LC’s own LL knocks em dead on OTR

Hats off to Julielynn Gibbons (Liberal Lucy of Liberal, Loud and Proud) and Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel from The Next Hurrah) for the excellent job they did representing liberal bloggers on “Off the Record with Tim Skubick.”

They appeared with rightwing bloggers Nick DeLeeuw (“Rightmichigan”) and Bill Nowling (The Lunchbucket Conservative) on the half hour show to discuss the effect of blogging on Michigan politics. They did an excellent job doing that, and they lent credibility to what we bloggers do. This is one of my favorite shows, and usually the panelists are political reporters from the mainstream media that cover the Capitol, but this time we had people who are much more involved in covering the Capitol.

I know this is all over the blogosphere by now, but because a lot of what I write about is politics where I live in Livingston County I wanted to point out the special connection to Livingston County.

Liberal Lucy grew up here in Livingston County’s Green Oak Township, and her proud parents still live. Although she now lives in Lansing, many local Democrats know her from her work to improve the Democratic net roots presence here in the county.

Bill Nowling also lives in Green Oak Township, and he was once a reporter here for the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus when it was still a weekly newspaper. After moving here to his wife’s hometown, fellow Republican Buddy Moorehouse, then the editor of the former Brighton Argus, got him a job with the paper until he could get into Michigan Republican politics, hooking up first on the staff of former Gov. John Engler and for then former state Sen. Mike Rogers.

After going to work for a PR firm, he made news when he allegedly threatened to blackmail Rogers after Rogers was elected to the U.S. House if he did not vote for a telecommunications bill one of the clients Nowling’s firm was representing wanted passed.

Ann Arbor resident Marcy Wheeler is the author of “Anatomy of Deceit” about the Plame CIA leak case. She was the only blogger to receive a press pass for the Scooter Libby trial where she live-blogged during the trial.

DeLeeuw operates one of the more slimier blogs around that’s long on accusations and short on facts. He recently took the Governor to task for daring to take a lunch hour and spending it with her teenage daughter on her birthday. His latest baseless attack is accusing Michigan House Democrats of taking a bribe because DTE’s political action committee contributed $15,000 to the House Democrats' political action committee, making the ridiculous claim it was for the proposal to revamp state regulations to return monopoly status to utilities such as DTE that could raise $500 million toward the budget shortfall. Like all of his “reporting” the real story is what he leaves out, like the fact that DTE has also given $11,500 to Senate Republicans.

You can see the show online, or you can tune in tonight at 9 p.m. on WKAR in East Lansing or 11:30 p.m. Sunday. The show is on most state PBS stations.