Dear TruthOut, OpEd News, Lone Star Iconoclast, Common Dreams, Black Commentator, Smirking Chimp, Counterpunch and Novekeo:

I just called the Congressional Press Gallery to see if I had been credentialed to cover the Denver and Minneapolis conventions. I hadn't been. That wasn't really a big surprise. But then I started asking the press gallery rep if any of the online progressive news services that I write for -- even occasionally -- might have gotten credentialed so that perhaps I could go to the conventions on their coat-tails instead. "What about OpEd News?" I asked. No.

"TruthOut maybe? Counterpunch? The Black Commentator?" Nope, nope, nope.

"Novekeo? The Lone Star Iconoclast? How about The Smirking Chimp?" Zero, zip, nada.

"Common Dreams?" No. "What about the Huffington Post?"

"No, not them either. We don't credential blogs." But then the guy looked again. "I take that back. They have been credentialed." Whew!

Either none of the rest of you applied to get credentialed to these incredibly important events or else your credential applications have been turned down -- in which case, if I was you, I would be totally pissed off.

The mainstream media has blindly supported the war on Iraq, lobbied for the congressional deregulation laws that led to our housing foreclosure crisis and dollar destabilization, gave the 2000 and 2004 election fiascoes a pass, etc. Yet they are being credentialed and you are not?