In December 2004, Hamsher founded the blog Firedoglake, naming it after her favorite activity at the time, sitting by the fire with her dog while watching Los Angeles Lakers games [REF].
In late 2005, Hamsher expanded FDL into a group blog, featuring such regular contributors as Christy Hardin Smith (aka "Reddhead"), Marcy Wheeler (aka "emptywheel"), "TRex", "Pachacutec", and "Siun", later joined by others, and she published it utilizing WordPress, enabling moderated and filtered commenting.