(We really do want your input... really! - promoted by Matt Glazer)
The Texas netroots is exploding and we are spreading our wings. Sometimes change is good and sometimes it isn't. That's why we need your help.
In partnership with blogs across the state, we have already started raising money to defeat John Cornyn.
Last month we partnered up with IVR polls to do a monthly poll on the 2008 Presidential race. Yesterday we launched our brand new Quick Hits. Now we are in talks to do Blog Talk Radio.
These are dramatic changes, but we want to continue to bringing you breaking news and new tools. We don't want to new stuff just because we can.
Tell us what you like and what you don't. Let us know what would make BOR a stronger community. Your opinion matters, so speak up.
Right now, there are 2,004 members of Burnt Orange Report.
That is more than 2,000 people from across Texas and around the world that read BOR, write comments and journals, and are signed up to BMail.
Burnt Orange Report is a family of political insiders, elected officials, college students, journalists, activists, consultants, insiders, outsiders and everything in between.
We are muckrakers and we are passionate. Thank you for being part of this community.
(Drafted by Kuff and Cross-posted at DKos. We are working to change Texas. We are working together to get rid of John Cornyn. Want to help?)
We, the undersigned, are some of the many progressive bloggers and online activists in Texas. The Texas netroots community is a large and diverse one - from blogs to Democratic Underground, from Democracy for Texas to MoveOn, and more. No one person or group speaks for it. While we often communicate among ourselves, and often agree on many points, we all have our own perspectives and preferences.
We, the undersigned, are some of the many progressive bloggers and online activists in Texas. The Texas netroots community is a large and diverse one - from blogs to Democratic Underground, from Democracy for Texas to MoveOn, and more. No one person or group speaks for it. While we often communicate among ourselves, and often agree on many points, we all have our own perspectives and preferences.
Though we are speaking as one in this post, we are speaking for ourselves. Though we are a part of the Texas netroots, we do not speak for the Texas netroots, because nobody speaks for the Texas netroots.
We are confident, however, that everybody in the Texas netroots is united behind the goal of replacing our ineffective and out of touch junior Senator, who is up for re-election next year. We fully expect to give our unqualified support to the Democratic nominee for Senate, and we fully expect the wider Democratic community, netroots and otherwise, to do the same.
While we all have our own preferences among the many fine choices to be that nominee next year, we do agree on one other thing, and that is that we intend to be a full-blooded participant in the process to choose him or her. We do not appreciate any effort by one group or another to dictate who that nominee will be, just as we would not expect anyone else to appreciate our dictating of a nominee. Some of us are undertaking an effort to draft a particular candidate to run next year, but those of us who are doing so hope to win that battle on the merits of our candidate. Others of us are not involved in any draft movements but are focusing on helping the eventual Democratic candidate. All of us expect a vigorous debate that will lead to the best choice being made, one we will all then unite behind. We are all committed to taking this seat back for the people of Texas.
We hope this clarifies matters, and we hope that you will join us in helping to elect a progressive, people-powered Senator from the great state of Texas in 2008. Thank you very much.
I have always had two general rules-- Never report rumor as fact and it isn't fact unless there are two sources. One blog didn't adhere to the same rule and that made us all look bad.
A source is valuable. Facts make good stories. Rumors and conjecture hurt people and reputations. How did this breakdown affect Burnt Orange Report? Simple. The rumor started at one national site and was picked up on Drudge. As a general rule, I never take Drudge too seriously. Drudge has always been more about a scoop than a story, so I looked for another source.
Alas, CNN.com put up a banner confirming the Politico story. I had my two sources.
We put up a story announcing Sen. Edward would be withdrawing from the race, and we had a great breaking story. As the press conference starts it became clear that Politico was not only wrong, but they were completely off base. Edwards announced the worst news, Elizabeth's cancer had returned. The catch was that Edwards was not withdrawing from the race. In fact, he stood steadfast and looked more decisive than he had in some time.
In the end we are sorry for relaying bad reporting. What this shows us, is that blogs can help make rumors truth. I applaud Politico and their apology. But the fallout can be too big for an "oops, sorry".
This is probably the last thing you'll ever need to read about the Edwards bloggers and the resultant teacup tempest: every party involved, in one way or another, was wrong.
In case any of you are looking to build your reading list, Judge Susan Criss of the 212th District Court in Galveston, has launched her very own blog about justice and life on the Texas Gulf Coast.; As The Island Floats.
