• Facebook.com/WhiteHouse
• MySpace.com/WhiteHouse
• Twitter.com/WhiteHouse

For the past fifteen months, CBS News and CBSNews.com have been delivering all the campaign and political news, developments, and analysis on our Horserace and From The Road blogs.

The Horserace is over, and the time for governing is about to begin for a new president and a new congress. Today we're launching the Political Hotsheet, a new blog which will combine the best Washington reporting, analysis and observations from the correspondents and producers at CBS News and CBSNews.com, and partners like the Washington Post and Politico. We'll also point you to the must-read stories across the Web. The Hotsheet will bring it all together in one place.

From the transition to the incoming president's first 100 Days in office and beyond, we'll keep you up on the very latest happenings in what’s about to become one of the busiest and most closely-watched towns in the world. Hotsheet will chronicle the news from the White House, Congress and all the institutions in Washington during these historic and uncharted days.

"In addition to their official (house.gov) Web site, a member may maintain another Web site(s), channel(s) or otherwise post material on third-party Web sites," the new House rules read. They also allow members to provide links to or embed outside content on their official sites, provided they include an exit notice indicating the visitor is leaving the House.

The Senate rules also allow for links to be added to official sites. They allow senators to use any third-party site of their choice, but the senators will have an "approved list" of sites for reference.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the change "a significant step forward toward bringing House rules into the multimedia age and allowing for members to effectively communicate with their constituents online."

Barack is about to choose a running mate, and he wants you to know first. You have helped build this movement from the bottom up, and Barack wants you to be part of this important moment.

Sign up today and we'll send you an email announcing Barack's running mate.

You can also text VP to 62262 to receive a text message on your mobile phone.

The blog will offer a fresh perspective and will include quotes, the candidate's schedule and photos not available anywhere else. As a part of our continual effort to reach voters, allow unprecedented access and bring greater transparency to American politics, our blog 'The McCain Report' will provide a sounding board for all.

I want the Fast Lane to be a true on-line community, and I encourage you to submit your comments and thoughts. After all, if I'm going to insist on twenty-first century solutions for our transportation system, I better communicate in a twenty-first century way!

The blog has received about 11,000 site visits since 10 a.m. compared with 13,000 daily visits to the main DOT Web site, the agency said. Comments are reviewed to make sure they're free of personal attacks, slurs or inappropriate language. If a topic attracts hundreds of comments, an agency spokesman said a representative sample of them may be posted instead.

The agency also plans to start hosting Web chats with Peters and other senior DOT officials as well as building a YouTube.com video page some time this year.

In Peters' second post, she announced from Chicago that the city was awarded a $153 million federal grant to reduce traffic congestion and pollution. Guest blogger Mayor Richard Daley followed with a post of his own thanking the department.

Darrell West, a public policy professor at Brown University, said that government blogs represent an opportunity for officials "to shape and be shaped by public opinion."

"Blogs inherently are interactive and help agencies learn what is on people's minds," he wrote in an e-mail. "I see this as a plus for agency responsiveness."

Yesterday, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, head of Her Majesty's Government, became the first head of government (at least, as far as I can tell) to officially embrace Twitter.

Is this a momentous occasion? It's hard to say. Politicians have been increasingly embracing various forms of social media. Nowhere, for example, do more elected officials actively write blogs than in Europe.

Some have suggested in recent days that Twitter is going mainstream. Perhaps that's the case as well.

To those who don't visit blogs or get their news from them (which a recent poll shows includes the vast majority of the American public) this might seem to be a provincial conflict, but it is highly significant.

In political terms, it underscores the raw, angry and bitter rivalrly between supporters of Obama and Clinton (as I noted in my appearance on CNN's blog segment last Sunday).

The mirror image distrust, hatred and dismissiveness felt by each side towards the others' candidates accentuates by the day - raising the authentic prospect that even in an awful economy the Democrats will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory - as some supporters of the losing nomination candidate stay home.

"First, these people should read up on the definition of 'strike.' What they're doing is a 'boycott.' But whatever they call it, I think it's great. It's a big Internet, so I hope they find what they're looking for."

While it could be said that blogs are just a younger person's folly, in our study this is not the case. Just one in ten (19%) Echo Boomers (those aged 18-31) regularly read a political blog and only 17 percent of Gen Xers (those aged 32-43) say the same. Matures (those aged 63 and older) are actually the generation most likely to be political blog readers as just over one-quarter (26%) say they regularly do so followed by 23 percent of Baby Boomers (those aged 44-62). Also, one hears of the rabid blogs on both sides of the political aisle, but just 22 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats regularly read blogs. Independents are the ones slightly more likely to read these, as just over one-quarter (26%) say they regularly read political blogs.

Looking at those who regularly do read political blogs, over half (54%) read one or two at least once a week with an additional 22 percent reading 3-4 at least once a week. And, while they may read these, they do not comment on them. Over two-thirds (69%) of those who regularly read blogs did not comment on one in the previous week. Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to comment. One-third of Republicans (34%) commented in the previous week compared to 28 percent of Democrats.

