Interview with Ireland's top blogger, Mick Fealty of SluggerOtoole.com

When I was attending the Personal Democracy Forum conference in Barcelona this past November, I had the good fortune to meet and hang out with Mick Fealty, Ireland's best known blogger, and the editor of SluggerOtoole.com. Mick is visiting DC this week with a group of Ireland's top journalists (from the north and south), and we got a chance to grab dinner last night with Joe, and then tape this interview.

The interview went on for a while, thus the 4 parts below. We talked about blogging in Ireland, the differences between the Irish and American blogosphere, Northern Ireland (the history, discrimination against Catholics, and the recent agreements to restore democracy there), Mick's impressions of President Obama, the Catholic church pedophilia scandal, and the influence of the American civil rights movement in Northern Ireland during the 1960s. (Mick also wrote up his impressions of Washington on his own blog today.) I'm not an expert on Ireland at all - that's Joe's and Chris' domain. I tried to get Mick to explain things for an educated audience that was relatively unaware of the past and present of Northern Ireland's politics. Hope you enjoy.