Some of you might remember Susan Tom[1], a remarkable woman who over the past decade or so has made it her mission to adopt and care for 11 special needs children. Some have had physical disabilities, some have had learning disabilities, some have had terrible illnesses. Three have died from their afflictions.

I first heard of Susan May 11th, 2004. As I wrote on our Iraq page then:

Tonight, I finished watching the HBO documentary My Flesh And Blood, which tells the story of Susan Tom, a 53-year-old single mother in Fairfield, California. Susan is the mother of 13 children, 11 of whom she has adopted, many of whom suffer from handicaps and diseases.

Teenagers Hannah and Xenia were born without legs. Anthony has a degenerative and usually fatal skin disease. Eight-year-old Faith has disfiguring scars and no hair from being badly burned as an infant. Joe, 15, recently passed away from cystic fibrosis. Margaret, 18, helps Susan raise the family. (You can learn more about her story here, here,   here and here, you can read about the documentary here and here.)

Hers is a powerful and wonderfully inspiring story. It left me moved by the grace, love, and caring Susan Tom exhibits to these children … her children … children whom, without her, may very well have gone throughout life without love, without tenderness, without a chance … without having really lived at all.

I turn from that documentary to The Command Post, where I see posted the photographs of Nick Berg’s beheading, and I’m struck bluntly by the complete antithesis of Susan Tom: murder, brutality, and disgusting inhumanity. In moments, I went from having tears in my eyes to having bile in my throat. And I’m left wondering, as I’m sure are most of us are, what exactly to make of it all.

Well, I’ve decided what to make of it all, and what I’m going to make is some good. Susan Tom is a hero … one of millions … waking each day with a commitment to make the lives of others better through love.

Hers is an example to which humanity should aspire. So my response to the murder of Nick Berg and the inhumanity it represents is to use it
as motivation to give to Susan Tom and the humanity she represents.

All of Susan Tom’s children save Katie plan to attend college. Susan will have education bills to pay, and toward that end she’s established the non-profit Tom Family Education Trust to assist the Tom children with college tuition and book expenses (according to the stipulation of the trust, the monies can not be used for any other purpose).

For the next three days, between the time stamp of this post and Midnight EDT Friday night, Michele and I will contribute all donations made to The Command Post PayPal account (the button’s below this post and also over in the right-hand column) to the Tom Family Education Trust.

That post did three things. First, it rallied the blogosphere, and we ultimately raised $15,000 in three days for the education trust. Second, it was the germ of an idea that ultimately led me to create Strengthen The Good, a non-profit network of bloggers committed to raising awareness for small charities around the world. Third, it introduced me to Susan, whom I've since come to consider a friend, and her kids, who are as much an inspiration as is she.

Well, Susan finally got what she deserved. ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition built her a house. The episode airs tomorrow night at 7:00 EST (it's a two-hour special), and I strongly encourage everyone to watch the show. It's a program that often brings people (including me) to tears; Susan's story will inspire you to change the world, in whatever small or grand way you can. It did for me, and I'm a better man for it.

Thank you, Susan, for being a hero, and congratulations on getting what you've so long deserved.

1. You may visit Susan's web site here; the bulk of this post is cross-posted here.

Our forum was hacked, and it's trashed. Hopefully we can retrieve the database, as it contains (in addition to the threads authored by the participants) a significant historical record of global response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

We're working on it, and we're talking with some other folks who were hacked by the same sensless, worthless piece of trash hacker about next steps.

Apologies to everyone who enjoyed the forum; it seems some people out there need to prove their place in the world through the small-minded defacement of others' work.

Lots of complaints recently about trackback spam at TCP. They're well-deserved; with five blogs running and some 17,000 inidivdual posts, there's a lot to spam.

Over the weekend we installed Brad Choate's new SpamLookup plugin, and it seems to be doing the job: no new trackback spam since Saturday. It may produce a false positive from time to time, though, so if your trackback doesn't go through, send us a note and we'll take care of it for you.

Thanks for reading the Post.

Michele and I were named as “Honorable Mentions” in the Always On/Technorati Open Media 100 list. Thanks to them, and thanks to our readers.

