Supporters at the press conference included Stanford professor Larry Lessig, former FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, environmental activist Van Jones, a venture capitalist from the firm which first funded Twitter, Google’s chief evangelist Vint Cerf and Josh Silver from Free Press. That’s the same Josh Silver I criticized back in May for claiming the only real news was his kind of news.

Also on the panel: Republican consultant David All, whom I count as a friend and whose work on Slatecard I admire but with whom I disagree on some matters of policy and partisanship. I’m not the first to note the incongruity of this panel; if you happened to check out the comments at All’s TechRepublican starting this weekend, Mike Turk initiated a very interesting debate with All on the merits of the group continuing through today.

David has called Internet for Everyone a “bipartisan” organization, which Turk has also called into question. All’s claim seems very hard to justify, based on the names above. For one thing, the only other reference to Internet for Everyone as “bi-partisan” comes from Brian Reich at Fast Company — who is, coincidentally, a former Gore campaign aide. Meanwhile Tim Karr of Free Press didn’t bother to include the word “bipartisan” in his announcement at Huffington Post.

But I was reminded of a tweet from @DavidAll the evening the conference ended:

And in a post on Saturday, All did concede that the bipartisanship of the group was tenuous:

As one of the only Republicans in the coalition (Vint Cerf of Google is a registered Republican), I believe it’s crucial for Republicans to embrace a national broadband strategy.

Curious about Vint Cerf’s Republican bona fides, I decided to punch his name into OpenSecrets.org. For the sake of column width, I’ve removed his employers (principally MCI, MCI Worldcom, Worldcom and Google). Here’s what I found:

Finally! Proof that Vint Cerf is a Republican. Well, maybe he was once a Republican. And so, David’s claim that the Internet was Republican from the beginning has a fighting chance. But Cerf is clearly not a Republican now, in fact he has been quite an active Democrat since approximately the Reagan administration.

There are certainly times when cross-ideological partnerships are a good idea, such as when Redstate’s Mike Krempasky, Adam Bonin and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos came together to fend off campaign finance restrictions on bloggers. But it concerns me that David All — one of the C&E-recognized rising stars of GOP Washington — is giving ideological cover to an organization which is not just non-conservative and not just un-conservative, but whose basic idea treats limited government and market-based solutions as beneath discussion.

P.S. I hope this doesn’t dissuade him from watching the rest of The Wire.

Why wasn’t Michael Isikoff’s investigative piece outlining the lobbying connections of Barack Obama’s lead strategist, David Axelrod, promoted in Newsweek’s Sunday e-mail to subscribers?

Below right, I’ve cropped the article descriptions from this list for purposes of formatting this post, but I have not removed any of the articles. Although Isikoff’s report appears in the same June 2 issue of Newsweek as the stories, it is nowhere to be found here. And it should be, especially considering that the first four articles listed are all generally pro-Obama in their tilt and three are explicitly framed as advice for candidate Obama. The other four articles cover minor issues such as Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and John McCain.

What happened? One slim possibility is that the article is online-only and thus not eligible for inclusion in a round-up of magazine stories. But this seems not to be the case, as the screen capture indicates, both types of stories are included.

Another may be that Isikoff’s story was put to bed late, and not yet finalized when the feature-heavy e-mail was compiled. Possible, but if so not an adequate defense. Like last November, when WashingtonPost.com erroneously reported positive developments in the condition of Redskins safety Sean Taylor after he was already deceased, there is no excuse for not making e-mail alerts as timely as possible.

One more reason could be that Isikoff’s article is short, perhaps taken from the front of book section that is also home to Perspectives and the up-down-sideways Periscope arrows (if you can’t guess, this week Obama is up, Hillary is down and McCain is sideways). But that doesn’t make any sense, either. As the e-mail alert says,

Dear NEWSWEEK Subscriber,

Welcome to another edition of Political Perspectives, the subscriber-only e-mail newsletter previewing and highlighting NEWSWEEK’s coverage of the political world, in print and online. This week, Evan Thomas writes what an Obama adviser might say to the candidate about how to address the issue of race on the campaign trail. Elsewhere, Holly Bailey pores through John McCain’s just-released health records and Jonathan Alter looks at the lessons we can learn from Hamilton Jordan and Ted Kennedy.

It goes on like that, but there’s no mention of Isikoff or Axelrod. As the e-mail announces, it is not merely a list of their top features but the magazine’s “coverage of the political world, in print and online.” How does Isikoff’s reporting not fall into that category?

Surely there’s an explanation I haven’t ridiculed, and surely that will be their justification. I’m not the first to suggest that Newsweek specifically is in the tank for Obama, but I think I am the first to suggest that Newsweek is burying scoops that are problematic for him.

No matter, the Isikoff story still made it into the blogosphere. But as far as I can tell, only conservative blogs mentioned it. Even TalkLeft, which remains Clinton supporter central, hasn’t picked it up. One wonders how much further it might have traveled if the magazine had deployed its considerable PR assets on the story’s behalf.

This past week I spent about an hour talking through a tiny iPhone bluetooth headset on Skype and staring at the built-in iSight of a MacBook Pro while talking to Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis. I did so at the invitation of Conn Carroll, who usually holds down the righthand slot on Bloggingheads.tv, while he was celebrating his fifth wedding anniversary (congrats, by the way). Bill was an upbeat, friendly debate partner, and so far it looks like the loyal Bloggingheads commentariat doesn’t want to kill me.

