In comments, although also in general, it's always best to give links and even quotes from the links for what you say.* Here's why:

1. Linky goodness improves the general tone of the blog by avoiding chatter. Chatter is for the cafeteria.

2. It upholds the enlightenment, and liberal, values of evidence and reasoning. The footnote -- and today, the link -- is a profoundly liberal invention, because it enables the reader to check the writer's sources, and not rely simply on the writer's authority.

3. It educates the readers, who can now read what you have read, should they care to.

4. It builds traffic for the good guys (though I grant that not everything quoted is from the good guys, much of it is).

And there is also the matter of quote-y goodness (a phrase that I just invented). Quoting from your sources is often good (though not needed as often as link-y goodness):

1. When the point to be made is not well understood, or needs a context to be understood, or needs a vivid description (like a campaign gaffe), quote-y goodness is a help. Not to single out anyone, but this is the example that got me going:

...had to come back out and do a not very smooth request to the donors...

Which is interesting, and apparently actually observed, but by whom? It sounds like there were killer details here, but there's no way to tell. In this case, a link would have been good, but a quote would have been even better, because that would give a more vivid "You are there" quality.

2. I know I very rarely read our famously free press any more, and I don't even have a TV; they're both just too toxic, and who has time to be poisoned? I suspect many of our readers and contributors are the same. Therefore, by using quotes to reinforce your key points, you're giving us information we can use without making us go out into a toxic environment to get it.

3. More subtly, many of the "primary sources" (like WaPo, or the Times) change over time, and the links break after a couple of years. I've noticed this -- though, alas, I have no link to hand -- on several of the more critical Iraq stories from three or four years ago. The use case is that I'll remember a phrase from a story that was widely quoted at the time, go to Google it for a link, and come up with a blog that quoted the story -- and when I check the blog's link to the story, I'll get 404 not found. So, in this way, fair-using quotations from the primary sources becomes an informal archive of crucial documents, and that increases the value of the blogosphere over time.

All that said, we can all write whatever the Fuck we want. I gave the rulebook to Geoff, the bartender in the executive cloakroom of The Mighty Corrente Building, but he says he doesn't have it any more. It wasn't under the bar; we checked.

NOTE * Of course, there are exceptions, like long Op-Ed pieces that depend on conventional wisdom, at least as seen here, or personal stories, or posts where you are your source, like wine-making or knitting, or a joke where the snarkiness is so strong it's its own justification, or impassioned rants. After all, other people should be quoting us too! However.

UPDATE The habit, which a few of our posters have, of blogwhoring their own blog by writing comments that are only tangentially related to the post does not fall under the heading of link-y goodness. If you're going to blogwhore, your content has to be better than what surrounds it, not worse.