PANDAGON: ” I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that there are just simply no consequences to getting on kos’s bad side. There really aren’t. And certainly not through the liberal blogads network, of which pandagon is still a member. Maybe he’d like to have the power to force people to get in line. I dunno. And maybe there’s a perception that he does have such power. I dunno about that either. But I suspect that you don’t need to threaten a lapdog with discipline. I’m not claiming to be the definitive authority or anything. But there aren’t many bloggers who have been more scathingly critical of kos from the lefty side than I have.”

UPDATE: Rogers Cadenhead emails: “I’m surprised at your mild response to Jerome Armstrong’s stock tout suit. He and Kos were becoming the blogging wunderkinds of the Dean campaign at the same time Armstrong was under active SEC investigation, and they stayed with the campaign. How would it have looked if the story broke in late 2003 or early 2004, when Dean was the Dem frontrunner?”

I wonder if they told the Dean campaign? I hadn’t really thought about the issue as a question of responsibility to their campaign clients, but of course it is. Rogers has a post on that here. And here are some further thoughts on blogs, politics, and journalism.

Daniel Drezner downplays the non-stock-related aspects of the story: “What’s going on is not illegal, or even out of the ordinary in Washington, DC. It’s politics as usual. The only reason the story is noteworthy is because bloggers like Kos have persistently said that they and theirs — a.k.a., the netroots — are not about politics as usual. Over time, however, that claim looks less and less viable. The question is whether bloggers like Kos find that their legions of readers are turned off by these kind of revelations, or whether they comfortably adjust into being middleweight power brokers.”

UPDATE: John Hawkins has a big roundup, with emphasis on the blogads angle, and Atrios is claiming a double standard:

Since “having a friend who works for a campaign” is apparently the new prima facie standard for evidence of corruption in Washington, it would actually be nice if journalists spent some more time tracking the chain of money and jobs in Washington – campaigns to consultants to lobbyists to media figures and around and around – to untangle the genuine financial conflicts of interest which rule that town.

Heh. Indeed.