Because of my role at Command Post, I'm occasionally sent a book to read, sometimes with a request for a review and sometimes not. Last week I was offered a review copy of Michael Phillip's new book, The Gift of Valor. It arrived Thursday; I read the bulk in two sittings (on the plane to and from Minneapolis on Friday), and the remainder this morning.

My main comments on the book are tangential to the core facts of a review, so I'll get the core facts out of the way first:

• The book is about Corporal Jason Dunham, U.S.M.C., who died from injuries suffered in Iraq when he covered an insurgent grenade with his battle helmet in an attempt to blunt the blow and minimize injuries to his troops.
• The book is extremely well-researched, well-written, and engaging. Difficult to put down, the accounts of battle are riveting, and the accounts of family and character are vivid and personal.
• Phillip's account is (thankfully) apolitical … he presents events through the eyes of a reporter who treats matters factually. It's a story of people, not a screed on the war.
• It's an extraordinary book, one I enthusiastically recommend to others.

Now to my main comments. I first leaned of Corporal Dunham when I read Phillip's first Wall Street Journal article about the Marine on 25 May 2004 (link via Blackfive). I remember being touched by the story; my feelings after finishing The Gift of Valor are deeper, stronger … more moving and substantive.

I finished the book just an hour ago, reading the final chapters on our back deck, warmed by the Sunday Pennsylvania sun as it rose through the white pines of our back yard. The air was warm but not hot, a soft breeze coming from the South, a trio of male cardinals chasing each other from tree to tree in the yard.

Kate by my side. Warm and freshly-ground coffee in my mug. The dog in the yard, happily munching on a stick, on the lookout for squirrels.

When I finished the book, I was moved.

Some of my reaction was a function of contrast: the obvious juxtaposition between my life in reading the book, and the lives of Corporal Dunham and his peers in living it. This book gives you a very clear window into the reality of the war in Iraq, the reality of war in general, and the people who shape and are shaped by that reality day in a day out.

It makes a Sunday morning on the deck with your wife seem a rich blessing, which frankly, it is.

Some of my reaction was melancholy at the death of Corporal Dunham. Some will call his death a waste, others a sacrifice, others still (including me) an act of courage and honor. History will apply that final lens, but regardless of that judgment, he was clearly a fine and good young man, and Phillip's descriptions of his life, his family, and his character struck deep chords.

And finally, and perhaps most of all, my reaction was humble awe not just of Corporal Dunham, but of the support of those around him through his journey: the Corpsmen, his fellow Marines, the nurses and doctors, the administrators … the infrastructure of the US military and the U.S.M.C, which brought humanity and caring to every step.

This is where we find the real story of The Gift of Valor: in the valor of not just those who serve, but of those who serve those who serve. This is a book about not one, but hundreds of heroes.

Of the Major who waits hours for his men to receive medical attention before revealing that he, too, has been shot.

Of the neurosurgeons who leave wealthy practice in the States to make a gritty practice in the sands of Iraq.

Of the nurses who refuse to leave an injured Marine alone for even a moment, hour upon hour.

Of the administrators at Bethesda who drain their personal savings throwing barbecues for the families of the injured, weekend after weekend.

Of the people of Scio who drain their rainy day funds to send Corporal Dunham's family to Germany, if needed.

There are two passages in this book that, for me, eloquently struck this chord of systemic caring. Both are in the book's final pages, as Corporal Dunham's family struggles with the decision of whether or not to honor the Corporal's living will request to not receive life support if in a vegetative state.

The first:

When the Dunhams stood up, one of the Marines took their place at Jason's side and held his hand.

The second — too long to recreate here — describes how General Michael Hagee, the Marine corps commandant, skipped a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to present Corporal Dunham's Purple Heart in person, and to be at his parent's side to tell them what kind of a Marine their son was.

Perhaps I'm naïve. But I've never held the view of the Marine corps, or of our military in general, as an infrastructure that would provide such humane caring for its people: to ensure a wounded soldier, even one in a deep coma, is not left without a hand to hold; to demonstrate that parents facing the most difficult choice they can make are a greater priority than the planning of our military's highest council.

