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Blog Bits

RootsCamp in Washington last week sparked a flurry of blog commentary about the online and grassroots lessons learned from the 2006 campaign.

Joshua Levy of Personal Democracy Forum offered the most thorough coverage. He wrote three entries while at the event (here, here and here) and then penned a wrap-up piece. E.politics did a blurb on working with local bloggers. There is also discussion at the RootsCamp wiki.

-- Bloggers are big fans of transparency in government, with new ideas on that front emerging all the time. The two latest ideas: instant online polling in the Iowa presidential caucuses in 2008 and more openness in congressional committees. More ideas are being solicited and compiled by Steven Clift of DoWire.

-- Jon Henke, the blogger who briefly served as the new media coordinator to the re-election campaign of Sen. George Allen, R-Va., granted an interview to Matt Lewis. Click to the interview to see the "three major problems" that Henke said campaigns can expect if they do not engage blogs and other new media early.

-- Brian Keeler has started a series of posts at Daily Kos with some advice for bloggers who might want to become candidates some day. Keeler lost his race for New York state Senate this year. After the defeat, he started a blog called The Albany Project.

-- Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., held a conference call with bloggers to tout their "Cleanse the Code" effort to curtail tax regulations. Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters said he was "impressed by the effort made by Wyden and Craig but not necessarily with the direction they appear to be taking."

-- Chris Bowers of MyDD has found the filing rules of federal election law so demanding that the burden "is almost single-handedly changing my views on campaign finance reform."

-- MyDD this week hired liberal radio host/blogger Taylor Marsh to cover a nurses lockout in Las Vegas.

-- MyDD also has been paying Tim Tagaris the past few weeks to cover a congressional run-off race in Louisiana. Voters there go to the polls tomorrow to decide between two Democrats: netroots favorite Karen Carter and Rep. William Jefferson, who is being investigated for corruption.

-- A judge in Denver ordered an arrest warrant for a blogger in Oregon when she failed to appear in court to answer charges of derogatory Internet postings about another blogger.

-- The Rightometer, a daily roundup of news and commentary from the conservative blogosphere, has a new writer: Matt Naugle, who until recently was the campaign blogger for unsuccessful Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell.

-- Swivel is a handy online tool that lets users upload data and create graphs from them. I can see that becoming a popular site for both with-it wonks in Washington and political bloggers outside the Beltway. Andy Roth of The Club for Growth already has discovered the site and proclaimed it "The YouTube Of Graphs And Data."

-- PressThink interviewed former Washington Post political editor John Harris about his move to the forthcoming newspaper and Web site Capitol Leader.

-- And even avatars deserve to make the news now and then: "Not only have Reuters, Wired and CNET set up virtual bureaus within Second Life in order to bring outside content in and in-world news out, but a host of Web sites, blogs and even an in-world newspaper -- the Second Life Herald -- are now devoted exclusively to covering the lives of avatars."

Posted by Danny | 12:00 PM

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