But we're finding [blogging] works better for keeping on top of daily flaps than for learning genuinely new information. Bloggers rarely pick up the phone or go interview the middle-level bureaucrats who know the good stuff. It's a lot easier to chew over breaking stories and bash old media. Where do they get the information with which to bash? Often from, ahem, newspapers.
Leave aside the question of how much "real reporting" bloggers do as compared to newspapers. If one looks at most of the vital disclosures of the last seven years -- whereby concealed, legally dubious behavior of one of the most secretive administrations of the modern era is exposed -- one finds that

By Spencer Ackerman 07/24/2008 One of the most important building blocks in the Bush administration's apparatus of torture became public today. An Aug.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed "in good faith" that harsh techniques used to break prisoners' will would not cause "prolonged mental harm."
That heavily censored memo, released Thursday, approved the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques method by method, but warned that if the circumstances changed, interrogators could be running afoul of anti-torture laws.
banned waterboarding in 2006 but government officials have said it remains a possibility if approved by the attorney general, the CIA chief and the president.

Ah, good intentions, with which that famous path was paved: According to Justice Department documents obtained and released by the ACLU on Thursday—albeit heavily redacted—CIA interrogators were authorized to use waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” that they believed “in good faith” would not “have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering.”
ending it?

WASHINGTON, July 24 (UPI) -- The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 a US torture ban would not be violated unless an interrogator meant to cause

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate U.S. prohibitions against torture unless they "have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," according to a previously secret Justice Department memo released Thursday.
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft testifies before Congress July 17 about waterboarding.
simulated drowning, does "not violate the Torture Statute."

By Jason Leopold A Justice Department legal opinion issued in August 2002 advised the CIA that its interrogators would not be prosecuted for violating