"Politics has become more accessible to young people," Schumer said. "They didn't really get into TV news the way my generation did. You know, when I was younger, the national news was sort of the national living room. That is not even close to true. Everyone read Time magazine or Newsweek. Hardly anyone does anymore."

The second-term senator credited specifically bloggers and the Internet for early successes in the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. According to U.S. News and World Report, from January 3 (day of the Iowa caucuses) to February 5 (Super Tuesday), 19.1 million Americans cast a ballot in a Democratic primary (or caucused as a Democrat) versus just 13.1 million on the Republican side in all the nominating contests.

"Instead things are more fractured, but the bloggers and the Internet has sort of become the medium of choice," Schumer said. "And it's gotten young people involved and excited in politics."

"But I think it's different this time," Schumer said. "I think the Internet is much deeper and more pervasive. Howard Dean used it - it was a brand new thing, 'What is this?' Now it's part of the working world. Hillary's raising a lot of money on the Internet too - not as much as Barack, but she still is. But to me, more the motivation of young people ultimately is, this world is a different world and we better get hold of it and I think that's a great motivation."

They don't call it Super Tuesday for nothing! Today marks an exciting day in the race to the U.S. Presidency: voters in 24 states will choose their party candidates. This will be the largest number of primaries taking place at one time in the history of the U.S. electoral system.

We've joined forces with Twitter to give you instant updates on Super Tuesday. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, you can send a simple text message about your voting experience. Huge turnout? Taking too long in line? Did you just vote for the first time? We want it all, if you can keep to 140 characters or less. (And if candidates can keep their posts to 140 characters, anyone can.)

Throughout the day, you can watch Twitter updates from across the country:

The blog, called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Personal Memos, has been active for over a year and has attracted a wide readership. But despite promising to spend a set amount of time writing the blog, he has seldom managed to post this year.

"Since my last post on the blog, a few months have passed," he writes.

"But this doesn't ‎mean that I have not been keeping my promise of spending 15 minutes per week ‎on it. As a matter of fact, I have spent more than the allocated time on the blog. The ‎magnitude of the reception and acclamation from the viewers was beyond ‎expectations."

As well as writing about his life and policies he also takes time to answer letters from readers.

The fund-raising by Paul, a Texas congressman who is the only Republican to oppose the Iraq war and who has argued for a limited government, was almost as much he took in from July to September. During that time period, he raised $5 million.

But Paul has been outpaced by Republican rivals who have raised tens of millions of dollars. Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, raked in more than $6.5 million during a daylong telephone marathon in January.

"The message is powerful and the level of frustration in this country that people are sick and tired of what they're getting," Paul told the MSNBC network on Tuesday. "They don't like the war and they don't like the economy. And they like the answers that I've been giving."

The Houston obstetrician-gynecologist has been a fierce critic of the Iraq war, calling for withdrawing U.S. troops. He also has said free trade deals and international groups like the World Trade Organization threaten U.S. independence.

Shelby Bonnie left the company he co-founded with Halsey Minor, CNET, just about one year ago. This morning he launches his next startup, PoliticalBase.

The site, which focuses on local, state and national elections and other political matters, is timed perfectly to take advantage of the 2008 presidential elections and the estimated $4.5 billion that will be spent on advertising to promote candidates and issues.

PoliticalBase is a structured Wiki that encourages research and debate. Users can edit most of the text but can't change the underlying database structure. That allows the site to slice and dice data for comparison purposes (something that can't be done with the free-for-all Wikipedia) but still gives the site's community the ability to create and edit content.

The site is broken down into interconnected categories, including money, people, issues, elections, etc. Clicking on, say Rudy Giuliani shows information on that presidential candidate, including the amount of money raised to date, his religion and party affiliation and biographical information. At the bottom of the page his position on key issues is also shown (for fun, register for the site and click that you do not support him - see how his picture changes).

The mission of the U.S. Department of State is to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.

Through its websites and other online resources, the Department offers broad public access to a wide range of information. Blogs.state.gov offers the public an alternative source to mainstream media for U.S. foreign policy information. This blog offers the opportunity for participants to discuss important foreign policy issues with senior Department officials.

Initial response to the blog was mixed. "John from Oregon" wrote, "It's great to see some extra sunlight coming into the State Department's long dark corridors with the launch of the new blog today. My hope is that this tried and tested 'disinfectant' can help restore some of the luster to the reputation of the U.S.A. here at home and among our friends throughout the world."

However, "Cynthia from California" noted that, "This new blog seems to be an effort at transparency, but given the U.S. State Department's warlike actions, I'm skeptical that this will actually encourage dialogue. I'm curious to know if this will be a two-way conversation, whether postings will reach people in positions of authority at the State Department. In other words, [will] the public's opinions and concerns be considered and [will] they will have any influence? [Will] the Bush Administration's viewpoint will be promoted here to the exclusion of independent and humane thinking and to the detriment of our country's standing in the world? [Is] this blog simply a PR tool for the Administration disguised as a dialogue? I'm not optimistic for a real exchange of ideas, but I hope I'm wrong."

