Type of site | Conservative blog and news aggregator |
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Available in | English |
Founded | May 27, 2002 |
Created by | John H. Hinderaker, Scott W. Johnson, and Paul Mirengoff |
URL | www |
Launched | 2002 |
Current status | Active |
This article is part of a series on |
Conservatism in the United States |
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Power Line is an American conservative [1] [2] [3] or right-leaning [4] political blog, [5] [6] founded in May 2002. Its posts were originally written by three lawyers who attended Dartmouth College together, namely John H. Hinderaker, Scott W. Johnson, and Paul Mirengoff. Contributors initially wrote under pen names; John Hinderaker, for example, wrote as "Hindrocket." [7] [8] The site is published by Joseph Malchow, also a Dartmouth graduate.
The site gained recognition for its role in covering the Killian documents story that aired during the 2004 Presidential campaign about forged documents relating to President George W. Bush's term of service in the Texas Air National Guard. [9]
In 2004, Power Line was named Time magazine's first-ever "Blog of the Year". [10] When AOL added blogs to their news website in 2007, Power Line was one of the five blogs included. [11] [12] A 2007 memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee described Power Line as one of the five best-read national conservative blogs. [13] CBS News described Powerline as "a prominent conservative blog." [14]
The main contributors to Power Line are John H. Hinderaker, Scott W. Johnson, Steven F. Hayward, and Lloyd Billingsley. [15] Susan Vass, writing under the name "Ammo Grrrll", contributes a humor column to the site every Friday. [16]
In 2007, Forbes recognised Hinderaker as the #19th "biggest and brightest star on the web" on the strength of Powerline's work on Rathergate. [17]
Power Line gained widespread recognition during the 2004 Killian documents controversy relating to a CBS report on George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, starting with a post entitled "The Sixty-First Minute"; [18] [19] Powerline is credited with helping break the story. [20] [21] Conservatives (including Power Line, National Review Online and Little Green Footballs) referred to the controversy as "Rathergate". [22] [23] The blogs and their readers questioned the authenticity of the documents, presenting hints of supposed forgery. After noting that the alleged documents used a proportional font, Power Line helped advance the story, triggering coverage by mainstream media outlets. [24] Dan Rather apologized and resigned from the CBS anchor chair.
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who distinguished it from other news programs by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation. In 2002, 60 Minutes was ranked number six on TV Guide's list of the "50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time", and in 2013, it was ranked number 24 on the magazine's list of the "60 Best Series of All Time". In 2023, Variety ranked 60 Minutes as the twentieth-greatest TV show of all time. The New York Times has called it "one of the most esteemed news magazines on American television".
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. is an American journalist, commentator, and former national evening news anchor. He began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people. He reported on some of the most significant events of the modern age, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, 9/11, the Iraq War, and the war on terror.
Little Green Footballs (LGF) is an American political blog run by web designer Charles Foster Johnson. In its beginning years, the site had a right-wing orientation and was known for its advocacy of the War on Terrorism and the Iraq War, as well its strident criticism of political Islam. The blog moved away from the right around 2009 and has become focused mainly on posts about music of Johnson's liking.
Controversy over George W. Bush's military service in the Air National Guard was an issue that first gained widespread public attention during the 2004 presidential campaign. The controversy centered on Texas Air National Guard, why he lost his flight status, and whether he fulfilled the requirements of his military service contract.
A milblog or warblog is a blog devoted mostly or wholly to covering news events concerning an ongoing war. Sometimes the use of the term "warblog" implies that the blog concerned has a pro-war slant. The term "milblog" implies that the author is a member of, or has some connection to the military; the more specific term "soldierblog" is sometimes used for the former.
Joshua Micah Jesajan-Dorja Marshall is an American journalist and blogger who founded Talking Points Memo. A liberal, he currently presides over a network of progressive-oriented sites that operate under the TPM Media banner and average 400,000-page views every weekday and 750,000 unique visitors every month.
The Killian documents controversy involved six documents containing allegations about President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972–73, allegedly typed in 1973. Dan Rather presented four of these documents as authentic in a 60 Minutes II broadcast aired by CBS on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the 2004 presidential election, but it was later found that CBS had failed to authenticate them. Several typewriter and typography experts soon concluded that they were forgeries. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett provided the documents to CBS, but he claims to have burned the originals after faxing them copies.
Charles Foster Johnson is an American blogger, software developer, and former jazz guitarist. He has played on 30 albums, sometimes credited as Icarus Johnson. He started the political blog Little Green Footballs in 2001.
Mary Alice Mapes is an American journalist, former television news producer, and author. She was a principal producer for CBS News, primarily the CBS Evening News and primetime television program 60 Minutes Wednesday. She is known for the story of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal, which won a Peabody Award, and the story of Senator Strom Thurmond's unacknowledged biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington. In 2005, she was fired from CBS for her part in the Killian documents controversy.
James Dale Guckert is an American conservative columnist better known by the pseudonym Jeff Gannon. Between 2003 and 2005, he was given credentials as a White House reporter. He was eventually employed by the conservative website Talon News during the latter part of this period. Gannon first gained national attention during a presidential press conference on January 26, 2005, when he asked United States President George W. Bush a question that some in the press corps considered "so friendly it might have been planted".
