The Volokh Conspiracy - I hope Nancy Pelosi's check is in the mail:

This post details some of the payments various bloggers are getting from political campaigns this fall. Other bloggers, including the famous Daily Kos were taking money from politicians as far back as the 2004 campaign.

Sadly, Nancy Pelosi has not yet paid me for my rousing endorsement of her bid to become Speaker of the House. Without the critical support of the VC vote, she would not be poised to take over Dennis Hastert's job right now. So I just want to say that it's not too late for the soon-to-be Speaker of the House to send some well-earned dough my way.

More seriously, I'm not convinced that taking money from politicians is the right way to go for bloggers. At the very least, all such payments should be prominently disclosed either on the title page of the blog or as part of any posts that comment on the campaign. If Nancy Pelosi does send me some money, you can be sure I'll let you know!

UPDATE: It seems to me that many of the commenters are reading a lot more into this post than is actually there. I did not say that all (or even most) of the bloggers on the list I linked to had failed to disclose. Nor did I claim that disclosure is required even years after the fact. I do believe that disclosure is required if you 1) take money from a campaign, and 2) blog about that race while it is still going on. Other situations are in more of a gray area and I'm not interested enough in this issue to do a detailed post on which of them require disclosure and which don't. Finally, it should be obvious that I did not say that this problem is solely confined to liberal bloggers.

UPDATE #2: For those interested in this subject, more details on the employment of both liberal and conservative bloggers by campaigns and interest groups are available in these two National Journal articles, here and here.

	[Ilya Somin, November 7, 2006 at 12:16am] Trackbacks I hope Nancy Pelosi's check is in the mail: This post details some of the payments various bloggers are getting from political campaigns this fall. Other bloggers, including the famous Daily Kos were taking money from politicians as far back as the 2004 campaign. Sadly, Nancy Pelosi has not yet paid me for my rousing endorsement of her bid to become Speaker of the House. Without the critical support of the VC vote, she would not be poised to take over Dennis Hastert's job right now. So I just want to say that it's not too late for the soon-to-be Speaker of the House to send some well-earned dough my way. More seriously, I'm not convinced that taking money from politicians is the right way to go for bloggers. At the very least, all such payments should be prominently disclosed either on the title page of the blog or as part of any posts that comment on the campaign. If Nancy Pelosi does send me some money, you can be sure I'll let you know! UPDATE: It seems to me that many of the commenters are reading a lot more into this post than is actually there. I did not say that all (or even most) of the bloggers on the list I linked to had failed to disclose. Nor did I claim that disclosure is required even years after the fact. I do believe that disclosure is required if you 1) take money from a campaign, and 2) blog about that race while it is still going on. Other situations are in more of a gray area and I'm not interested enough in this issue to do a detailed post on which of them require disclosure and which don't. Finally, it should be obvious that I did not say that this problem is solely confined to liberal bloggers. UPDATE #2: For those interested in this subject, more details on the employment of both liberal and conservative bloggers by campaigns and interest groups are available in these two National Journal articles, here and here.