While mainstream media has been paying lots of attention to bloggers this year, it's a welcome change to see it devote headlines to those who made it possible, like Ben and Mena Trott, the darlings of the blogosphere.

Movable Type, the blogging software used by more than 7 million bloggers, (including its simplified version, Typepad,) was created by Ben and Mena Trott in their bedroom. They named their little venture Six Apart, because they were born six days apart. Fast forward to the present, three years after they launched the company, and Six Apart has offices in San Francisco, Paris and Tokyo. Venture capitalist and blogger Joi Ito arranged for them to sell "a stake" in their company for $11.5 million. Mena is President, Ben is CTO, and neither has turned 30 yet.

Crooks and Liars has the video.

Raw Story reports it may have found the link between Gannon and the White House, and it may be GOPUSA and Talon News founder Bruce Eberle.

Update: Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, in a blogger-friendly article, tells Bush to check his media lapdogs.

Meet Ricky Lee Claycomb, age 37. He was serving a jail sentence in Colorado for robbery when Ohio authorities extradited him to Ohio to stand trial for a 1994 rape in which his DNA had turned up as a match. Mr. Claycomb went to trial in Ohio and was acquitted. The jury accepted his defense that he had had consensual sex with the accuser the day before the assault. Ohio jailers told him to leave. He told them he had to go back to finish serving his sentence in Colorado, and they told him to find his own way back.

So Mr. Claycomb called his mother in Colorado.

"He told them at the jail that he was supposed to be taken back to Colorado," said Mr. Claycomb's mother, Jill Claycomb. "He said they told him he was done in Canton and it was his problem to get back."

She sent him money for a bus ticket. After the two-day trip to Colorado, Mr. Claycomb visited her long enough to have oatmeal and peaches for breakfast and pizza for lunch, and then his brother drove him to the Fremont Correctional Facility in Canon City, Colo., late Thursday.

In 1994, as part of its get-tough-on-crime mania, Congress abolished Pell grants for prisoners, effectively ending chances for inmates to get a college education while behind bars. Professor Ian Buruma, writing in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, taught college courses at a maximum security prison in New York, and explains, in a very moving article, that educational courses can reduce recidivism and benefit all of us.

Doug Wead, an author who was an aide to the former President Bush, has released secretly recorded tapes of his conversations with GW Bush when GW was Governor of Texas and contemplating a run for the White House.

Memorable moments: Bush indicates he smoked pot and says he won't answer questions about his drug usage, and, Bush thought John Ashcroft should either be a Supreme Court Justice or his Vice-Presidential candidate.

Congratulations, Oliver. For three years he's wanted to be on tv, and he's finally getting his chance:

This Monday, February 21st - President's Day - I will be appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, along with Patrick Ruffini (formerly of GeorgeWBush.com). Tune in to C-Span at 7:45AM...

Break a leg, Oliver.

Colorado Representative Marilyn Musgrave has made the Republican's list of House members it considers to be the GOP's 10 most at-risk. The list is part of the Retain Our Majority Program (ROMP.)

ROMP was designed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) in 1999 to funnel money from legislators hailing from safe seats to those who represent more marginal districts. Typically, a ROMP beneficiary receives upwards of $100,000 from each event and rarely spends less than $2 million defending his or her seat.

Why is the champion of the Gay Marriage Amendment so vulnerable? According to today's Denver Post,

by TChris

Bill Hill has had some problems during his six years as Dallas County's district attorney.

•Fake drugs: He and the DA's office continue to struggle with the fallout from the 2001 scandal in which police informants planted fake drugs on innocent people. Prosecutors were slow to recognize that the criminal cases were based on bogus evidence. Two plea deals were accepted even though prosecutors knew the evidence was fake.

•Fruitless investigation: A long investigation into a jailhouse contract awarded by former Sheriff Jim Bowles resulted in several indictments, but all were legally flawed and eventually were dropped or dismissed.

•Delayed justice: A judge twice dismissed charges against notorious child molester David Wayne Jones because the district attorney's office violated his right to a speedy trial. The prosecutor in the case said he was too busy working on other cases.

Hill's remedy for this dysfunctional office? Hire a spokesperson!

Dr. George Hunnsinger, a frequent reader and commenter on TalkLeft, is the McCord professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the coordinator of Church Folks for a Better America (CBFA). He is interviewed by Katrina Vanden Heuval in the new Nation.

Hunsinger is working hard to reframe the "moral values" debate by raising tough questions about how torture, pre-emption, unjust war, and poverty can be tolerated by people of moral and religious conviction....[He] gives the lie to the Right's caricature of progressives as anti-religious zealots.

Hunsinger has tapped into a rich tradition of religious progressive activism--from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Father Robert Drinan to Rev. William Sloane Coffin.

Here's some of what he had to say:

The FDA has given the green light for soldiers suffering combat stress after serving in Iraq and Afganistan to receive Ecstasy. [link via Majikthise and Daou Report.]

Scientists behind the trial in South Carolina think the feelings of emotional closeness reported by those taking the drug could help the soldiers talk about their experiences to therapists. Several victims of rape and sexual abuse with post-traumatic stress disorder, for whom existing treatments are ineffective, have been given MDMA since the research began last year.

by TChris

The post below describes the pain that a judge experienced after being accused of telling a rape victim to "get over it." He denies saying those words, although he may have said something like "she needs to get over it." Even that compassionate suggestion may be politically incorrect in today's society.

In addition to being a "prison nation," we've become a "victim nation." Crime victims are a staple of afternoon talk shows, and their stories are often horrible. But victims (or those who claim to be victims) sometimes find the attention and sympathy they receive so rewarding that "victimization" becomes a way of life, and an excuse to avoid recovery. Too often families hear: "You can't expect me to [return to work] [be a supportive mother/father/wife/husband] [feel love] because I'm a victim." And too often "support groups" for victims validate those statements rather than encouraging victims to get on with their lives. That may be one reason that so many false accuations are made: victims receive attention, sympathy, and sometimes celebrity -- responses that many find appealing.

A psychotherapist reminds us that we aren't helping victims by encouraging them to dwell on their personal tragedies.

Those who choose to allow painful events to negatively determine the rest of their lives stand in their own path to healing. Yes, we never recover totally from the loss of a child or the loss of a limb. However, we also do not want to allow that event to turn us into bitter, angry people whose bitterness creates a downward spiral where more and more evidence for negativity can so easily be found.

by TChris

Finding that a Boston tabloid acted with "actual malice" or "a reckless disregard for the truth" in its reporting of off-the-record comments allegedly made by Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy, a jury returned a libel verdict in the judge's favor, awarding him more than $2 million in damages.

The first article was a front-page piece that said Judge Murphy, then assigned to a court in New Bedford, was a "wrist-slapping" judge who had "heartlessly demeaned victims" and had said of one young rape victim: "She's 14. She got raped. Tell her to get over it."

There's nothing a judge hates more than being branded as "soft on crime," but the real dispute in the case centered on whether (or in what context) the judge said "get over it."