Still, the hour-long meeting in the Roosevelt Room offered Bush another opportunity to break through what he sees as the filter of the traditional news media, while also reaching out to the providers of a new source of information for soldiers, their families and others who follow the conflict in Iraq closely.

"More and more we are engaging in the new-media world, and these are influential people who have a big following," said Kevin F. Sullivan, the White House communications chief.

Bush told the group that, to his knowledge, it was the first time a president had met with bloggers for a chat at the White House, one of the participants wrote.

Romney, the lone GOP holdout, has posted more videos on his YouTube channel (283 as of Sunday afternoon) than any other presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat. But he has resisted the debate, in which videotaped questions are submitted through YouTube. In an interview with Manchester Union Leader, Romney said, "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman."

That drew a video response from Billiam, the snowman who questioned the Democrats on global warming last month in their YouTube debate. This time, he riffed on another Romney quote from the campaign: "Lighten up slightly."

Sources at CNN said the debate, co-hosted with the Republican Party of Florida, will be held at the Mahaffey Theatre in St. Petersburg. Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube, said that more than 1,100 videos have been submitted, and the popular video-sharing site will allow YouTube users to upload their videos until Nov. 27.

Even though users can submit their own questions, CNN is ultimately in charge of picking the questions that are going to be asked. Still, this is a promising development. According to an article on CNN.com, there is a small committee at CNN that is in charge of selecting the questions. David Bohrman, Senior VP for CNN and a member of the selection committee said, "There are questions that we, the journalists, we, the mainstream media, would never think to ask in the presidential debate."

The fact that this debate is even happening just goes to show the enormous impact that user generated-content has had on society. Ten, even five years ago, something like this would have had no chance of happening. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out and hopefully this type of debate becomes more typical in the future.

No one's more surprised at this robust Web presence than Paul himself, a self-described "old-school," "pen-and-paper guy" who's serving his 10th congressional term and was the Libertarian Party's nominee for president in 1988.

"To tell you the truth, I hadn't heard about this YouTube and all the other Internet sites until supporters started gathering in them," confessed Paul, 71, who said that he's raised about $100,000 after each of the three debates. Not bad considering that his campaign had less than $10,000 when his exploratory committee was formed in mid-February. "I tell you I've never raised money as efficiently as that, in all my years in Congress, and all I'm doing is speaking my mind."

That means saying again and again that the Republican Party, especially when it comes to government spending and foreign policy, is in "shambles."

But while many Democrats have welcomed the young and fresh-faced Obama, who's trailing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in most public opinion polls, Paul is barely making a dent in the Republican polls.

Republican strategists point out that libertarians, who make up a small but vocal portion of the Republican base, intrinsically gravitate toward the Web's anything-goes, leave-me-alone nature. They also say that his Web presence proves that the Internet can be a great equalizer in the race, giving a much-needed boost to a fringe candidate with little money and only a shadow of the campaign staffs marshaled by Romney, McCain and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

On June 13, Michael O. Leavitt, Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, convened a leadership forum on pandemic preparedness, which brought together highly influential leaders from the business, faith, civic and health care sectors to discuss how best to help Americans become more prepared for a possible influenza pandemic. The Department is hosting this five-week blog to expand the conversation as part of an ongoing effort by the Department to help Americans become more prepared. HHS does not edit blog postings and cannot ensure that all included links are functioning. We apologize for any inconvenience.

At the beginning of 2005, I was Google's lone public policy guy. Today, there's a bigger - and growing - team of us scattered around the world, working on issues like privacy, child online safety, copyright and trademark protection, content regulation, reform of the patent system, and broadband policy. These issues are fundamental to the future of the Internet (and of the individuals it empowers), and are increasingly prominent on the agendas of policymakers worldwide.

We're seeking to do public policy advocacy in a Googley way. Yes, we're a multinational corporation that argues for our positions before officials, legislators, and opinion leaders. At the same time, we want our users to be part of the effort, to know what we're saying and why, and to help us refine and improve our policy positions and advocacy strategies. With input and ideas from our users, we'll surely do a better job of fighting for our common interests.

You may be wondering why it contains two months' worth of posts, given that we're only just now launching. Well, we started the blog internally back in April, to limber up our blogging muscles. Now that we've gone public we thought it'd be fun to share our earlier internal posts. In the weeks and months ahead, expect to hear more from us on issues like net neutrality, censorship, innovation regulation, immigration, R&D, national security, and trade, just to name a few. All of the members of Google's global public policy team will be contributing posts (or else - right, team?).

But the larger aim is clearly to woo the sort of tech-savvy Democrats who can harness online gadgetry to benefit the Edwards cause. And Twitter stands out, both for its cachet among true tech cognoscenti and the level of commitment it exacts from users. Plugged in with mobile wireless devices, especially active users post and respond on the site dozens of times a day.

So it's not surprising that Edwards dictates his entries to an aide, who enters them on the site. It's also not surprising that many of the entries are terse to the point of near-semaphores, such as this post of a month ago: "In san antonio."