Time and again The Gift of Valor tells these tales: people, caring for each other, loving each other, in the eye of a storm of pain and risk and death. It's terribly moving.

One of my favorite films is Love Actually. It's one of those movies that, if I catch a glimpse of it on TV, I'm committed to see the rest of the thing out. The film opens with a narrative by Hugh Grant, in which he says:

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the
arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make
out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that.
It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly
dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons,
mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old
friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of
the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or
revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got
a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.

And so it is with valor. The dictionary tells us valor is "courage and boldness, as in battle; bravery". The message Michael Phillips brings us is that, yes, Corporal Dunham had the gift of valor. But the bigger message is that people all around us … doctors, nurses, administrators, the school principal down the street … they also carry that gift, for they have the courage and boldness and bravery to love.

And in that, valor is all around.

(You may see the Fallen Heros Memorial page for Corporal Dunham here, and the Marine Corps News story of his death here. Cross posted at Seat 1A.)

While at the DNC in Boston I bumped into Mike Moran at the hotel bar. Mike was behind Hardblogger, and we had a good chat about blogs and journalism (while having, I seem to recall, some of the finest chowder of my life).

He's now posting over at Sword and Pen for the Overseas Press Club of America … check it out.

He's also taking part in a June 1st panel on blogs and international news, along with Joe Trippi, Paul Mirengoff, Marshall Loeb, and Rebecca MacKinnon. Hmm … CBS and PowerLine, together at last … should be interesting. It's in NYC; go here to learn more.

You may now also find me here.

I've had a bit of an Outlook crash. Well, a huge Outlook crash.

If you have mailed me at my TCP address in the past month or so, or if you sent a mail that you thought deserved a response and didn't get one, please resend your inquiry to micheleREMOVETHIScatalanoATgmailDOTCOM.

Thank you and I apologize for not getting back to you.

A quick book suggestion: I recently picked up a copy of Virginia Postrel's The Substance of Style, which I'm very much enjoying. She's been a fan of Command Post since the start, and SOS is well worth the time and $ if you're at all interested in culture and aesthetics. Check it out.

I've been on vacation and without net access for the past week. I'm back online now, though, and will be plowing through the emails that have come in since I started my break. If you sent one, be patient: I'll get to them all.

Thanks.

GUNNER PALACE reveals the complex realities of the situation in Iraq not seen on the nightly news. Told first-hand by our troops, 'Gunner Palace' presents a thought provoking portrait of a dangerous and chaotic war that is personal, highly emotional, sometimes disturbing, surprisingly amusing … and thoroughly fascinating.

Filmmaker Michael Tucker, who lived with 2/3 Field Artillery, a.k.a. “The Gunners” for two months, captures the lives and humanity of these soldiers whose barracks are the bombed-out pleasure palace of Uday Hussein (nicknamed Gunner Palace), situated in the heart of the most volatile section of Baghdad. With total access to all operations and activities, Tucker's insider footage provides a rare look at the day-to-day lives of these soldiers on the ground — whether swimming in Uday's pool and playing golf on his putting green or executing raids on suspected terrorists, enduring roadside bombs, mortar attacks, RPGs and snipers.

See the trailers here.

A list of screenings is here.

Stumbled recently across ¡No Pasarán!, a group blog published by Erik Svane and Joe N. of Merde in France. Its focus:

What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions.

Check it out.

Via MetaFilter:

Think you might know a thing or three about US Presidents? (Alternately, have five minutes to kill?) Then try identifying some of them by their hair! Be sure to give it a few tries as there are more presidents than hairdos-to-guess per game.

Go on, guess the President's hair!

… works great with Movable Type (as you can see by the fact that I'm posting this with the Treo right now).

Test complete.

Pep Boys is a pretty unassuming company. Sells car parts. Does some simple service. Straight forward, easy to understand, not involved in all sorts of complex financial circumstances, international industries, or sophisticated financial instruments (like, say, a BP or an Exxon/Mobile or a Merrill Lynch).

