Okay, it appears to have been funded by foreign money. But its theatre of operations was indigenous to Ireland. The University of Limerick is an indigenous Irish University even if it had relied heavily on foreign donations to build up its infrastructure.

Irish politicians will take none of this seriously whilst it doesn’t either offer a threat or an opportunity they find tangible in their own real world terms.

Obama’s in another, larger, richer and vastly different social structure. Libertas delivered its bloody noses at home.

There’s not much I can add to Mick Fealty’s timely history lesson, which as an observer of many years of the growth of the US blogging scene I can endorse as a pretty accurate picture.

But I will say that Bush was merely one (pretty mediocre) politician. Believe me, there’s plenty of wingnuts left to come to grips with. They haven’t gone away, you know.

Libertas is “indigenous”, Mick?

I – and a f***ing load of other people – would take great exception to this description.

Simon, I don’t deny Guido’s readership and impact but that doesn’t mean all of us are looking to make an impact on the same way. Nor should we be. Different tools for different goals.

“…it didn’t require Libertas to be directly guiding things.”

Ba sin é go díreach! It’s that ‘investment in conversations’ I mentioned in the IT piece. You can say what you like about the site, but David understands the the value of those conversations, and Naoise (I suspect) had the strategic nouse to put it to good use with the press.

Whether or not you think Libertas was out to do good or bad, it was an audacious (and indigenous) use of the net for political ends.