However, it is surprising to note that Edwards has interactively Twittered his way into committing some actual news. Well-known blogger Robert Scobie came across a Twittered declaration from Edwards that his campaign would be "carbon neutral," and posted a text reply asking how a fast-traveling presidential campaign could ever hope to redress its fearsome carbon-consumption deficit.

Much to Scobie's surprise, Edwards promptly Twittered a promise to offset the carbon he generated by funding alternative-energy research - marking what seems to be the first policy clarification from a major candidate on social software.

So the bloggers weren't even talking about current conditions in Baghdad. That left it to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, former Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post -- and author of the heralded 2006 book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" -- who appeared on MSNBC's "Countdown" tonight to debunk this idea of a newly-safe Baghdad. "I talk to Iraqis all the time," he said.

He revealed that there had been steady insurgent artillery shots falling in the supposedly safe "Green Zone" all week, at least two Americans had died there in recent days, and U.S. Embassy staff had been instructed, in a switch, to wear their protective vests outside at all times. He also disclosed that the embassy's pool, scene of much partying in the recent past, has now been declared off-limits to extended stays.

To back up his point that pulling out of Iraq would be a disaster, President Bush had said today, "They have bloggers in Baghdad, just like we've got here," in a speech to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

Then he quoted two of them: "Displaced families are returning home, marketplaces are seeing more activity, stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now. Our people want to see this effort succeed."

Only hours later did the White House reveal that the bloggers were brothers, Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, and these supposedly little-known average Joes had met Bush in the Oval Office in 2004. They are dentists and write an English-language blog from Baghdad called IraqTheModel.com, also available via Pajamas Media.

I have been called a patriot, and treated like a criminal. I have been called a Soldier and treated as the enemy. I have been told to get a hair cut and not to eat the civilians. My humor misses most people. Sometimes it is too rough, too dark, and too close to home. But that is what happens when you have seen too much and spoken too little. It finds a way to the surface. A way to be heard.

I have stood by long enough.

I have been mistreated, and I have seen others mistreated. I had the system that is supposed to help me, hurt me. I have seen it hurt others. I have seen this place break a Soldier down. I have seen the hope slowly leeched from a Soldier. Vibrant and full of pride, ready to be healed and return to the fight, broken down, spirit trampled, and hope taken from them. I have seen it. And I have been that Soldier.

"Through a series of highly sophisticated and complex algorithms, this system has determined that you are not presently authorized to use this system function. It could be that you simply mistyped a password, or, it could be that you are some sort of interplanetary alien-being that has no hands and, thus, cannot type." (See screenshot on 2nd page of this post.)

But wait, it gets even weirder:

"If I were a gambler, I would bet that a cat (an orange tabby named Sierra or Harley) somehow jumped onto your keyboard and forgot some of the more important pointers from those typing lessons you paid for. Based on the actual error encountered, I would guess that the feline in question simply forgot to place one or both paws on the appropriate home keys before starting. Then again, I suppose it could have been a keyboard error caused by some form of cosmic radiation; this would fit nicely with my interplanetary alien-being theory."

"You've got this wonderful, imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out. I think one of the most important takeaways is - it's the classical line - not only should you not believe your own press, you probably shouldn't believe your opposition blogs either."

"I think politics and political coverage has become so polarized in this country...because it's the Internet and the blogs that have really used this White House's press conferences to somehow support positions out in America, political views. And they will clip and digitize portions of these briefings to fit into their particular argument."

Not so, said C-SPAN spokeswoman Jennifer Moire. The videos on Pelosi's blog, called The Gavel, came from the House chamber, where the footage is shot by cameras owned by Congress, not C-SPAN.

"That's in the public domain, it's owned by the American people," Moire said.

The 2008 election will be the first where the Internet will play a central role, not only in terms of how the campaigns use technology, but also in how voter-generated content affects its course. TechPresident.com plans to track all these changes in real-time, covering everything from campaign websites, online advertising and email lists to the postings on YouTube and who's got the fastest growing group of friends on Facebook.

Our team of bloggers is made of veterans of the 2004 and 2006 elections, ranging across the political spectrum. Their expertise covers everything from website design to the latest in mobile tools and social networking sites. And we'll look closely not just at what the campaigns are or are not doing, but what voters and activists are doing online to independently affect the election.

Unlike most politics sites, techpresident.com will be the online equivalent of a trade magazine, aimed at political professionals who need to keep up with the Internet and technology executives involved in creating the tools they use. A group blog with a dozen contributors, it is an extension of Personal Democracy Forum, an online publishing and conference business owned by an Internet entrepreneur, Andrew Raseij.

Although Mr. Raseij has been a donor and adviser to Democratic candidates - he served as chairman of the technology advisory group of the Howard Dean campaign - he has recruited former campaign workers from both parties as bloggers. "When techies talk about technology, they tend to forget their politics," Mr. Raseij said.

HuffIt lets you decide which news stories should get the most attention. You can submit and select news from anywhere in the world and the most popular stories will appear on the front of the Huffington Post.

