Yesterday, a Kossack posted a recommended diary accusing the Firedoglake blog of "Swiftboating" Obama over his work for a Chicago law firm. As an Obama supporter, I agreed with the diarist on substance, although I don't think the blogpost qualified as "swiftboating."
Today, however, another poster at the Firedoglake blog has revisited the issue in a way that corrects some of the errors in yesterday's post. It's a nice treatment of the issue and is worth reading:
In yesterday’s post on Obama and Rezko, some questions were raised about this firm and why he picked Miner, Barnhill and Galland over a "white shoe" outfit. Let’s take a look.
One of the appeals was surely the firm’s role in Chicago politics. As the Boston Globe noted:
Miner was Chicago's corporation counsel under Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor, in the 1980s when Washington was battling for control of the City Council against remnants of the once-mighty Machine.
Along with that political heritage, the firm itself specialized in areas of law that may have caught Obama's interest:
"It's a real do-good firm," says Fay Clayton, lead counsel for the National Organization for Women in a landmark lawsuit aimed at stopping abortion clinic violence.
The FDL blogger concludes:
Looking over the work Miner has done over the years, I almost wish I had gone to law school!
I suppose this shows that, when dealing with group blogs, we should be careful in attributing a post by a particular individual to an entire blog. There is not only diversity between blogs, but, when you're dealing with group blogs, among the posters at an individual blog. As another example, Jonathan Singer at MyDD is an Obama supporter even though, overall, most of the posters at MyDD are Hillary supporters.
Anyway, please give the FDL post a read.