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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

What Do Michele Bachmann and Ozzy Osbourne Have In Common?

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, July 20 2011

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Ozzy Osbourne are both riding the crazy train straight to the bank, political science professor Justin Buchler suggests in a new article in "The Forum," a Berkeley Electronic Press ... Read More

But This Congressman Called the Cops, So His Twitter Hacking Scandal Is Maybe Less Scandalous

BY Nick Judd | Friday, July 15 2011

Politico reports that Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio)'s Twitter account may have been hacked Wednesday night, and his Twitter profile image replaced with "a heavily Photoshopped image of a naked man." Unlike Rep. Anthony ... Read More

Faults and Defaults: How Twitter's Settings Tripped Up Weiner

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, June 13 2011

Veteran tech journalist Steven Levy has a useful backgrounder up on Wired.com on how Twitter's default settings for following and messaging other users tripped up congressman Anthony Weiner. Levy's key point: requiring ... Read More

Engaging the Public vs Engaging the Pubic

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, June 9 2011

For some time now, those of us who work in networked politics have been arguing that it was time for the relationship between government officials and the public to change. The internet's economics of abundance--of time, ... Read More

Rep. Anthony Weiner, Internet Daredevil

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, June 9 2011

Rep. Anthony Weiner; photo credit: mysticchildz If you really pay attention to the details of this whole Anthony Weiner situation, one of the things that jumps out is just how amazingly reckless the 46 year-old married ... Read More

Weiner Reveals What Went Down

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, June 6 2011

And...it was him. Rep. Weiner says he indeed tweeted out the underwear shot, "meant as a direct message to a woman as part of a joke to a woman in Seattle." Weiner says he's had similar contact with other ... Read More

Was Weiner a Victim of a yFrog Weak Spot?

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, June 3 2011

Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng walks us through how one could post and tweet a photo through someone's accounts even without their permission. Read More

Wolf and Weiner Contemplate the Nature of Twitter

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, June 2 2011

Well, this story isn't going away. The Anthony Weiner Twitter-gate media tour continues with an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that focused much on the Twitter zeitgeist, and in particular how this brave new world of ... Read More

How Hill Staffers Deal with Bosses Who Tweet

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, June 1 2011

A report from Politico's Scott Wong on the Twitter nervousness sweeping Capitol Hill in the wake of the, well, Weiner underwear situation, contains this gem: To stay just a few seconds ahead, staffers have set up email ... 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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