Welcome to the first day of the Just The Facts blog.

One day, in the not so distant future, I predict that the date June 5, 2003 will be looked upon as having almost the same significance as August 5, 1735. (I’m sure all you lovers of freedom know the significance of that date.) And not because it’s the first day of this blog. No, this date is an important milestone in our history because it is the day in which the blogosphere brought down the editors of the The Paper of Record, the New York Times.

And make no mistake about it; it was the blogs that directly led to the demise of Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd. As Jack Shaefer said in his Slate column, “Until a couple of weeks ago, the New York Times was the closest thing left to the Soviet-era Kremlin—or the Don Corleone family. Whatever politicking or bloodletting that went on inside the 43rd Street compound stayed inside.”

And just like the Kremlin, the mighty have fallen, not by armed force but by something even more powerful and compelling —the simple truth. No longer can the Raines’ and Dowd and The Guardian, to name a few, intentionally distort and misquote to further their own agendas of the elite news media get away with their half-truths and selective ellipses. As leading blogger Andrew Sullivan said today, “It means that huge and powerful institutions such as the New York Times cannot get away with anything any more. The deference is over; and the truth will out.” The power of the blogs, that free, unfettered electronic universe where anyone can be a publisher, an editor and a reporter means that the old ways of defining what is “news” is over. Now, bloggers can see source material, such as the exact quotation of Wolfowitz instead of the Vanity Fair or Guardian interpretations of his words.

It’s a great day!