In the aftermath of the Brown resignation, it is now clear to the whole country that Bush does not mind appointing incompetents who are politically loyal. Some MSM commentators have wondered publicly how many other Michael Browns there are in this administration. But the MSM is not going to pursue this on their own: there are thousands of political appointees in the federal government, and no MSM outlet has the resources to do a thorough investigation of them all.
I think that that is our job.
So far as I can tell, the successful toppling of Brown was set in motion first by a Daily Kos post from a member of the International Arabian Horse Association, who described how he had displayed his incompetence there first. From there, the story was picked up in the MSM the next day. To me, this is how the blogosphere seems to work best, by cooperatively doing the legwork that the MSM can't or won't do, and then feeding them with information that needs to reach the public.
In the aftermath of the Brown resignation, it is now clear to the whole country that Bush does not mind appointing incompetents who are politically loyal. Some MSM commentators have wondered publicly how many other Michael Browns there are in this administration. But the MSM is not going to pursue this on their own: there are thousands of political appointees in the federal government, and no MSM outlet has the resources to do a thorough investigation of them all.
I think that that is our job. Those of us who have some expertise in a given field should start investigating the political appointees in the particular goverment agencies that we know about. Here, I am not talking about exposing ideological bias: it is taken for granted that Bush appointees will be unpalateable right-wingers. But there have got to be more "Brownies", people who simply have no real qualifications for their positions, and who have embarassing or even corrupt backgrounds. I don't think that we should engage in random rants or unproveable smears (I myself have done a little investigating, but wont post anything specific without evidence)--but I do think that we need to bring out as much real evidence as possible about as many bad appointees as possible.