Yet consider what Pep Boys needs to do to satisfy the SEC and the investor community:

• File an annual report (and make that available to all shareholders and potential investors) that reviews the state of the company and management's strategic intentions and priorities for the coming year.

• Hold investor conferences where investors can review the nitty gritty of the business and it's condition.

• Hold other conferences for investors and analysts so they can vet the firm, its strategy, and its direction.

• Disclose all significant or unusual corporate events with the SEC (and place those events on public record).

• Disclose the level of investment by company insiders others know who owns how much, and if they're buying or selling.

… and frankly, a dozen other things: analyst calls, annual meetings, etc.

Why must simple Pep Boys do this? Why subject poor Manny, Moe, and Jack to such rigor?

Because people are tangibly invested in the company, and as such, they demand as transparent a view into the stewardship of that investment as possible.

It's been that way for a long time, but ENRON, in particular, has made transparency the watchword of the decade for publicly traded companies, their boards, and their CEOs and CFOs.

Which brings me to CNN.

Eason Jordon. Wow. And this was a blog event, from the beginning to the end.

Like Dan Rather.

Like Howell Raines.

Here's the lesson for these and similar folk in mainstream media:

Information has always been a commodity in the public discourse. But now, for the first time in history, the channels of distribution have sufficiently fragmented that information (and news) is no longer something that's held, it's something that flows. From the “Law of the Flow” section of my APME speech:

If you’ve ever taken a class in macroeconomics, you might remember learning about “stocks” and “flows.” In economics, a stock is something that is accumulated over time … furniture in your house is a stock.

A flow is something that occurs over time, and tends to change the level of a stock. Income and savings are examples of flows.

And one of the conversations you have in macroeconomics is about money, and whether it’s a stock or a flow … and increasingly, as money has become more ubiquitous with credit cards, checks, cash, PayPal … money is more of a flow than a stock. It’s not something you ever really have as much as it’s something that flows from place to place as a means of accumulating the stocks you DO have.

Here’s the lesson from Command Post: information in general, and news in particular, is now a flow, and not a stock.

Before the Internet, information was governed by set distribution channels and gatekeepers … brokers … who decided who was able to have what. The stock broker had the price. The real estate agent had the prior housing report. The car salesman had your credit report.

And in news, the journalists had the facts, and the editors acted as brokers, making choices about what would be reported and what wouldn’t.

Not the case now. The Internet hates brokers. It KILLS brokers. Now, because of the Internet, everyone with a computer, an email address and a browser is a point of distribution … the only thing needed for information to “get out” is an interest on the part of one person to supply it, and a demand on the part of another person to have it.

Because of The Flow, people now are exposed to more information, are naturally more dependent on it, and are better able to judge its quality than ever before.

It's the currency of exchange for daily life, and mainstream news organizations (at least before the blogs) have been our banks of information: they held the currency, and they distributed it to the populace. And in serving that role, we made a similar investment in the mainstream media: We invested our faith.

Which is where CNN has something to learn from Pep Boys. Publicly traded companies must now begin to provide high levels of transparency if they hope to keep the faith of their investors. The same is now true for MSM news outlets. For … well, forever, really … they’ve been able to live in a world with no transparency, and make choices about how to handle the investment of faith by others without accountability to the investor.

Not any more. Now The Flow, facilitated by the blogs, are pulling back the covers on our banks of public trust. Dan Rather, Howell Raines, Eason Jordan … they were the CEOs of those information banks. For decades they've made choices of how to handle the consumer’s investment without providing any visibility into direction or intention. They've had their ENRON here and their WorldCom there … we just never learned of them. Now, the blogs are forcing transparency upon you, and some consumers are rightly finding that their investment hasn’t been treated as well as the like.

So they’re placing it elsewhere. They're placing it here.

In the closing pages of BLOG Hugh Hewitt writes:

The key to keep in mind is that trust drives everything. To build and maintain trust is a tremendously difficult thing, requiring patient attention to detail and discipline over long periods of time.

