When it comes to blogging, Andrew Sullivan is an old hand. And an indisputable expert. In the (redesigned) November Atlantic he has written a 5,000 word “dead-tree” essay, Why I Blog. In it, he tells of those early days grappling with what to write for an audience of only a few hundred back in the spring of 2000. He recalls how he was “technologically clueless” and used Blogger for its simplicity. Right off he found directly broadcasting his own words to readers “exhilarating...

Click here for Interactive McCain family tree Douglas A. Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name – The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, is the Atlanta Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. Over the past 20 years, he has written extensively about race, exploring the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct and racial segregation. On Friday, Blackmon wrote of the descendants of slaves held at the Mississippi plantation owned by Sen. John McCain’s...

On Meet the Press this morning (after the Colin Powell endorsement) Joe Scarborough offered up some advice to Obama, “Go to Florida. Go to Ohio. Get out of North Carolina…” He says we’re not a 60/40 country and later suggests that the only reason for Obama’s lead is the economy. Do we agree? RELATED: Earlier in the segment NBC News political director Chuck Todd’s numbers included the observation that, “McCain’s path now is solely an electoral college...

The cover asks: Do you think that after eight years of George W. Bush this country is in good shape? Do you feel the U.S. Constitution has too many Amendments? Do you often dream of George Bush in a flight suit? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, it’s time to seek help. And Gene Stone’s new book, The 12 Step Bush Recovery Program, is a vital guide to post-Bush era wellness that’s coming out just in time! My old colleagues Carl Pritzkat and Tony Travostino...

CNet News Webware: Google’s personalized homepage, iGoogle, is getting an update today. Widgets on the page can support a new “canvas view,” which expands the widget to the full iGoogle window. The sixteen new or updated widgets that Google is promoting today support this feature. There are over 40,000 iGoogle widgets available, iGoogle group product manager Jessica Ewing told me. 40,000??? That’s a lot of widgets… The Official Google Blog: Not all of our gadgets have...

Martin Eisenstadt says Joe the Plumber wasn’t vetted: John McCain did great tonight in the debate. But every time John mentioned “Joe the Plumber,” some of us in the campaign banged our heads against the wall. If Steve Schmidt had any hair left, I hear he would have been pulling it out tonight. He reportedly screamed at John’s debate prep team tonight (out of earshot of reporters, of course). “You idiots – he’s related to Charles Keating… of the Keating Five scandal!” They...

ATask: Hottest costume this halloween: Joe the Plumber Kevin Drum: Is “Joe the Plumber” going to be the new “Joe Sixpack”? seldo “Joe the Plumber for Obama” hat now available on Zazzle. Already? [link, t-shirts too link] Paul Carr: I reckon McCain has absolutely nailed the plumber and autistic children vote… McCain finishes on a little dance. Nice touch. But perhaps a bit gay for Joe the Plumber. mattfromseattle: The real question Mr. McCain, is what are...

The last debate only makes C-SPAN’s Debate Hub even MORE useful. Remember, all of the debates are indexed and archived — all of the Tweets, blog posts, video, transcripts, and word clouds included — so as the debates accumulate the site gets exponentially more useful.You can compare and contrast or mix and match the candidates across all or each of the debates. My full tour walks you through the site’s features. Or here’s a handy Q&A sent to me by Leslie Bradshaw, the Communications...

Time Magazine: Among many black political observers, there is a pronounced sense that Obama’s advisers have consciously distanced themselves from older black leaders who might galvanize prospective voters — especially in the many impoverished black communities where there is no tradition of treating voting as an obligatory civic duty. Ronald Walters, director of the University of Maryland’s African American Leadership Center, says “You can’t send young volunteers into the...

The Chronicle has it: For starters, the university’s media rate card offers a combination Internet-and-telephone package for $650, including both wireless and hard-wired network connections. Renting a laptop computer costs $250, a laser printer is $550 (supplies included), and a high-speed copier runs $1,650 (including paper). Add on another $15 for an outlet strip to plug everything in. But bloggers won’t want to work standing up, of course — a four-foot table is $44 ($51.50 for the eight-foot...

Yesterday I quoted Techdirt as “impressed” by the McCain campaign letter to YouTube defending Fair Use. Today Chris Soghoian of the Berkman Center articulates a far more cynical view of the letter: John McCain’s presidential campaign has discovered the remix-unfriendly aspects of American copyright law, after several of the candidate’s campaign videos were pulled from YouTube. McCain has now discovered the rights holder friendly nature of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,...

In a seven-page “manifesto” released yesterday after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Davis’ case, Chatham County District Attorney Spencer Lawton Jr. complained: “The PR campaign has of course become the favored artifice for corrupting the independence and credibility of the truth-seeking and independent judicial branch of our government,” he wrote. “These campaigns are usually energized—or at least, having been set off at the center, are carried forward around...

Dallas Morning News columnist and religious (but not evangelical) conservative Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, … America (or at least the Republican Party) was the guest last week on Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippet. Dreher is an Eastern Orthodox Catholic. Tippet asked him for his view of the close alignment between Evangelical Christianity and...

TechDirt is impressed: This is impressive, and somewhat unexpected. It’s rather rare to see politicians (other than marginal ones, at least) showing any sort of recognition of fair use. It’s certainly not an issue you’d expect to see raised by a presidential candidate (of either party). However, John McCain’s campaign has sent a letter to YouTube complaining about the site’s unwillingness to consider fair use in videos before taking them down… [link] The letter...

Wired’s Threat Level: Registered sex offenders will have to start providing their e-mail addresses to a national database available to social networking sites, under the misleadingly titled “Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2008″ — a bill authored by Senator John McCain and signed by President Bush on Monday. The idea behind the law (.pdf) is that a social networking site can query the database to keep registered sex offenders from signing up, and thus...

A sad day for justice. AP: The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a Georgia man to be put to death for killing a police officer two weeks after it halted his execution to consider his appeal. Troy Davis asked the high court to intervene in his case and order a new trial because seven of the nine witnesses against him have recanted their testimony. Former President Jimmy Carter and South Africa Archbishop Desmond Tutu are among prominent supporters who have called for a new trial. CNN: MacPhail’s...

The National Enquirer headlines, OBAMA SEX PERV SCANDAL. In it they sensationalize the possibility that Barack Obama was mentored in his youth by a man who may have turned out to be a pedophile. James Joyner links to the blogosphere storm before commenting: Obviously, one hopes that young Barry wasn’t the target of such a horrible experience.  Regardless, he is who he is.  Obama didn’t have his father around growing up and was a biracial child who looked black being raised by his white grandparents...

You’ll remember that David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student and the son of a Democratic state legislator, pleaded innocent this month to charges that he had hacked into Sarah Palin’s email. The Chronicle’s Eric Kelderman: Now some legal scholars are wondering how the charges against Mr. Kernell were raised to a felony — from a misdemeanor — which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. “In order to charge the case as a felony rather...

Robin Wauters at The Next Web says in his business he comes across “a mountain of poorly executed websites and applications, or startups that have business models that you just know will never bring in a dime of revenue.” Still, it’s the names he finds really awful. So he’s compiled a list of what he thinks are The 15 dumbest names for Web 2.0 startups. Here’s just one: 11. Oooooc.com Provides a marketplace for contents and services. Much like Zooomr and ooooj, it’s...

XKCD: I spent more time trying to get an audible.com audio book playing than it took to listen to the book.  I have lost every other piece of DRM-locked music I have paid for.