Happy Fourth (Ka-Boom!)

So in the spirit of the Fourth of July, (today's No. 23 top phrase) you'd assume (perhaps) that bloggers would be glorifying the principles of democracatic governance and the rights of a free press in an open, democratic society...and if so, you'd pretty much be wrong.

Because instead, you've got Business Week writing about bloggers "Polluting the Blogosphere" by being paid for product placement mentions in their posts (today's No. 8 top news story) and conservative bloggers nagging about a New York Times travel story that located the vacation homes of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (as if either were surprises to anyone who hasn't been reading the papers for the past several years?). Blogger Glenn Greenwald points out that the same group of bloggers didn't have the same reaction to similar detailed household disclosures several weeks ago in a Times article about Bill and Hillary Clinton....and he offers has a few other cogent observations about defining real enemies vs. those imagined.

Michael J. Totten Marches On
Every once in a while, blogger Michael J. Totten's posts from his travels through the Middle East bubble to the surface, and they make for some of the best blog reading anywhere. Today's' No. 8 most-cited blog post, in fact, describes his discovery of an ever-elusive phenomenon known as moderate Islamics. He writes from Kurdish Iraq: "If all the world’s Islamists were like these mellow Kurdish Islamists there would be no Terror War and there would be no talk of any clash of civilizations. It’s no accident, nor is it merely a convenience, that the Kurds of Iraq are American allies." "Absolutely fascinating" is one blogger's review.

Celebrate your rights
And for one more moment of groundedness, today's No. 10 most-cited blog post provides 20 amazing facts about American voting. Happy Independence Day?

World Cup: All-European Event
Now that Brazil and Argentina have been ousted from the World Cup finals, it's an all-European affair: Italy, Germany, France and Portugal will battle it out for bragging rights. A BlogPulse Trend graph takes a look at current "buzz" about each of the four countries paired with the phrase "World Cup":