Yep. Trust drives everything. Always has. The difference now is that the media not only needs to earn it, they need to prove they deserve to keep it. Doing so is going to require true change in the structures and policies of these institutions. Good intentions and a commitment to better ethics won’t suffice (it certainly wouldn’t for Pep Boys) … and the resulting change is going to require a transformation of enormous consequence, the beginnings of which we have yet to even see.

Visited DeepBlog yet? Just checking.

I'm taking part today in a panel on blogging, journalism, and politics at a Campaigns & Elections seminar in D. C. Among the other participants are Hugh Hewitt and Matt Gross. I'll moblog anything interesting from the site, and have a post-panel post this evening.

OK ... totally off topic for Command Post. But it's my page, damn it. And the fact is, as a Philadelphia resident, I can no longer contain myself. So ... all together now:

Fly Eagles fly, on the road to victory.
Fight Eagles fight, score a touchdown 1-2-3.
Hit 'em low,
Hit 'em high,
And we'll watch our Eagles fly.
Fly Eagles fly on the road to victory!!!!

E. A. G. L. E. S. EAGLES!!!!!!

The Christian Science Monitor takes on that question, including whether journalists warrant press protections.

My two cents: If in addressing the issue of protection you’re comparing the guarantee journalists have to that enjoyed by physicians and attorneys, it strikes me as a false comparison. Unless there's a form of “official” accreditation or licensing for journalists, we're not journalists.

Of course, given that there is no such accreditation or licensing, that means that journalists aren't journalists, either. So we're all either in the protection soup, or we're all out.

The fact is, the protection journalists have enjoyed re: their sources is a legacy of their being the only news distribution channel in town. They’re not anymore, and as such, they’re no more or less official in their roles than are the bloggers … unless we want to say that the fact one might get a job with the New York Times counts as a vetting and accrediting process equal to that of passing the Bar.

Which, we know, it does not.

(Tip to Power Line)

Andrew Sullivan is giving up his Daily Dish:

After much hemming and hawing, I've decided to put the blog as you've known it on hiatus for a few months. The Dish will still exist, the site will be updated weekly with new feature articles, and I'll still post when I feel like it. But it won't have the regularity or content of the past four and a half years. Why? The simple answer is that I want to take a breather, to write a long-overdue book, to read some more, travel to Europe and the Middle East, and work on some longer projects. Much as I would like to do everything, I've been unable to give the blog my full attention and make any progress on a book (and I'm two years behind). It's not so much the time as the mindset. The ability to keep on top of almost everything on a daily and hourly basis just isn't compatible with the time and space to mull over some difficult issues in a leisurely and deliberate manner. Others might be able to do it. But I've tried and failed. Besides, this is my fifth year of daily blogging - I was doing this when Clinton was president and Osama bin Laden was largely unknown - and I've always thought it's a good idea to quit something after around five years or so.

Virginia Postrell comments intelligently, as usual:

Even the few brilliant scholars (Tyler Cowen, Eugene Volokh, Grant McCracken) who make blogging seem like it should foster serious thought limit their posting to topics they want to mull over in public. Current-affairs blogging of the Sullivan/Instapundit/name your favorite type is inherently quick, dirty, and disposable. It may add to the public discourse, but it doesn't tend to deepen the blogger's own thinking. That, plus sheer laziness, is why this blog has never promised more than a few posts a week, and why I've given up my think-magazine-editor instincts to voice an opinion on everything. For a full-blown argument, I want to write something for a sizable audience and get paid. And I don't really want to post half-baked ones.

I appreciate the point of view. Luckily for us, we have lots of contributors to carry the torch.

Brett Stephens at Opinion Journal:

The theme for this year's meeting of the World Economic Forum is “Taking Responsibility for Tough Choices,” and on Thursday afternoon the choice before me is this: Do I sign up for the session on Arab Reform with Gamal Mubarak, heir apparent to Egypt's throne? Or do I plump for the “Reinvent Yourself” workshop with Angelina Jolie?

