Last Rites for Hillary?

"Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn't have applause lines. He didn't give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn't summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better."

The LAT reminds us that John McCain's criticism of the war effort came only after the invasion:

"Before the war, McCain predicted a quick and easy victory, not a vicious insurgency. He issued dire warnings about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction but didn't read the full 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that showed gaps in the intelligence."

How did federal investigators start looking into a Democratic governor hiring hookers? The New York Post has the answer:

"Four months before a hooker scandal brought down Eliot Spitzer, controversial Republican operative Roger Stone tipped the FBI to the governor's penchant for prostitutes."

We'll wind up this morning with today's print column:

The press wasn't paying much attention to John McCain last fall when he called Ed Morrissey from the campaign trail and spent 38 minutes fielding questions.

"You sound pretty chipper for a dead guy," the radio host told McCain, whose presidential campaign had been all but buried by mainstream journalists. The Arizona senator joked that his wife had performed "mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."

The radio show McCain was calling isn't heard on the air, and averages perhaps 1,000 listeners. Morrissey's program is one of 3,400 carried on the Internet through an outfit called BlogTalkRadio, which has quietly emerged as a populist force in cyberspace.

"I wouldn't say I'm a national name, but it's a great way to connect with blog readers," says Morrissey, a conservative who has interviewed other GOP candidates. "There's an immediacy to it, a connection greater than when you're just putting words up on a Web site."

A year and a half after New Jersey businessman Alan Levy launched the venture, BlogTalkRadio is averaging 2.4 million listeners each month for programs that range from politics to the paranormal, along with sports, finance, food, religion and romance. The Pentagon recently started two shows on the network.

The question is whether this is a flash in the pan that appeals mainly to geeks and those with a need to talk to someone -- anyone -- or whether, like blogs, online radio could explode in popularity.