Soon we'll launch the official blog of HillaryClinton.com, a crucial part of our exciting national conversation about the direction of our country and the place to go to learn more about Hillary.

We know our readers are going to have a lot to say, so we want to give you the first word.

We're looking for your ideas on how we can work together for change. If you'd like to write the very first guest post on the HillaryClinton.com blog, submit your entry in the form below. And if you already have your own blog or other website, please post your entry there and let us know about it. We'll select one entry as the first guest post on our blog.

THE internet could become even more difficult for governments to regulate with a new website, Wikileaks, promising to provide a safe haven for whistleblowers to upload confidential documents.

Australians are among the volunteers behind the site. "Your country's support for the underdog and for a fair go is showing through," a spokeswoman said.

Comparing themselves with the leaker of the Pentagon papers that damaged the Nixon administration and eroded US public confidence in the Vietnam War, Wikileaks' creators say they will uncover unethical behaviour by developing "an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis".

Wikileaks was founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.

Our advisory board, which is still forming, includes representatives from expatriate Russian and Tibetan refugee communities, reporters, a former US intelligence analyst and cryptographers.

There are currently 22 people directly involved in the project and counting.

Bloggers rapidly highlighted the faulty graphic last night. At Daily Kos, a diary started by one user included comments from hundreds of users debating whether or not the graphic was constructed deliberately. While some noted the proximity of the program to New Year's Eve might have resulted in sleepy graphic artists at the cable network, others insisted that the 'B' and 'S' keys are far from one another on the keyboard, making a mere typographical error unlikely. Instead, they saw an anti-Obama bias in the news media as the source of the CNN graphic.

***

In an interview with RAW STORY, Senator Obama's Press Secretary Tommy Vietor said he thought there was "no malicious intent" behind the graphic. "Wolf Blitzer is a good person and journalist. Someone made a mistake in a graphic, and that's as far as it goes," he said.

Vietor said the senator and Blitzer had not yet managed to connect on the phone, but that there was a message in his voicemail before 8 AM this morning expressing Blitzer's intent to apologize in person.

Senator Obama's Press Secretary also added "We really appreciate the people in the blogosphere who brought this to our attention, and act as our eyes and ears."

1. Boing Boing
2. Engadget
3. Post Secret
4. Daily Kos
5. Huffington Post
6. Gizmodo
7. Instapundit
8. Michelle Malkin
9. Crooks and Liars
10. Dooce

1. Engadget
2. Boing Boing
3. Gizmodo
4. TechCrunch
5. Huffington Post
6. DailyKos
7. Lifehacker
8. PostSecret
9. Ars Technica
10. yanxi.bokewu.com

Nor did Edwards hope to spread his message by putting himself at the mercy of others. Like all candidates now, Edwards has his own Web site and his own videographer. As he did some volunteer work in the 9th Ward on Wednesday afternoon, he taped a message that his campaign posted later that night on his campaign Web site and on YouTube.com. What he said in that video was nearly identical to what he said to a bank of network and local television station cameras on Thursday.

Smart candidates know the old command-and-control structures of politics don't work anymore. Instead, campaigns are all about building communities and speaking directly to supporters, whether through email or podcasts or what the Edwards team calls "webisodes." As part of his announcement day, he spent a few minutes answering questions on the Daily Kos site, an influential liberal blog.

Candidates are looking for ways to get people more directly involved, by challenging them to give money not just to their campaign but to worthy causes; or by asking them to volunteer their time in New Orleans (as Edwards has done) or in their own communities, or by challenging them to take direct action politically to stop a war or a dam or to enact a piece of legislation.

The 24/7 culture demands dynamic messaging and niche marketing. Edwards offered a window into that future with his announcement day activities. By throwing out the old rules, he hopes his second bid for the White House will be more successful than the first.

Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards jumped into the presidential race Wednesday a day earlier than he'd planned, prodded by an Internet glitch to launch a candidacy focused on health care, taxes and other domestic issues.

The North Carolina Democrat's campaign accidentally went live with his election Web site a day before an announcement Thursday that was supposed to use Hurricane-ravaged New Orleans as a backdrop.

The Washington Post described Jessica Cutler as "our blog slut". The National Enquirer opined that she was "beautiful, untalented and morally corrupted". Now the blogger who wrote about her attempts to juggle affairs with six men while keeping a job as an aide to a senator has a new role: as the star defendant in a case that could help define what can and cannot be published in a blog.

Writing under the pseudonym Washingtonienne, Cutler described in detail the sexual intricacies of her life on the Hill. The blog, which Cutler claimed was intended to keep her friends up to date on her social life in Washington DC, achieved notoriety, and its author fame and a book contract, after it was brought to a wider public by another blog, Wonkette.

*****

The case dating from the 2004 blog is expected to go to trial soon. In establishing whether people who keep online journals are obliged to respect the privacy of those they interact with offline, the case could have a profound effect on the content of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. "Anybody who wants to reveal their own private life has a right to do that," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre. "It's a different question when you reveal someone else's private life."