I must say, the Mubarak meeting is awfully tempting to this Middle East policy junkie. Also on offer Thursday night are discussions about the weak dollar, the blogosphere, dangerous ideas, European leadership, cubicle design, public universities, brand USA and the economics of populism. Overall, the forum hosts 189 meetings over five days, not to mention press conferences, coffees, nightcaps, and plenary addresses by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder, Jacques Chirac and Victor Yushchenko, among others. It's all so exciting.

… the weak dollar, the blogosphere, dangerous ideas … what? The blogosphere? Who's at Davos talking about the blogoshpere?

Ahh, here it is … “Welcome to the Blogpolis”:

By providing highly personalized, real-time political information, blogging is reshaping how citizens make political decisions, for good and ill. 1) When do bloggers provide better information and analysis than conventional media? 2) Are bloggers effective media watchdogs? 3) Can bloggers be a positive political tool, and not just a threat to the powers that be? 4) What is the relationship between bloggers and democratic values?

Moderated by Richard Sergay, Senior Producer, Internet and Technology Unit, ABC News.

OK, but which bloggers are there? You now … him, or him, or her?

Now, the WEF has its own blog here (although its views “do not neccessarily reflect those of the Forum”). I see Loic Le Meur is a contributor, and some MSM types.

Ahh, here it is. The blogging panel included:

• Loic
• Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner, Softbank Capital, USA (as far as I know, not a blogger)
• Rebecca MacKinnon, Berkman Fellow, Harvard University, USA, and blogger (a good panelist)
• Oh Yeon Ho, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Ohmynews Co, Republic of Korea
• David M. Webb, Editor, Webb-Site.com, Hong Kong SAR

But seriously: If you wanted a panel about blogs as a political tool, and their role at the nexus of politics, media, and the public, wouldn't you want someone around who had actually, you know, used them as such? A Matt Gross … a Mike Krempasky … somebody?

I'm just sayin'.

… to my blog partner, friend, and general all around action hero cool chick, Michele, on the four year anniversary of her taking mouse, and blog, in hand.

The 'sphere has never been the same.

You rock, pards. Like RJD.

New poll up on the main page: Is Doug Feith leaving Defense a good or bad thing?

And if you don't know who Doug Feith is, you need to read Command Post more! Here's a primer …

We're proud to add Keith Taylor of Sortapundit to our ranks of contributors. Visit his blog and help welcome him to the Post.

As for Michele and me: Welcome, Keith!

The Philly Inquirer's Chris Hedges has a think piece up today titled Journalists' objectivity needs balance of truth. In it he notes:

Balance and objectivity, without a strong commitment to the truth, can turn journalism into farce. It was impossible to witness the army massacres in El Salvador or the murder of children by Bosnian Serb snipers in Sarajevo without being revolted. I hated these crimes. I took risks, along with many of my colleagues, to expose and explain them. And I wanted, through my reporting, to get the world to wake up and put an end to the wholesale murder of innocents.

This commitment, however, was effective only when we were rigorous about telling the truth. It is this moral core, this belief that we can contribute to an open society and make the world a better place, that keeps me and other reporters focused on truth as well as balance and objectivity.

And then this:

Balance and objectivity have become code words to propagate the insidious and cynical moral disengagement that is destroying American journalism. This moral disengagement gives equal time, and sometimes more than equal time, to those who spread falsehoods and distort information. It tacitly sanctions the dissemination of lies. It absolves us from making moral choice. It obscures and often shuts out the truth.

This sophistry has come to characterize the circus that goes by the name of journalism on cable news shows. Facts on television are largely interchangeable with opinions. The television reporter, like a game show host, makes sure each warring party has his or her time to vent. The veracity of what is said is irrelevant. But the disease of moral neutrality is no longer confined to the poseurs on television, who are, after all, entertainers posing as journalists. It is seeping into those organizations that are still attempting to report the news. Objectivity is not the same as moral disengagement. Balance does not mean giving everyone the same space. We are more than dutiful court stenographers. Journalists have a contract with viewers and readers. This contract was broken. We must make sure it is not broken again.

“Entertainers posing as journalists.” Wow. Wonder how he feels about Dan Rather.

I see the boys at Powerline critique Corzine via a parody of a critique of Lincoln's second inaugural (what?). Reminded me of another Lincoln-related parody. Evils of PowerPoint, anyone?

