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Josh Marshall over at TalkingPointsMemo.com has a new group blog in the works, and he's put out a call for suggestions and ideas for possible features. Give it some thought, then hit him up if you have something to share.

In the meantime I'd like to highlight something he said in his discussion of why he felt the site was needed:

Another reason for launching the site is something that only became clear to me in the last six months or so. And that is, the way that blogs can facilitate what amounts to a sort of distributed or open-source journalism. Perhaps, you might even call it open-source muck-raking. I began to sense the possibilities of this during the whole Sinclair Broadcasting debacle last fall, again with the 'DeLay Rule', and then on a larger scale with President Bush's jihad against Social Security. When people guest-blog on TPM, they never fail to be amazed at just how much quality information comes in from readers. And in this case, I don't just mean solid thinking and analysis, but concrete factual data. It would have been impossible for me, for instance, to have written most of what I've written on Social Security over the last few months if I didn't have literally thousands of people reading their local papers and letting me know what they're seeing or reporting back from townhall meetings or giving me the heads up on things that are about to break on the hill. That's not a replacement for journalism; it's different. But it's potentially very powerful.

Information is power, and it wants to be free.

Throughout this nation's history, political realignments have come when disconnected groups have found new ways to connect. In the 1980's, conservatism rose on the back of a new set of institutions that formed a new social network: PACs, interest groups, think tanks, media organizations, and religious organizations. The left was caught unprepared and has spent the last decade struggling to make up ground. Their efforts, however, have been largely confined to matching the strategies of the right. Think tanks, lobbying groups, PACs, whatever they're having I'll have two. And while it has certainly helped blunt the conservative advance, there's nothing innovative about any of it. Until... this.

Yes, I know, the right has their own blogs. True, true. But there's a difference between us and them. A crucial difference. We are not the dominant framework. We are not the ones in power. While their blogging efforts are aimed at propping up their sources of power, ours are aimed at tearing them down. And that's an essential difference.

Why? Well, there are plenty of reasons. For one, tactics. The tactics of opposition are always different than the tactics of preservation. For another, incentives. Those out of power always have more to gain, and thus more motivation to seek that gain, than those in power.

But much more important, I think, is a reason quite specific to today. As Michael Kinsley, Thomas Frank, David Brock, George Lakoff, Bill Moyers, Robert Greenwald, and a whole host of others have shown, Republican dominance over the past few decades has been increasingly built on lies. Lies carefully crafted and delivered through a sophisticated media machine designed to overpower even the most reasonable of arguments.

But the machine has a flaw, and more and more I'm seeing that it's a big one. For all its considerable power, the machine was designed for another age, one where media outlets were both limited in number and centralized, where consolidation and not proliferation was the name of the game. With fewer and fewer voices speaking to the nation, manipulation and message control weren't just possible, they were easily achievable.

But Josh is right. Something is changing. Information, like water (and money!) always finds new outlets. It wants to be free, and although it can be diverted, it cannot be stopped. Through the new media, and through blogs in particular, information - truth - has found a new opening. It has found a way around the machine.

As Jefferson once said, "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." With the power of the new media the truth will stand. The machine will be brought down.

So... give it some thought. They're building from the ground up, and they're looking for advice. Speak up! And then, let's work together to take this country back.

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