Mr Steinbuch's attorney, Jonathan Rosen, told a judge in a pre-trial hearing that his client, who teaches in Arkansas, wants to restore his good name. "It's not funny and it's damaging," Mr Rosen said. "It's horrible, absolutely horrible." Cutler's attorney, Matthew Billips, had a different view: "I have no idea what he wants," he said. "He's never said, 'This is what I think should be done.'"

The judge, too, seemed bemused by the case. "I don't know why we're here in federal court to begin with," Judge Paul Friedman told attorneys in April. "I don't know why this guy thought it was smart to file a lawsuit and lay out all of his private, intimate details."

During an appearance last night on MSNBC, DeLay was asked about the mechanics of writing for his new blog. "Well, I'm not a very good writer," DeLay acknowledged. "I have the ideas, and I have somebody else put the words together." Apparently he still isn't interested in doing research on the Internet.

The legislation, drafted by Sen. John McCain and obtained by CNET News.com, would also require Web sites that offer user profiles to delete pages posted by sex offenders.

In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, the Arizona Republican and former presidential candidate warned that "technology has contributed to the greater distribution and availability, and, some believe, desire for child pornography." McCain scored 31 of 100 points on a News.com 2006 election guide scoring technology-related votes.

After child pornography or some forms of "obscenity" are found and reported, the Web site must retain any "information relating to the facts or circumstances" of the incident for at least six months. Webmasters would be immune from civil and criminal liability if they followed the specified procedures exactly.

Internet service providers already must follow those reporting requirements. But McCain's proposal is liable to be controversial because it levies the same regulatory scheme -- and even stiffer penalties -- on even individual bloggers who offer discussion areas on their Web sites.

"I am concerned that there is a slippery slope here," said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "Once you start creating categories of industries that must report suspicious or criminal behavior, when does that stop?"

According to the proposed legislation, these types of individuals or businesses would be required to file reports: any Web site with a message board; any chat room; any social-networking site; any e-mail service; any instant-messaging service; any Internet content hosting service; any domain name registration service; any Internet search service; any electronic communication service; and any image or video-sharing service.

The U.S. Justice Department, for instance, indicted an Alabama man named Jeff Pierson last week on child pornography charges because he took modeling photographs of clothed minors with their parents' consent. The images were overly "provocative," a prosecutor claimed.

The other section of McCain's legislation targets convicted sex offenders. It would create a federal registry of "any e-mail address, instant-message address, or other similar Internet identifier" they use, and punish sex offenders with up to 10 years in prison if they don't supply it.

Then, any social-networking site must take "effective measures" to remove any Web page that's "associated" with a sex offender.

Tom DeLay's back, this time on the Internet. Friends tell us that the powerful former House majority leader, dubbed the "Hammer" for his tough persuasion tactics, this week unveils TomDeLay.com, where he'll blog—DeLay's Daily—on newsy issues and build a coalition he's calling Grassroots, Action, and Information Network.

I have created this blog in order to provide Americans with a new meeting place where such opinions and viewpoints might be better shared, discussed, and debated; a place where conservative Americans might really speak truth to power and to one another.

In all honesty, I did not fully realize the impact or potential of the blogosphere until very recently, when Red State gave me the opportunity to post some of my observations in the wake of the recent midterm elections. The response I received was overwhelming, and I would like to again thank the fine people at that site.

This experience brought me to the immediate realization that I needed to become more directly involved in the blogosphere. TomDeLay.com is the product of our latest effort to find new ways to connect, unite and organize conservatives from all over America into a real grassroots political force.

Netanyahu started a Hebrew blog this week in order to reach his constituents while bypassing the media and to allow him to write longer articles that the media would not publish.

Netanyahu's spokesman said that the opposition leader wanted to post his articles in English but was looking for a staff of volunteers to help.

Readers of the website can already send messages to Netanyahu on his site, www.netanyahu.org.il, in many languages.

GRETA: Why do you think it's gotten so adversarial? Tonight is literacy. Everybody comes in from all different sides and wants to help. It seems like oftentimes in Washington, you know, on something we all want to work towards it's not necessarily so civilized. It's not so pleasant.

H.W. BUSH: It's true but that's not new really. I mean, you go back in history and you'll find that there was always adversarial politics. There was always gut fighting. And it's probably a little worse now given the electronic media and the bloggers and all these kinds of things. But I don't despair about it. I think things - there is a pendulum at work at times so you swing away from the incivility back to more normal climate.

Washington-Younger voters turned out in higher numbers in Tuesday's US congressional elections, giving a lift to Democratic candidates in a contest that gave the party control of the US House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years. "This is a new generation," Hans Riemer, political director of Rock the Vote, an organization that seeks to mobilize young voters, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "They're more involved, more engaged, and less cynical."

Exit polls showed that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast 13 per cent of all votes, up from 11 per cent in the 2002 elections, the last non-presidential national election. Voter turnout is typically higher in presidential elections.

That increase is important because the proportion of young voters has become smaller in the same time period, causing the increase to outpace the growth in turnout among all voters, Rock the Vote said.

Young voters traditionally favour Democratic candidates and did so by a 22 point margin on Tuesday, the organization said, citing exit polls.

