Leavitt, Chertoff launch blogs

WASHINGTON — It was late on Aug. 22 when Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt wrapped up 1,250 words on his experiences in Mozambique. There was more he wanted to write about online, but he had to be up early.

"I think I'll post and go to bed," he wrote on his Web log.

Leavitt and Michael Chertoff at Homeland Security are the first two members of President Bush's Cabinet who are blogging. They are among the more than 61 million Internet blogs, according to blogpulse.com, a site that tracks blogs.

The State Department has begun a blog, too, although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is not a contributor so far.

Chertoff and Leavitt discuss issues facing their departments and occasionally sound off on criticism of their policies.

Two of Chertoff's 11 entries challenge New York Times editorials. Most recently, he said the newspaper's editorial staff "hyperventilates" about the department's effort to arrest gangs and get illegal aliens off the street.

And on Sept. 14, Chertoff said an editorial about the department's disaster response plan was "a perfect storm of misrepresentation and misunderstanding."

Leavitt has written about the children's health care program and defended Bush's veto of a spending increase on the program that the Democratic-controlled Congress passed. Last week, the House failed to override the veto. "The drama around vetoes and overrides are just the way Washington conducts a conversation and debate," he wrote.

In one entry, he compared personal health care with buying the right golf clubs; in the analogy, the clubs are the medication and the golf game is the medical ailment.

Leavitt started his blog in August, having enjoyed reading a pandemic flu blog that his department began this year.

"I've decided to wade in a little deeper into blogdom by writing one for the next month or so," Leavitt wrote in his first entry. "I'm going to see how I feel after that time period. I may continue; I may not."

Leavitt says he writes every blog entry himself, often late at night in hotel rooms when he is traveling. He is concerned that his entries are too long; on Aug. 20, he wrote 2,444 words about his trip to an orphanage in South Africa.