Got The Fire, Got The Dog ...

Caption: OK, I found a fire, I'm sure there's a lake around here somewhere. I'll look for it after my nap...

Image credit: St. Bernards Hotel, in Australia, who have absolutely nothing to do with this article, or with FireDogLake.


There are quite a few blogs out there. Some are good, some aren't. If you're a progressive, though, there's one blog that should stand out: FireDogLake.

Lots of folks think they know what it is: a shrill place where people are always finding stuff that's wrong with America. Actually, it's the place that tells you what's wrong with America when most news outlets, including a few other blogrollees, should be telling you. Marcy Wheeler, David Dayen, and Jon Walker provide reporting that often puts other news outlets to shame, and there are usually at least a few good user diaries on any given day.

Sure, there are days when FDL annoys me. On the other hand, more often than not, they annoy the right people. And if you want to see truly insane comments threads, you can do a lot better, um worse?, than FDL. So on the whole, I like them, and more importantly, I respect their work. It's valuable, useful work that might not get done if they aren't around to do it.

Until the end of this month, FireDogLake is running a pledge drive. They're trying to get enough contributions to keep the bytes flowing for the next six months. So if you have a few extra bucks that the government or the corporations that own it haven't screwed you out of yet, you'd do a lot worse than to head to their contributions page and leave them there.