A new spot from MoveOn that will become MTV's second ever political ad involves jokey references to STDs and a confusing chicken metaphor -- both things that are big hits with the kids!; an activist group spawned online is pioneering in the cable TV space, using a service that brokers tiny slices of airtime for as little as the cost of a sandwich; the RNC riffs off Facebook to shed some negative attention on Barack Obama's "friends," it we ask if the effort is worth it; and a great deal more, my friends, a great deal more.

We invoke "Fahrenheit 451" to assess Barack Obama's speech in Berlin yesterday; Obama gives a shout-out to the Iranian blogosphere; the McCain campaign launches a new event planning tool and the RNC unveils a fundraising tool bar; a senator from Oklahoma talks about how technology will save the Republic; and much, much more.

Team McCain pwns the Obama campaign by tracking screen captures that show changes to the Democratic candidate's website subsection on Iraq; with an innovative and occassionally funny digital townhall, Rep. John Culberson gets one step closer to be a "real time representative;" JibJib has a new video; we highlight the latest development in the ongoing conservative battle over broadband; and much, much more.

The power of the Connected Age is the friction-free creation of large numbers of people to support a campaign and act in concert to impact an issue, legislation or public awareness of an issue -- and the power to let them go not to create the behemoth nonprofit institutions associated with last century. This is what the

Now that FISA has been put to rest, what happens to the group that quickly formed to protest Obama's stance on the bill?; the Twitter Dome Scandal (we coined that!) heats up, and we break it all down for you; a new map tracks where in the world our presidential candidates are; and much, much more.

With it's last-ditch Night of Facebook Action, the anti-FISA group that was organized to protest Barack Obama's stance on the bill is turning into a case study in "worth a try" activism; Carly Fiorina is on the trail and defending John McCain's tech cred; we take a look at a dust-up over congressional rules on third-party web tools; a Daily Kos diarist pushes back against calls for millenials to take their activism to meat space; and much, much more.

The anti-FISA protests of Barack Obama swamp Google News search results for the bill; is the House of Representatives really trying to hush up Twittering Rep. John Culberson?; British PM Gordon Brown, facing no such restrictions, is reporting back from the G8 Summit in Japan, Obama's recording of his memoir might make some radio-friendly ad-fodder this election cycle; and much, much more.

In an ironic twist worthy of a Seinfeld episode, supporters of Senator Obama have been using the organizing tools on his own website to protest his vote for FISA that grants immunity to telecoms that have abetted the government’s illegal surveillance efforts. The FISA Flap is not a political kerfluffle for the Obama campaign but a preview of 21st century democracy.

As Barack Obama responds to protests of his FISA stance, we consider how an online action's success might be judged; NPR focuses on Hispanic voters and how candidates are working to get their messages delivered to them; a new quiz tests your political smarts; we've got new video up from PdF '08; and much, much more.

The online mini-rising to protest Barack Obama's support for the Congressional compromise to renew the FISA legislation has been getting a lot of attention, with much being made (by us and plenty of others, including Ari Melber in the Nation, The New York Times, et al) that activists are using Obama's own social networking platform, my.BarackObama.com, to organize and channel their efforts to get him to alter his stand. Indeed, as of today the Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right group has swelled to more than 14,000 members, which makes it the single largest self-organized group on the whole platform, which reportedly has close to a million registered members.

This is certainly a good example of what thinkers like Clay Shirky and Mark Pesce have been talking about, when it comes to "ridiculously easy group formation" (qua Shirky) and how "Hyperconnectivity begets hypermimesis begets hyperempowerment" (qua Pesce). But right now the main reason this development is important is NOT because the group itself is that powerful; it's because attention-amplifiers in the blogosphere and the MSM are covering the story and thus threatening some of Obama's hard-won image as a change agent, which could conceivably weaken his vaunted fundraising and organizing machine. So while the Obama campaign is keeping a poker face about the importance of some of its members using the master's tools to challenge his position, it is no doubt paying attention, too.

The fact is, we're all entering completely new territory here. There have always been efforts to influence political candidates to take or change positions during a campaign (or afterward), but we've never before had a national campaign create an open platform for mobilizing supporters AND THEN seen a salient chunk of those supporters openly use that platform to challenge the candidate on a policy position. Indeed, while the net is inherently a two-way, many-to-many medium, no politician has yet used it to listen to his supporters as a group. Yes, the Obama campaign has asked its supporters to share their stories about their health care woes, and some of those anecdotes have made it into the campaign's blog or policy papers. But we have no norms for a collective, public discussion--even though we now have the capacity for one.