Two-by-two, polling specialists from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press will go into rooms in New York and Washington shortly before noon Tuesday. Their cellphones and BlackBerrys will be confiscated; proctors will monitor the doors; and for the next five hours, these experts will pore over exit-poll data from across the country.

If all goes well, only when they emerge from their cloisters will the legions of ravenous political bloggers have any chance of getting their hands on the earliest indication of which party will end up controlling Congress.

"The demand for info is intense, and if the safeguards aren't steel doors bolting people inside a room, it will get out," says Marc Ambinder, associate editor of National Journal's Hotline OnCall. "The insatiable appetite for this info will overwhelm the ability to keep it secret."

Perhaps the best thing to do is publish exit polls continuously through the day. Only then will the public see that they're inaccurate and near meaningless, especially early in the day. If reporters are locked up without their cell phones and Blackberries, interest in the exit polls is sure to rise. Why? People naturally suspect that secrets are worth knowing.

The cable news network plans to host more than two dozen bloggers from across the political spectrum - including sites like RedState and Daily Kos - at a Washington Internet lounge where they can monitor the election returns on a slew of flat-screen televisions. (Each blogger will get his or her own monitor, which can be tuned to any channel.) There will be free wireless access — and plenty of food and beverages, natch.

CNN Internet reporters Jacki Schechner and Abbi Tatton have been assigned to cover the gathering and provide regular updates on the air about the topics that are generating the most chatter.

"Bloggers are leading the conversation," said David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief. "You could argue that most of the political dialogue in this country is happening online, so if you don't incorporate that into your coverage, you're missing a major element."

Subscribers to CNN Pipeline, the network's broadband service, will be able to monitor the happenings at the blog party through one of the online channels, which will be dedicated exclusively to footage from the event.

Seriously, you don't ask newspaper columnists to sit in front of a laptop and write their columns on air, and we're way past the point that bloggers should have to humiliate themselves like that in order to get a few seconds of airtime. This isn't 2002, we all know what blogs are. If bloggers have something to contribute to the conversation, let them sit at a roundtable on election eve and contribute their thoughts like any other opinion writer, without treating them like teenagers at a TV dance party circa 1962 who need to be lured into the studio with "plenty of food and beverages, natch."

The Polling Place Photo Project is a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that seeks to empower citizens to capture, post and share photographs of democracy in action. By documenting their local voting experience on November 7, voters can contribute to an archive of photographs that captures the richness and complexity of voting in America.

With citizen's images and the information that accompanies them, the Project becomes a research tool on how voting happens in America and how it can be designed to be easier, less confusing and more enjoyable. The project intends to collect photographs of every polling place in America, so you are encouraged to participate no matter where you vote, how large or small your polling place is, what kind of ballot you use, or what your party affiliation.

Wilshire & Washington highlights the enduring relationship between entertainment and politics. More than a mere curiosity, the intersection of these worlds play out daily in fund raising, celebrity causes, show business lobbying and creative expression. Variety editor-at-large Ted Johnson provides the daily dose with contributions from reporters in L.A. and D.C.

Several news outlets, including the AP and Washington Post, reported or headlined incorrectly that Secretary Rumsfeld told "critics" to "back off" during yesterday's press briefing. In fact, the Secretary was referring specifically to journalists who were seeking to create a perception of major divisions between the positions of the U.S. and Iraqi governments. He was not referring to critics of the administration's Iraq policy.

Liberal bloggers had the idea first. Chris Bowers of MyDD outlined the strategy Sunday. He said the plan involves purchasing "Google AdWords that will place each negative article on the most common searches for each Republican candidate. Simultaneously, I will produce an article on MyDD that embeds that negative article into a hyperlink."

Bowers asked bloggers to help add links, and they spent the next few days compiling negative news articles on Republican candidates in about 50 targeted races.

Conservative blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News learned of the strategy and urged his allies to "fight fire with fire." Hawkins expressed concern the Google-bombing campaign just might work for Democrats.

"Who would be doing a Google search on a particular candidate in the final days of a campaign?" he wrote. "Probably an independent voter who is trying to get more information about a candidate. And if the first article he runs across is a brutal hit piece, well, that could be the information that helps him make up his mind."

Tension between the government and Pronk escalated after he wrote in his personal Web blog this month (www.janpronk.nl) that Sudanese army losses in recent fighting in northern Darfur "seem to have been very high."

"Reports speak about hundreds of casualties in each of the two battles, many wounded soldiers and many taken as prisoner," he said, adding that morale was low among Sudanese troops in northern Darfur and "some generals have been sacked; soldiers have refused fighting."

On Thursday, the Sudanese armed forces said those remarks amounted to "psychological war against the Sudanese army" and declared that Pronk was "persona non-grata." One day later the military demanded an official apology.

According to the official news agency, the government said it was "committed to cooperate" with the U.N. and would work with Pronk's replacement "in accordance with signed treaties with the U.N. and the current principles of international law."

