{"id":485,"date":"2006-09-01T08:45:32","date_gmt":"2006-09-01T14:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/2006\/09\/01\/chicago-tribune-busted-by-the-bloggers\/"},"modified":"2006-09-01T08:46:07","modified_gmt":"2006-09-01T14:46:07","slug":"chicago-tribune-busted-by-the-bloggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/2006\/09\/chicago-tribune-busted-by-the-bloggers\/","title":{"rendered":"CHICAGO TRIBUNE:   &#8220;Busted by the bloggers&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/instapundit\/main\/~3\/18323725\/032298.php\">from Instapundit<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:20pt;\"><em>CHICAGO TRIBUNE:<\/em>  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/opinion\/chi-0609010279sep01,0,3544472.story?coll=chi-newsopinion-hed\">&#8220;Busted by the bloggers&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To the right of the masthead at the Web site porkbusters.org is a quote attributed to former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott: &#8220;I&#8217;ll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I&#8217;m getting damn tired of hearing from them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sens. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) are probably damn tired of hearing from them too, but taxpayers ought to listen up&#8211;and applaud. The porkbusters led a pack of bloggers who outed the two senators for bottling up a bill meant to help the public track how its tax dollars are spent. . . .<\/p>\n<p>When they were caught, Stevens and Byrd offered lots of blather about why they were preventing taxpayers from finding out how their money is spent.<\/p>\n<p>Byrd&#8217;s office said he just wanted to slow things down so the bill could get a thorough and open debate. Stevens&#8217; staffers said he was concerned about the cost, and he wanted a cost-benefit analysis and assurances that the database wouldn&#8217;t create more bureaucracy and blah blah blah. Stevens could have brought all this up while the bill was in committee, but he skipped those hearings.<\/p>\n<p>A more likely motivation: Stevens was mad because Coburn had tried to block a $223 million appropriation for Alaska&#8217;s infamous &#8220;bridge to nowhere&#8221; that Stevens inserted in last year&#8217;s federal highway bill.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a good day for taxpayers and the bloggers who got to the truth. And a bad day for secrecy in the U.S. Senate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Indeed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from Instapundit CHICAGO TRIBUNE: &#8220;Busted by the bloggers&#8221; To the right of the masthead at the Web site porkbusters.org is a quote attributed to former<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-news","category-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pekNN-7P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}