My story on Saudi blogs, "Freedom agenda confronts Saudi reality," is up on the site this morning. I wanted to make sure there were links to the relevant blogs and a few other things.

Ahmed al-Omran, who is leading an online movement to free imprisoned blogger Ahmed al-Farhan, blogs at saudijeans.org.

Carol Fleming, a former U.S. diplomat now married to a Saudi national, blogs at delhi4cats.wordpress.com, and has a fantastic blog roll on her page of other Saudi blogs.

In addition, I found this post at Global Voices about Mr. al-Farhan very interesting. Mr. al-Farhan, the jailed Saudi blogger, appears to have said in 2005 that he hates President Bush (the grammar is a little confusing).

You can also read an interesting interview of Mr. al-Farhan by Mr. al-Omran here.

I certainly found this concept of Saudi blogs fascinating. Mrs. Fleming said she thinks blogs are "opening up new worlds and new dimensions to Saudi nationals."

"I personally believe this new openness is facilitating reforms and with Saudi nationals becoming more expressive," she said.

On another topic, I was asked to do an interview with Saudi state television last night. They originally told me it would only be a short interview of a few minutes, but they then walked me to a full blown set in our hotel, and promptly informed me that it would be only 10 to 15 minutes.

It ended up being a 30-minute spot with no commercial breaks, which meant I was stuck there. But the interview ended up being both fun and a learning experience for me.

Here's a picture of me and another guest on the show.

And I can't resist putting in this picture of the Chicago Tribune's Mark Silva, sandwiched between Saudis and pecking away on his computer at a press conference here today with the Saudi oil minister.

And here is a picture of the pretty impressive stage they set up for the press conference.

-- Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times