This is a great post. “Abramson shuddered.” I bet. Enough said.

Michele just sent me this. Nice to know we've entered the ranks of the academy, if only through a back door. And if you're reading this, Mr. Hastings Law Student, thanks for stopping by. How IS contacts, anyway?

Typing this from 37,000 feet and US Airways flight 1640.

I’ve just completed Hugh Hewitt’s book, Blog. Hugh’s folks were kind enough to send me a complementary copy before its release, but true to form I was only able to start it two days ago. The good news is that I read it in two sittings, most of which were on airplanes, which supports Hugh’s hope that it be a fast read.

I don’t write this to post about Hugh’s book, as much as I liked it. I’ll do that in another post. I’m writing this post to talk about Command Post, and what’s next for me with the site.

Fact is, we’ve been really lucky here. Our post-election traffic has held up quite well, stabilizing at about the same level as it was before the conventions and Election Day. What’s more, the tsunami proved what we’ve seen with the war and with the Northeast blackout and with hurricanes and a host of other stories: when news breaks, people around the world can rely on our network of bloggers to aggregate new fast, accurately, and with more global depth of coverage than just about anywhere else out there. People may not come here every day, but they come here when a story hits.

That’s wonderful, and it’s the point of the site: a sort of “middle ground” in journalism. Not mainstream media, and not the pure opinion of most blogs, but a third alternative, primarily about the news, that’s an awful lot faster, easier to access, and personable than the MSM sites.

And if you trust Command Post more than CNN or FOX, more power to you.

But reading Blog was a catalyst for a bunch of thinking I’ve been doing about the site, and where I’ve settled is that I in particular can get much better as an administrator and contributor. So, without consulting with Michele (she’s reading this for the first time, too … sorry pards, had to get this on, well, not paper, but screen), here’s what I’m thinking about my commitment to Command Post:

• Bigger network. People come and people go from TCP, and that’s fine. But our policy is to keep people on the rolls, and they’re all still welcome. And I don’t care how often someone posts … because if they only post once a year, but it’s a key issue or breaking item, that’s good enough for me. That said, I want to expand the network. We have some 170 contributors now … why not 300? Or 500? Or 1,000? The value of the network is the square of its number … so let’s grow the sucker. Our mission, vision, values, and posting guidelines are over there in the left-hand column. If you can live by those, you’re welcome to join the team.

• Write more. My posting comes and goes, and is almost always a function of my travel and work schedule, which are both frankly quite demanding. Most of my work days are in front clients or team members or on airplanes, not in front of a PC, and my blogging time is generally restricted to weekends, early mornings, and late evenings. That said, if I can post, I’m going to try to contribute more original stuff. I’ve only really done this twice here, with this Op/Ed and with my APME speech, and both seemed well received. So look for me more on Op/Ed and the Publisher’s Desk. And if you hate my writing, thoughts, or style, well … sorry about that.

• Link to blogs more. We do a great job of linking to MSM, but I think we can do a much better job of linking to the blogosphere. BUT: we have to link to the left and the right, given our desire to keep this site to the center. So I’m going to get better at finding and highlighting unique, and undiscovered, blog voices on the events and topics we cover here. I’m sure I’ll learn something, and perhaps you will, too.

• Get mobile. I can post from my phone, and did so extensively during the RNC. In fact, near as I can tell, I was the only blogger posting from inside the hall during the President’s acceptance speech. Our whole network needs to be able to do the same, so I’m going to equip us all with mobile posting capability.

• More responsive. Readers send me email and tips all the time, and I almost never respond. I used to, but the volume simply outstretched my available time. I read every email, though. Always have and always will. What I can get much better at is acting on those links and tips. So I may not reply to you, but I’m going to do my best to check out, and if it works, post, the stuff you send. The forums can become yet another source for this … for readers to post news items and have conversation about those stories. In fact, maybe I need to start a “Tips” forum topic. Note to self … [Update: Done.]

