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Andrew Breitbart speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2012. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Andrew Breitbart, Who Pushed the Edge of Online Political Journalism, Has Died

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, March 1 2012

The controversial rightwing online publisher Andrew Breitbart died early this morning, his website BigJournalism.org reports. Brietbart had been an editor at the Drudge Report and helped launch the Huffington Post before starting his own mini-empire of websites Breitbart.tv, BigJournalism, BigGovernment, BigHollywood and BigPeace. Read More

Things For a 2012 Election Infrastructure: a High-Tech Tracker Operation

BY Nick Judd | Monday, July 11 2011

The New York Times' Michael Shear has a look inside American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic organization following Republican candidates running in 2011 and 2012, searching for their "macaca" moments: Combined with a ... Read More

BigGovernment.com Videos Trigger Resignation of University of Missouri Labor Lecturer

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, May 3 2011

It hasn't gotten the attention of the Shirley Sherrod  incident, but videos posted to Andrew Breitbart's Big Government site have led to another job loss. St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Tim Barker reports: A University of ... Read More

No, No, This is the Quote of the Day...

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, August 17 2010

I'm surely not going to yield because some Tea Party agitator sat at his computer and turned everything I said upside down and inside out. Read More

Sherrod: Andrew Breitbart, Call Your Attorney

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, July 29 2010

Former USDA state official Shirley Sherrod to sue Andrew Breitbart for posting a snippet of video that framed her as racist: "He had to know that he was targeting me," Sherrod told reporters at a meeting of the ... Read More

Shirley Sherrod Case: Soundbites Still Pack a Punch

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, July 21 2010

USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign after a two-and-a-half minute clip of her 45-minute speech to an NAACP gathering in March was circulated by Andrew Breitbart's Big ... Read More

Quote of the Day: Andrew Breitbart, Creature of the Internet

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, May 18 2010

I am sated. I am complete in this environment. Read More

The High Cost of White House Outreach

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, September 23 2009

Andrew Breitbart is providing a master class in how online activists can set their political opponent's agenda. Days after Breitbart's BigGovernment.com drove Congress, the U.S. Read More

News Briefs

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Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

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CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

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Copyright Fights Heat Up Again Around Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today re-released part of a previously leaked February 2011 draft of the U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on his KeepTheWebOPEN website, as he joined calls by advocacy groups to make the currently ongoing deliberations about the treaty more open.

The United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are all involved in negotiating the agreement, which include provisions about intellectual property and copyright that will play a role in the developing global online economy. A 12th round of negotiations on the deal is now under way in Dallas, Texas. Issa is encouraging users to use his MADISON platform to comment on the document, which the website Knowledge Economy International obtained and released in March 2011.

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House Republicans Relaunch Speaker.gov

House Speaker John A. Boehner's office on Tuesday pulled the wraps off of the Speaker's overhauled web site just in time for a major policy speech about House Republicans' stance on any debt limit negotiations in the coming year. GO

We're All Journalists, Indeed: Obama Campaign Guests Checked Mobile Phones at the Door

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed, studiously reading pool reports from President Barack Obama's recent campaign fundraisers, catches something: the Obama campaign, per Washington Post pooler David Nakamura, appears to be collecting mobile phones from event attendees at the door, and storing them in plastic bags. At least, that was the case at a Monday event in New York City.

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Americans Don't Elect to Use Americans Elect; 3rd Party Hits Wall?

Is Americans Elect, the third ballot line cum party that hoped to use the Internet to nominate a centrist ticket for president in 2012 dead? It certainly looks that way. But before anyone starts writing the post-mortem, remember that it has ballot lines in half the states--and those could be used by renegade factions in 2012, or possibly in 2014 to run candidates for Congress. GO

Lori Compas, Netroots Challenger to Wisconsin Senate Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Posts Irreverent YouTube Riposte, And It Takes Off

Lori Compas, a Democrat who's challenging Wisconsin state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) in the state's June 5 recall election, had a rather unusual Mother's Day this year: She spent at least part of the day making a YouTube video with her family. GO

Romney Campaign Targets Obama's Barnard Commencement Speech With Google Ads

New York City area web users looking for details about Barnard College's Commencement Ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address earlier this afternoon, are also likely to have encountered a targeted ad calling out "Obama's Wasteful Spending" on Mitt Romney's website, as Emily Schultheis from Politico first reported. While she suggested it was targeted at only the zip code where the college is located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, it also showed up on a search for a zip code located in Queens, while accessing the Internet from Lower Manhattan. But it did not show up for an Internet user located outside the New York area. GO

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