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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Blogging mere heartbeats from the presidency

Frank Sennett Correspondent

Anyone wishing to initiate a dialogue with two men in the official line of presidential succession can simply post a comment or question on their blogs.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, 14 heartbeats away from the presidency, posted his first Leadership Journal entry at DHS.gov on Sept. 12. He followed in the cyber tracks of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. Currently No. 8 in the line of succession, Leavitt kicked off his blog at HHS.gov in August.

Blogging fever seems to be spreading throughout the Cabinet-level departments. The State Department unveiled its unfortunately named Dipnote blog at State.gov last week, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been too busy trotting the globe to post her musings.

Leavitt and Chertoff have proven prolific at the keyboard, however, and the Homeland Security honcho confronts department critics in the best tradition of blogworld debate.

“I am concerned … that for some Americans, the reality of 9/11 is fading,” he lamented in his initial post.

Chertoff took on the New York Times editorial page in the next entry, accusing its writers of delivering a “broadside” against him and misreading federal security law. He concluded with a tart smackdown: “Nostalgia for a time when terrorist WMDs were not a real risk is not a reason to return to pre-9/11 thinking.”

The secretary later directed his ire at Illinois officials who oppose forcing employers to use his department’s electronic employee verification system.

He also uses the blog to ask hard questions about “the tension between privacy and security” and post reminders about disaster preparedness. All of the entries accept comments, and Chertoff wrote that he welcomes constructive criticism.

But don’t bother asking about the immigration status of a loved one or trying to tell the secretary you saw someone from the FBI’s most-wanted list buying a giant jar of mayonnaise at Costco.

“This is a thought journal, not a substitute channel for services or general questions,” the guidelines state. Reporters are discouraged from badgering Chertoff at the blog as well.

The good news is, Chertoff actually reads the comments that do go through, said Jeff Ostermayer, a DHS spokesman. “And the only ones that don’t get posted are those that violate the comments policy.” The site had published more than 60 responses by Thursday afternoon.

Chertoff’s goal is to “open a dialogue with the American people about homeland security issues,” Ostermayer added, and the secretary plans to address some of the comments in future entries.

Now’s a good time to get in on the conversation. Before the blog was mentioned on CNN last week, it was in something of a soft-launch mode. The site had drawn about 5,000 readers at that point, Ostermayer said, “but we’ve had visitors from all over the world.”

Curiously, Chertoff told the New York Times Magazine last year he doesn’t use e-mail. “One reason is when you write an e-mail, you have to be mindful of the fact that nothing ever disappears,” he said. “It can be deleted, but it is still in the system somewhere.”

Even though the secretary is now “very engaged in writing the blog,” Ostermayer said, “he still does not use e-mail. He’s got folks around him who get him the information he needs.”

So Chertoff might be the only blogger in the world who doesn’t e-mail his friends to ask them to read his site.

Pics to click

For years, a monitor in Google’s Blogger office has displayed a continuous stream of the latest images uploaded onto the service’s multitude of blogs. Now everyone can tap into the addictive Blogger Play slideshow at play.blogger.com. Clicking on an image takes users directly to the host blog. With most of the smutty pictures screened out, it’s a reasonably work-safe time-waster.