarily suggesting what his political proclivities might be. (Although we might need to assume by being in the W White House what those are, he is a career (okay, roughly 10-year) civil servant -- and, taking the complimentary nature of this discussion, the type of person we should hope chooses a life of civil service.)
In the article, a Kossack (Lowell Feld) is cited in reference to a speech Zarate gave in September at the "liberal" New America Foundation. As per Jeff Stein, National Security Editor, CQ Staff, the comments were made on "the gossipy but influential anti-Bush political blog Daily Kos."
Zarate camed to the White House out of the Treasury Department, where he worked on issues related to terrorist financing. The quotes in the article come from both Bush and Clinton political appointees and are, uniformly, quite favorable about Zarate. See the article if you are interested in Zarate, himself.
From the article:
Zarate's luncheon speech at a September conference on terrorism at the liberal New America Foundation in Washington drew a vicious pan by the gossipy but influential anti-Bush political blog Daily Kos. "Frankly, this guy's speech was not just bad, it was one of the worst speeches I've ever heard in my life" and an "insult" to the nearly 1,000 experts present, wrote blogger Lowell Feld. "It . . . was so bad, so clueless, that I observed many people in the audience literally covering their faces in frustration, grimacing, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads, and smirking throughout his talk. Pitiful."
Now, the article suggests that others found this, at best, a weak speech (both others were anonymous). But, really, Zarate is not the thing that interested me in this story. (If interested in him, go to the article.) For me, I was interested to know that, at last, I have transformed from being a policy wonk into a gossip columnist / commentator.
On a more serious note, several posts / diarists I've seen recently have raised the question of why DailyKos can't merit the same sort of citations as might be give to some element of the MSM as the 100,000s of hits per day clearly indicates a greater readership than many newspapers or other "news" outlets. Here is an example of such a citation ... diminished by describing this as a "gossipy" blog (rather than one filled with intellectual (and emotional and ...) fervent, generally from a progressive point of view).