Salon beefing up its political writing. Salon is opening a Washington D.C. news bureau to headed up by former Clinton insider, Sidney Blumenthal, according to MediaChannel.org. Blumenthal is spearheading what Salon is calling new "editorial intiatives", which will also include partnerships with The Guardian and MoveOn.org.

The piece goes on to refer to two articles that will appear in Salon this week which sound quite interesting:

Salon will publish on Wednesday an inside account of how intelligence was twisted in the rush to the Iraq war. The author of the article, "The New Pentagon Papers," is a retired lieutenant colonel, Karen Kwiatkowski, a Near East specialist, formerly assigned to the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon. On Thursday, Salon will publish the first of several advance excerpts from "House of Bush, House of Saud," a new book by Craig Unger "that explores the relationship between the two dynasties."

I am eagerly looking forward to seeing what Salon has planned. I liked Blumenthal's last book, and I hope he can inject some life into Salon, which has been disappointing me lately. It is still reliable for arts and culture, but it has slipped far behind Slate, in my opinion, for being the best overall web-only magazine.