The show plays like a funky, freewheeling, not-ready-for-cable TV “Crossfire” with less point-scoring, featuring a recurring cast of quirky political bloggers and policy wonks. I’ve been a constant viewer/listener back to when it was just Bob and Mickey figuring it out as they went along.

I should warn, around the middle there are audio-video sync problems, so this might be a good time to subscribe to the audio-only Bloggingheads podcast in iTunes.

So far, I see no discontent. Is that an advancement or an abdication? Or an accident?

How arbitrary is it? That’s no casual “it’s just in the sidebar” BlogAd — that’s a fully integrated premium BlogAd for an international petrochemical conglomerate lording over the front page of the progressive blogosphere’s most-viewed URL.

And yet, I only found it earlier by typing dailykos.com alone into the address bar in Firefox for OS X, at say, 10:00 p.m. EDT. Otherwise, I’ve gotten this:

Can anyone duplicate the page with the Chevron media buy? As I reload, and reload, and reload, I continue to see the “Crashing the Gate” spot in the same place, over and over. Did Markos change his mind at the last moment? Did Chevron Corp. withdraw? Is it slated for release and for some reason I’m missing this will be completely non-controversial?

I guess we’ll see. Either way: Interesting agreement on Chevron’s part, and on Kos’ part as well.

Update: Apparently yes, this has already appeared and apparently was not completely ignored — but still doesn’t seem to have meant the ad’s removal from the Daily Kos ad rotation — though perhaps efforts have been made to have it be less-seen. Presumably the ad buy is just running out by this point, and that’s that. I sure hope not.

Updated again: Competing arguments from the 10/16 comment section:

The bulk

of this diary is bitching about a single adverstisement on the largest pro-democratic website in the world. Somehow, from that single ad (which isn’t fooling anyone around here, by the way), the diarist states that he is one of many who are “deeply concerned that this website has become a staging ground for big oil propaganda.” That is just stupid.

I agree as well….

…I am weening myself off this site. I am stunned that Marcos would accept advertising dollars from Chevron…especially since he lives in the SF Bay Area….and has to know that Chevron is a major polluter of the SF Bay and delta regions…I was shocked to see the ad and thought it was snark…oh, well…

It will be diaried another day.

NARAL Pro-Choice America is one of several Beltway lobbies endorsing Lieberman for the August 8 primary. Yet Carolyn Triess, Conn. chair of the group, cast her lot with Lamont as a delegate to the Conn. Dem convention in May. And Triess’ thinking is much more in line with the lefty blogosphere than her own parent organization.

A primary reason for this disconnect is Lieberman’s views on the morning-after pill. As Connecticut blogger “Connecticut” Bob Adams noted in May, Lieberman has voiced opposition to forcing hospitals to provide morning-after pills to rape victims. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has been perhaps his sharpest critic, in her rhetorically excessive way. Ned Lamont is clearly aware of this disconnect; his official site includes this unambigiuous affirmation: “I will fight to make the morning after pill available over the counter, to make emergency contraception available to all rape victims, and to support the nomination and appointment of pro-choice judges.”

But this isn’t the first time NARAL has found itself the wrong end of the blogosphere.

Hamsher and others last hit NARAL in January over their endorsement of pro-choice Republican Lincoln Chafee, who voted for cloture on now-Justice Samuel Alito (whom many assume would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade) but against his confirmation. She wrote at the time:

“I just got off the phone with NARAL and I am being told that they do not consider Chafee’s vote on cloture to be significant. They are not going to pull their support for him over this. … This ridiculous little kabuki about voting AGAINST Alito and FOR cloture is a sham, and if NARAL is going to look the other way they no longer deserve to be the guardians of a woman’s right to choose in this country.”

Lieberman, too, voted for cloture but against confirmation.

Washington groups such as NARAL and Planned Parenthood recorded the confirmation vote on their all-important scorecards — as they have done in past nominations — but not the cloture vote. In NARAL’s defense, the cloture vote hasn’t been very controversial in the past, and they have reasons not to change the rules in the middle of the election cycle.

But we’re still in the middle of it, and today Hamsher made the point as forcefully as ever (although her controversial coinage doesn’t show up until a reader uses it in the the 166th comment), asking readers to explain what she can’t seem to wrap her head around: “I really just do not understand the endorsement by NARAL and Planned Parenthood of Joe Lieberman.”

Surely she is aware of the reason, which she just as surely finds unacceptable: Most lobbying groups have a policy of endorsing incumbents with acceptable voting records on their particular interest. Even the NRA endorses Democrats over Republican challengers on occasion (including one Howard Dean, eight times).

The institutional directives couldn’t be more stark. Lobbies don’t want to end up on the wrong side of a politician if they’re returned to office. Bloggers don’t have the same need to get along. It’s almost against their nature, and that’s a big part of why they’re interesting.

Yet NARAL’s own blog, Bush v. Choice, seems not to have clearance to defend the organization on these issues. Instead it sticks to doing what its name suggests, casting aspersions on “anti-choice” conservatives and Republicans. NARAL just isn’t engaging the conversation. And at its own blog, neither is Planned Parenthood. These groups maintain something different than the blogs as most know it. They are “blogs” more than blogs. The one thing you can say of Joe Lieberman — he doesn’t even pretend to be blogging.