On Air: Senators, Military (Blackfive), and More!

The following post has been written by Kevin at Pundit Review. It is fantastic, but I have to get ready for Church. So instead of having you miss an opportunity to hear Kevin and Gregg tonight, I decided to 'borrow' it. They wrote the whole thing! Kudos to you, Kev and Gregg! Great job. Okay, here ya go:

This weekend on Pundit Review Radio we will be providing a preview of the 2006 election season by interviewing Bill Pierce, a Republican running in the primary against two-term Senator Mike DeWine.

This race interests us for two reasons. First, Pierce is running to the right of DeWine. He is unhappy with the GOP Congress, their inability to control spending and entitlements, their failure to extend the tax cuts and their weak stance on immigration, among other things. The second reason we are following this campaign is that Pierce has an interesting, and seemingly effective blog strategy, utilizing a number of Ohio blogs, including our friend Tom Blumer at BizzyBlog, to get his message out and to help him raise money.

A recent column in a local Ohio paper summarized Pierce’s blog initiative,

Bloggers are attempting to do the same thing for Republican Bill Pierce in his challenge against U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine. While the mainstream media gives little coverage to DeWine’s two challengers, many bloggers, frustrated with what they view as DeWine’s abandoning Republican principles, have latched onto Pierce’s campaign.

Tom Blumer, 51, of suburban Cincinnati, blogs at bizzyblog.com and is working with Pierce’s campaign. How much bloggers affect the outcome of the Republican Senate primary will be another benchmark for their influence, Blumer said.

At the very least, said blogger Tim Ferris, of Cleveland, he gets a place to have his say.
“We have that perfectly fine fellow, Bill Pierce, and they won’t even acknowledge him,” Ferris said. “He needs to be able to tell people what he thinks, without having tons of money. That’s what we do. That’s the democratic process, with a small ‘d.’”

Those who blog politically nearly always have candidates they are supporting; the bias is a major difference between them and other media. Bloggers say, however, that their bias is stated, not the hidden bias they say they see in larger, corporate media.

At 9pm, it is Someone You Should Know, our collaboration with milblogger Blackfive in which we take a few minutes to appreciate the heroic efforts of the men and women fighting for us overseas. We’ll also find out more about the 1st annual Milblogging Conference in Washington DC.

For the remainder of the hour, we will talk about the arrest of a CIA leaker and what it means, for our national security, and the future of journalism.

Have a great day, and God bless you.