John Choon Yoo is a South Korean-born American legal scholar and former government official who serves as the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Yoo became known for his legal opinions concerning executive power, warrantless wiretapping, and the Geneva Conventions while serving in the George W. Bush administration, during which he was the author of the controversial "Torture Memos" in the War on Terror.
PJ Media, originally known as Pajamas Media, is an American right-wing subscription-based commentary website. It was founded in 2004, with its majority owner being software entrepreneur, billionaire and angel investor Aubrey Chernick, founder of Candle Corporation. Salem Media Group acquired the company in March 2019. PJ Media also operated the online television and video network PJTV, which ceased operations on May 11, 2016.
During the Killian documents controversy in 2004, the authenticity of the documents themselves was disputed by a variety of individuals and groups. Proof of authenticity is not possible without original documents, and since CBS used only faxed and photocopied duplicates, authentication to professional standards would be impossible regardless of the provenance of the originals. However, proving documents inauthentic does not depend on the availability of originals, and the validity of these photocopied documents has been challenged on a number of grounds, ranging from anachronisms in their typography to issues pertaining to their content.
Nick Catoggio, who previously used the pseudonym Allahpundit, is a blogger and former senior editor for the American political news and commentary website Hot Air from its founding in 2006 through his resignation on September 2, 2022. After moving to The Dispatch, Catoggio writes a daily newsletter, "Boiling Frogs", under his own name.
Robert B. Bluey is an American conservative blogger and journalist. He is executive editor of The Heritage Foundation's The Daily Signal, a multimedia news organization. Bluey is a former editor of Human Events. He has written for The Daily Caller, RedState, Andrew Breitbart's Big Government and the Washington Examiner.
While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it. Before "blogging" became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical "corkboard". Some have likened blogging to the Mass-Observation project of the mid-20th century.
Free Republic is a moderated Internet forum and chat site for self-described conservatives, primarily within the United States. It presents articles and comments posted pseudonymously by registered members, known as "Freepers", using screen names. The site is supported entirely by donations, with pledge drives known as "Freepathons" held each quarter.
Hot Air is a conservative American political blog. It is written by the pseudonymous Allahpundit, Ed Morrissey, John Sexton, and Jazz Shaw.
Steven F. Hayward is an American conservative author, political commentator, and policy scholar. He is a senior resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Law.
Truth is a 2015 American biographical political drama film written and directed by James Vanderbilt in his directorial debut. It is based on American television news producer Mary Mapes's memoir Truth and Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power. The film focuses on the Killian documents controversy and the resulting last days of news anchor Dan Rather and producer Mary Mapes at CBS News. It stars Cate Blanchett as Mapes and Robert Redford as Rather.
And not from conservative bloggers, either. John Hinderaker of Powerline thinks a rebellion on the fringe may hurt centrist Democrats
John Hinderaker at the conservative blog Powerline also enjoyed the symbolism of Holder speaking at the LBJ Library, albeit for very different reasons: "Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965—Holder's intended reference—but he is also associated with voter fraud."
Conservative John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog argues that normally there's "nothing wrong"
Cornyn tweeted, quoting the right-leaning Powerline blog
ARI SHAPIRO reporting: John Hinderaker spent yesterday criticizing President Bush on the political Web site powerlineblog.com
At PowerLine, a widely-read conservative blog, John Hinderaker
Then Powerline, with a prompt from Free Republic and assists from Little Green Footballs and others in the blogosphere brought down Dan Rather
John Hinderaker at Power Line, a prominent conservative blog, pushed back
Ammo Grrrll Hit the Target: A Humorist's Friday Columns from Power Line. What do four boring middle-aged white guys need to liven up their group blog? A regular Friday humor column from former standup comedienne Susan Vass
John Hinderaker is a lawyer and fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute--but his claim to fame is as one of the editors of PowerLine, a right-wing blog best known for its 2004 reporting on "Rathergate."
Of course your most famous bump-up in recognition came during the 2004 election. Can you just lay out the story for us? [...] I called that post "The 61st Minute,"
Powerline, a conservative blog, was one of the first to raise questions about the authenticity of memos on President Bush's National Guard service, broadcast by CBS on "60 Minutes."
Scott Johnson of Powerline, the blog that first surfaced the Rathergate fraud, took on the task of debunking Truth
Dan Rather going on air with his 2004 story about George W. Bush's service in the Air National Guard, then retracting the story because the key document was forged, then, years later, refusing to apologize. New conservative media—talk radio, blogs, message boards, Drudge—claimed his scalp. One of the key blogs, Powerline, was profiled by Time magazine. "Rathergate" changed the audience's relationship with the media.
Mona and Jay welcome Powerline blogger Scott Johnson to discuss the "Rathergate" scandal
over now to Powerlineblog.com. This is the three conservative lawyers who blog over here and maintain this site. They were the ones who were widely credited, along with their readers, with really blowing what is called in the blogosphere as Rathergate, those CBS documents last year about Bush's National Guard service.