• More sticky, more fun. Gotta love a line like that. I can do a much better job of making Command Post a more interactive, and frankly, more fun, site. The forums are a start, and seem to be coming along well. I can change the poll question more often, we can have more contests, and we can engage the blogosphere more. Hugh’s done a great job of this, asking other bloggers to post answers to questions and then cross-linking them, and I intend to steal this idea with abandon. (Flattery, Hugh, flattery.) What’s more, we have an awfully funny and compelling writer in Michele, as anyone who reads ASV knows, as we do among many of our contributors. No reason not to unleash those same talents on the Op/Ed page, related to our topics of coverage, or in the form of a bit more personality in our posts on our main news pages. So look for that (and you have been warned).

So … that’s a start. I don’t expect, nor do I have dreams for, Command Post to be a great revolution in media. That’s already underway. It’s called the Blogosphere, and we’re but a small part. But this is a labor of love, and in the very least, it’s been a personal investment of time, energy, thought. And because of that, it’s an investment I want to be proud of. We’ve done well, being a resource of citizen-journalism for people over the past 18 months, but we can do better. And if I can keep the commitments above, at least for my part, we will.

Just thought you should know.

Thanks for reading the Post.

Michele and I wanted to let you know that we’ve incorporated The Command Post. The official name of the firm is “JBTP, LLC”, with “JBTP” standing for “Journalism By The People.” We took this step based on the advice of Hugh Hewitt, which he dispensed during a conversation he and I had at the DNC in Boston. It doesn’t mean much in a tangible way … it’s not like we’re making a ton of money doing this … but it will help us account for our travel expenses at speeches and panel discussions, and our donations, a bit more cleanly.

More important, I think it’s symbolic of our little corner of the Blogosphere becoming “real” enough that we had to treat it as so. Which, I think, is symbolic of the Blogoshpere itself becoming increasingly “real.” (As are the incorporation of Strengthen The Good as a 501©(3) non-profit, the formation of Red State as a 527 … I’m sure there are others). To that we owe thanks to Hugh and Reynolds and Lileks and APME and many other sponsors and interested parties, but most of all we owe thanks to our contributors and our readers. For all of you: We’re grateful. It’s fun doing this, but only because Michele and I have had occasion to feel part of something larger than ourselves.

Some of you know that I fly almost every week. If you happen to see a guy in his mid-30s tapping a blog entry on a black IBM Thinkpad on your next commercial airline flight, it’s probably me. Say hello, and I’ll buy the drinks.

Jenna loves Ronnie James Dio!

[Not really news, so I'm just sticking this here]

__________ was the shortest inaugural address at 135 words. (1793)

________________was the only president to walk to and from his inaugural. He was also the first to be inaugurated at the Capitol.

The first inaugural ball was held for _____________.

____________ was the first president sworn in wearing long trousers.

____________was the first president to affirm rather than swear the oath of office.

_________________'s was the longest inaugural address at 8,445 words.

The first inauguration to be photographed was _______________'s.

__________ was the first to include African-Americans in his parade.

___________s mother was the first to attend her son's inauguration.

____________ inauguration was the first ceremony to be recorded by a motion picture camera.

__________'s wife was the first one to accompany her husband in the procession from the Capitol to the White House.

____________s second inaugural parade.

____________ was the first president to ride to and from his inaugural in an automobile.

__________'s was the first inaugural address broadcast on the radio.

_________'s was the first to be televised.

____________s inauguration had first poet to participate in the official ceremony.

____________ was the first (and so far) only president to be sworn in by a woman.

_________'s inaugural parade featured solar heat for the reviewing stand.

_____________'s second inaugural had to compete with Super Bowl Sunday.

The first ceremony broadcast on the Internet was _____________'s second inauguration.

Bonus: Name the six presidents who did not take their oaths in Washington, D.C.

[Trivia from infoplease.com. Leave your answers in the comments - I'll post the correct answers tonight.]

Please help us welcome a new TCP contributor, Josh Stanton. Josh publishes his blog One Free Korea from Washington, DC. Josh served in Korea, and is a former Army JAG prosecutor and defense counsel. Welcome, Josh!

We were asked to exchange banners with Helmets to Hardhats, a company funded by