Now, I got a couple of e-mails I was checking here during the break from people who say, "Oh, no, Rush! Don't get in a war with conservative bloggers. If the media rips you guys apart, it's all over." I am not at war with conservative bloggers. I quote countless posts from many blogs on this program. I use them as resources. I'm referring to one blog post, and I don't even know who it is. This all got started when I cringed when I saw the use of the term "premortem" on a blog site called Insta-Pundit. It hurt me; it irritated me as much as when Tom Davis, congressman from Virginia, goes on Face the Nation and starts speculating to Bob Schieffer or whatever it was, and starts counting up the number of seats his party is going to lose.

No, it's not. But I'm talking about one blog, and it's not even Insta-Pundit. Whoever Insta-Pundit is, is letting somebody else reply to whatever it was I'm saying on the program, and it's a little one-page post that I responded to this morning in the first hour.

I'm going to tell you the blog postings that I regularly read in my RSS reader. I've communicated with many of the people who run them. They're fabulous people, starting with National Review Online, then Hugh Hewitt and his Townhall blog, Captain Ed, Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters. The three lawyers at Power Line. These are resources that I have added to everything else that I use for show prep which makes show prep an ongoing, never ending thing. Red State is another site.(I hope I don't forget anybody.) Little Green Footballs. I don't want to leave any out. A.J. Strata, Strata-Sphere. I don't want to leave anybody out here. The American Spectator. You here me talking about these. I'm referring to two days' worth of posts on this one site.

The team uses several scanning tools to monitor sites for OPSEC violations. The tools search for such key words as "for official use only" or "top secret," and records the number of times they are used on a site. Analysts review the results to determine which, if any, need further investigation.

For the 10 Virginia Guardsmen, the mission often becomes personal.

"I have friends over in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan," said Sgt. Yaphet Benton, a network technician in civilian life. "Once I started this mission, I saw a lot of things that can endanger a lot of Soldiers. I see a lot of bios, pictures, names and birthdates. I consider that critical. Terrorists (and persons trying to steal your identity) can use that information."

Based in Arlington, Va., AWRAC was created in 2002 to monitor official Web sites. Its mission was expanded in August 2005 by order of the Army Chief of Staff to include unofficial sites written by servicemembers.

*BLOGS,* OR WEB LOGS, POSTED TO PUBLIC WEBSITES ARE INCREASINGLY USED BY MILITARY PERSONNEL AS PERSONAL JOURNALS. COMMANDERS SHALL ENSURE SUBORDINATES ARE AWARE THAT, IN ACCORDANCE WITH DOD DIRECTIVE 5230.9, *CLEARANCE OF DOD INFORMATION FOR PUBLIC RELEASE,* AND THE JOINT ETHICS REGULATION (DOD 5500.7-R), PERSONAL BLOGS (I.E., THOSE NOT HAVING DOD SPONSORSHIP AND PURPOSE) MAY NOT BE CREATED/MAINTAINED DURING NORMAL DUTY HOURS AND MAY NOT CONTAIN INFORMATION ON MILITARY ACTIVITIES THAT IS NOT AVAILABLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. SUCH INFORMATION INCLUDES COMMENTS ON DAILY MILITARY ACTIVITIES AND OPERATIONS, UNIT MORALE, RESULTS OF OPERATIONS, STATUS OF EQUIPMENT, AND OTHER INFORMATION THAT MAY BE BENEFICIAL TO ADVERSARIES.

I would like to invite you to check out our web site, www.centcom.mil. It's one more resource for information and you're free to use any of it (video, audio, photos and articles) in conversations on your blog.

As part of his attempt to inform Americans about the sacrifices servicemembers are making, Trudeau is launching a military blog on his Web site: www.doonesbury.com, he said. The blog, which launches Oct. 8, will be called "The sandbox" and will feature entries from servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It's important that people understand," he said. "I think the wars are just too remote for people's minds. They see two, three minutes on the evening news, maybe, if they don't look away. And people just get on with their lives. I understand that; there's just so much stress that you want in your life. But at the same time, there's a lot of people over there fighting in our name, so I think we need to pay attention to what they're doing."

Garry Trudeau wrote the book, "The War Within: One More Step at a Time," as a follow-up to his book, "The Long Road Home: One Step at a Time," which tells the story of comic strip character "B.D.," a National Guardsman who lost his leg during the battle of Fallujah in Iraq and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. The second book follows B.D.'s return to civilian and family life after leaving the hospital and his process of dealing with his post-traumatic stress disorder.

Berman said the company was hoping its users would use such tools to encourage friends to register. He acknowledged MySpace was late in launching a voter-registration drive, but said he still hoped "thousands upon thousands of MySpacers will register to vote and spread the word."

Election Day is Nov. 7, and many states close voter registration up to a month before that.

To register, members simply go to http://www.myspace.com/declareyourself and enter a state or ZIP code. After entering the requested information, the site generates a PDF file that can be printed and mailed to state election officials. A Spanish version also is available.

Although MySpace has a heavy youth population, about 80 percent of its 114 million registered members are old enough to vote, according to the Los Angeles-based company.