I decided to publish this blog after being inspired by the bloggers who post about the justice system and the government. The first blog I read was The Burnt Orange Report. I was amazed at how quickly they were able to report news out of the Texas Capitol. I was hooked.
Scott Henson encouraged me to blog when I began writing to him about the criminal justice issues he covers in Grits For Breakfast. When I saw how State Rep. Aaron Pena reveals the human side of serving in government in A Capitol Blog I knew I wanted to do this.
Judge Criss, first elected in '98, has a long list of credentials. For example, she is a Director for the National Association of Women Judges, Project Director of the Color of Justice Video Project for Texas, and chairperson of the Gulf Coast MHMR Task Force on Jail Diversion for the Mentally Ill.
We at BOR are excited to have yet another valuable resource into the happenings in Texas government, and encourage you to stop by and check out Judge Criss' site.
Note: The following is a general overview of a new blog I am working on called Progressive Wave. It is a re-post from Daily Kos. Simply put, we are looking for a large number of bloggers to cover our new representatives and senators in Congress. For Texas, we'd appreciate any bloggers who would be interested in covering Nick Lampson or Ciro Rodriguez. If you're interested, please post here or email me at my address in my profile. Thanks!
It's great to see citizen journalism in action. A project here at Daily Kos is picking up steam - where we 'adopt' a congressional committee and keep tabs on their progress. It's a great idea, and by all means one that we should encourage; after all, a democracy thrives when its citizens participate actively within it.
Before the election I was thinking of taking a similar principle and applying it to our newly-elected Congresspersons and Senators in the U.S. Congress. Many of our newly-elected representatives come from extremely close races (such as Patrick Murphy in PA-08 or Joe Courtney in CT-02), or they are in areas that will make it a challenge for them to be re-elected every time they are up (Nick Lampson in TX-22 or Nancy Boyda in KS-02). While the Netroots-endorsed list has only included challengers, it's inevitable that we will have to begin defending our incumbents, beginning in 2008.
In reading Matt's post about how the netroots community is preparing to seriously grow up, I couldn't help but think about any numerous events over the past few months.
I thought about the Friedman jokes, and all the controversy that stirred. At the end of the campaign, did our posts have an efect? Or did they merely speed up the decline of an already falling star? If the negative, albeit factual, posts we made about Friedman are the biggest thing we can hang our hats on, what does that say about the role of blogs?
Then I thought about the 180 comment-thread SmartyPants started last week. How much of that was a productive conversation, and how much of that was redundant, inside-baseball that everyone else ignores? Are we really contributing to the discussion to make the system better, or are we like those guys that call AM radio at 7:00am Monday morning to say that, hey, if the offensive coordinator had made a different call, then the game would have come out differently?
(I am an idiot and forgot to check the right box. Oops. - promoted by Matt Glazer)
Every time I type netroots down something weird happens. My computer tells me I am misspelling "enroots". Weird.
It reminds me of what use to happen when I typed grassroots down when I was working in 2004 in New Mexico and Iowa. With my latest updates, my computer gets it now. The grassroots is an established campaign phenomenon.
I look back and realize how far the grassroots movement has come in two years. It has gone from adolescence to early adulthood. The idea behind the grassroots movement has elected a new kind of DNC Chair with a strategy of growing our base not our bank account.
Nationally the grassroots has helped a wave of 30+ new house members, 6 new Senators, and created a sustaining platform of activists. Statewide, the grassroots turned a county blue, protected every incumbent seat (with the House Democratic Campaign Committee's foresight), and picked up 6 new house members.
The grassroots is an establishment now. What about the netroots?
We are babies in Texas. We are new, and still unsure how to flex are muscle. We are teenagers looking for direction.
In the past year we have made great leaps as a movement to figure out our place in Texas politics. We helped Senator-Elect Carlos Uresti find a new chamber. We did all we could do end Rep Al Edwards blind support for Speaker Craddick. We worked tirelessly on the races for John Courage, Shane Sklar, Hank Gilbert, Valinda Bolton, Juan Garcia, and the many great Dallas area Democrats. When three of us in Texas worked together to elect fair and just Secretaries of State we helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and worked to elect 5 of the 7 candidates we followed.
We as a movement understand elections. We follow our regions closely. We are getting closer and closer to the inside.
However close we get it is important to realize that we are not insiders. We do not toe the party line at all times. We remain honest to our readers and ourselves. Our gut tells us that when things are broken, they must be fixed.
