Charlie Rose just introduced his show by announcing that a Congressional report was released today saying intelligence agencies missed opportunities before 9/11 . "Joining me now from Washington, Michael Isakoff of Newsweek magazine. He has read the declassified 900-page report and is here to tell us about what is in it."

What? Was this thing leaked days ago with an embargo, or was that a bald-faced lie? Who can read 900 pages in an afternoon? And I don't believe he was at his desk reading all day anyway.

Why the pretense? They can't admit that he skimmed through parts of the report, read sections that jumped out at him, or that a team of assistants said were the good parts?

And they wonder why we don't trust the media. 

I just checked my mailbox, and 5280 (Denver's city magazine) was there, with my story on Colorado bloggers prominently placed. A few excerpts (I'm going to focus on quotes here, to give you other bloggers a voice):

[From TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt on why she loves to blog]: "When I'm on [FoxNews'] Hannity & Colmes, a milllion people may see me," she says. "But how many of those people are really interested in what I have to say? But when I blog, people are reading me because they're interested in the liberal viewpoint." [Then later in the piece:] "It's the response that keeps you going," she says. "People are really reading. And through the comments, you can see they're thinking and discussing. You know you've hit a chord, and it pumps you up."

...

"Everyone wants validation of their opinion," says Denverite Andy O'Reilly, one of four writers behind WorldWidRant.com. "Or at least to get in a fight about it." He chuckles at the last line, but he's not entirely joking. LIke any political junkie, he hungers for the stimulation of a vigorous debate.

And I'll give away my ending:

"I could either yell at the TV or write it and put it on the Internet," [VodkaPundit's Stephen] Green says. "I found it was a lot more fun to put it on the internet, although I do still yell at the television."

I loved that last quote. I knew the second he said it that I wanted to open or close the story with that idea.

They gave the piece really nice play, too. It was supposed to just be a little half-page quickie, but I wrote way long and they gave me the real estate. With graphics, it fills the whole page, too, the front page of The Atmosphere, which is the opening section of the magazine. (It's actually on the second page of that--the first right-hand page which is much better; reader eyes tend to see go right to the right-side pages, often miss the left).

Thanks to everyone who participated. I hope you're happy with it. Do let me know. My editor took out a bit of the fun stuff, but gave me the extra space (I wrote more than 50% longer than assigned and they gave me nearly all the extra real estate). All four bloggers on focused on are intact. Shew! They are: Jeralyn of TalkLeft, Stephen of VodkaPundit, Andy of WorldWideRant and Walter of WalterInDenver.

There's also a box listing "Ten Great Local Blogs," with urls to everybody's sites. I'm going to reproduce it below, because it will be a lot easier for you to click than to try to type it in from the magazine. I'll see if I can get them to post this on their site. And I will leave it in my intentionally misnamed "Eight Great Denver Blogs" link in my blogroll in the left column:

• Talk Left: The politics of crime from a liberal perspective
• Vodka Pundit: Politics, war, satire and recipes, from a libertarian angle
• The World Wide Rant: Politics, religion, science, etc.
• Rover Pundit: Eclectic: politics, computers, great big trucks
• Walter In Denver: Libertarian politics and golf
• Rant-O-Rama!: Fun-loving anecdotes
• Resurrection Song: Politics and culture, moderately conservative
• The Blog of the Century of the Week: Eclectic: movies, technology, unemployment
• Coyote Gulch: Detailed election coverage, especially local
• Amygdala : Libertarian politics

And one I didn't know about when I turned in the piece:

• Mike's Weblog Streams of consciousness from a queer Denver lunatic (his words; but he's pretty sane.)

The mag hits newstands tomorrow. It will be in all the grocery chains, but may take the distributor a few days. Tattered Cover normally gets it up in the morning, as it's their bestselling magazine (including nationals like People or Vanity Fair). If you're not near Denver, you'll probably never see it, but I'll start posting outtakes in a few days, once I get my story in.

I found some great resources on gay marriage, and added links to my new Gay Marriage subsite.

The best one, unsurprisingly was a very comprehensive site dedicated to the issue by GLAAD. They've got a complete breakdown on the issue, with a table of contents to organize all the subtopics, and links to dozens of other sites. Start here.

And GLAD (a different org) has an extended discussion of the evolving history of marriage.

These will remain on my gay marriage site, and I will be adding more resources soon. (And feel free to let me know about more.) You can always find my gay marriage site via a link in the left column. Just look for the pic of Reichen & Chip. I may change the pic at some point, but the link will remain constant.)

Interesting piece in the W Post about the man who apparently gave up Uday and Qusay. Not interesting enough. To me there's a fascinating story about conflicted loyalties here to be told, but hopefully we'll get that eventually. Here's a start:

The Doorbell Rang And 'There They Were'
Hussein Sons Came To House to Hide

By Kevin Sullivan and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 24, 2003; Page A01

MOSUL, Iraq, July 23 -- Nawaf Zaidan Nasiri answered the front door of his elegant mansion 24 days ago and greeted a nightmare.

Standing there, he told his neighbors Tuesday, were sons of former president Saddam Hussein, Qusay and Uday, two of Iraq's three most-wanted fugitives, asking Zaidan to repay years of privilege and favors they had doled out to him.

"I answered the doorbell and there they were, right in front of my face," Zaidan told his neighbor, Mukhlis Thahir Jubori, as they sat in a U.S. military Humvee on Tuesday. Thahir recalled their conversation in an interview today. He said Zaidan had told him: "They asked to stay in my house and I could not refuse them. This is a disaster for me."

Just talked to my 5280 editor.

The issue with my piece on Denver-area bloggers hits the newstands tomorrow.

I haven't seen the final version, so hopefully most of the people I spoke to are still in there. I went way over my assigned word-count trying to include you all, so one or two may have been cut. It's only 600-1000 words, but should be prominently featured in the opening section, Atmosphere. I'll let you know more when I get my copy.

I hope to include some outtakes from the interviews here as well. I got such great material and could only include a whisper of it, so I'd love to share more great thoughts from blogging, particularly from Jeralyn of TalkLeft, Stephen of VodkaPundit, Andy of WorldWideRant and Walter of WalterInDenver. All that may have to wait till I get my current story in, but the issue will be on newsstands for two months.

(FYI: 5280 is Denver's city magazine. This is the mile high city, because supposedly the altitude is exactly one mile, 5280 feet high. I linked to their website above, though they don't have a whole lot on it.)