Virginia Bloggers in the News

You know that political blogging has moved beyond a narrow niche when mainstream journalists start recommending blogs to their readers.

So it is that Bob Gibson, the venerable columnist and political reporter for the Daily Progress in Charlottesville and sometime host of "Evening Edition" on WVTF-FM, has found a few Virginia-oriented blogs that he likes and tells his readers to point their browsers in the direction of those blogs.

Gibson even tickles his readers with a little rhyme as he introduces his subject:

If you’re in the mood for a prickly political opinion, a salty suggestion or even a benign or humorous observation, your search need not go much further than Virginia’s great and growing collection of political blogs.

Those who lack strong positive or negative opinions about Democrat Timothy M. Kaine or his main Republican rival for governor, Jerry W. Kilgore, can find many hundreds of them in the blogs.

Many bloggers feed a variety of partisan tastes, but it does appear that conservatives flock to some and liberals to others without a great mix of opinions across the political spectrum on most. A blog, short for Web log, is a rolling diary open to the world, a personal Web site where users post anything from commentary to art, from links around the Internet to glances into their souls.

Politicians read these things with one eye for news and another for views, with which the blogs are infused.

Among the blogs Gibson recommends is Bacon's Rebellion, which he says is also a favorite of Republican consultant J. Scott Leake (whose daily emails of press clippings are an important source of information for me).

Gibson adds:

Other well-read conservative blogs include Commonwealth Conservative, found on the Web at vaconservative.com; sic semper tyrannis, found at sicsempertyrannis.blogspot.com; and the feisty One Man’s Trash, found at www.onemanstrash.blogspot.com.

One of the smarter blogs is the libertarian-leaning collection of Charlottesville posts put up by Rick Sincere at ricksincerethoughts.blogspot.com. He’s a member of the city Electoral Board.

Lest we forget that blogs are not solely a right-leaning activity, Gibson reminds us of a few on the left side of the spectrum:

Liberal-progressive blogger Waldo Jaquith of Charlottesville has a wicked sense of humor at waldo.jaquith.org.

Jaquith also operates the local news blogspot Cvillenews.com, which has had a refreshingly sharp series of discussions about problems in the Charlottesville public school administration and School Board. He also has links on his blogroll list to 19 bloggers, most of them lefties.

One of the best is Commonwealth Commonsense, which is found at commonwealthcommonsense.typepad.com.

Interestingly, Gibson uses his column about blogs and bloggers as a sort of frame to discuss the situation in Prince William County involving criminal charges of voter fraud levelled against GOP primary candidate Steve Chapman. It's worth a look if only for the collection of opinions that Gibson has drawn together on this single current controversy.