Credit: Radio Free Asia - China

• A Chinese online activist who had challenged the government's take on a 2008 earthquake gets five years in prison -- but not for his quake activism, says authorities, rather it was his "subvers[ive]" mention of Tiananmen Square in an email.
• The Pollies push back their deadline, on account of all the snow.
• Gmail goes social.
• Obama pops into a press briefing -- surprise! -- and according to Politico, says that "'the White House will put up health care ideas on a website 'for a long period of time.'" No, we have no real idea what any of that means.
• Gibbs, the guy who briefs the press when the President's not around to do it, takes some advice from Sarah Palin on where to keep his notes.
• The White House's new color-coded Open Government Dashboard is very much a work in progress, say its makers.
• Some snow-inspired snarky tweeting from Kansas Republican Rep. Lynn Jenkins "Votes canceled today for the House..politicians not in Washington = your pocketbook is safe."
• All those technology services -- cable, cell phones, etc. -- have real costs that really add up.
• Should questions about CompStat prompt doubts about data-driven decision making?
• Pretty sure all our blog posts should be trailer-ized.
• And the guy behind the rather invaluable SCOTUSblog gets a TV pilot made of his life.

(With Micah Sifry)

The San Francisco company Tulchin Research is out with some fun polling of California voters that fleshes out the intersection of tech and politics. Among the findings:

• Have an iPhone? You're likely a Jerry Brown voter. Fifty-seven percent of Apple phone-havers back Brown, a Democrat, in the California governor's race, while 31% like Republican candidate Meg Whitman; 12% might be sold on their phone choice, but are undecided in the race.
• Wait, you're a BlackBerry user? Then there's about a one in two chance that you're a Whitman fan; 38% of RIM customers prefer Brown.

• Seventy-two percent of voters in the state who are under the age of 40 have a Facebook account -- which is 13 more percentage points than those who subscribe to cable television.

More here. (Thanks Matt Lockshin)

Credit: Re-Elect Congressman Kucinich Committee

An email from Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich promoting his candidacy in a Firedoglake online contest is getting attention in some quarters for the fact that Kucinich lays out in black and white pixels that he'll vote in Congress against any health care reform measure that doesn't include a public option. The Senate bill, of course, doesn't have a public plan in it, and Kucinich's eventual support for a compromise legislative vehicle had been something of an open question.

But aside from the legislative particulars, we're early enough in the evolution of the political blog universe that it's still eye catching to see a sitting congressperson go after a blog endorsement like this, and it points to the success that Firedoglake has had in establishing itself not only as a political blog, but as a sort of blog/activist-force hybrid that few, if any, other political blogs on the left have duplicated. Whatever advocacy might that might be is something Kucinich could use in his corner; the long-time member of Congress faced his toughest race yet in 2008, though his Ohio district is fairly solidly Democrat territory.

What's FDL promising? The top three winners of its "Fire Dogs" contest gets added to FDL Action PAC's ActBlue fundraising drive; in the last quarter of 2008, ActBlue listed Firedoglake as its fourth largest aggregator of donations, pulling in $150,000 in that sleepy quarter. Beyond fundraising promises, FDL says that they will buy voter lists for the districts of their winning candidates, and then supply the army that it will take to turn those lists into phone calls, emails, and general promotion of the successful Fire Dog. "Members of the FDL community," reads the contest's rules, "will call voters in these districts to identify and persuade constituent support, encourage voter registration and recruit volunteers."

In addition to a taking a stand against health care reform that lacks a public option, FDL is encouraging participants in the contest to judge the congress-testants on whether they've pledged to cut off funding for the Iraq war, as well as their vote on one particular June supplemental bill. (The correct vote was a "no.")

Kucinich hit his email list yesterday with a note that read this: "Popular progressive blog, Firedoglake (FDL), has launched a new poll to identify three 'Fire Dogs' in Congress." He went on: "We are currently 2nd in the poll out of all the Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives. I need your help in getting us into 1st place." First, at the moment, is Orlando Rep. Alan Grayson. Kucinich followed up with a gentle nudge via email earlier today, writing to supporters that "You can make a difference, where being successful is a must."

Success might be a must, but will Kucinich be a success? We'll see. Voting ends tonight at midnight, east coast time, and the winners will be announced tomorrow.

• From the recently discovered YouTube channel of the game designers behind the U.S. Army's "America's Army" video game. Watch the above for details on how they get the furrowed brow of a virtual drill sergeant just right.
• Maybe it's the snow, but freshly-minted Senator Scott Brown is still without a website.
• The Orange Revolution, one of the earliest case studies in how digital technologies can shape political engagement, seems to more or less be over.
• Microsoft is setting up some government scientists with free cloud computing.
• And Google's DC talk on the topic of "Democracy Online" that we mentioned last week has been snow-poned.

Credit: C-SPAN

The White House seems to be gearing up to kill three birds with one stone.

During a pre-Super Bowl interview, President Obama announced that he's invited Republicans to a half-day summit on February 25th that will give them an opportunity to present their proposals for fixing health care. The GOP has complained that Obama hasn't yet heard out their contributions to the health care debate -- bird one. Bird two is that the GOP isn't in much of a position to turn down the session, but it may well be a repeat performance of Obama's "question time" with the House Republican Caucus from earlier this month where Obama grasped much of the limelight, a fair amount of praise, and a bit of breathing room for his health care push.

As for bird three? Well, you'll remember that many on the right and left have criticized Obama from backtracking on his campaign pledge to hold health care negotiations live on C-SPAN. It's become a favorite cudgel for Republicans to use against Obama's push for health care reform. The summit later this month is a chance to combat that line of critique, at least just a little.

I asked C-SPAN communications director Howard Mortman if the network planned on airing the proposed White House health care summit. Short answer: heck yes. Slightly longer answer: "C-SPAN will carry it live and replay it...completely at night," said Mortman, continuing, "plus archive the event through the C-SPAN Video Library."

Credit:DSCC

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm of Senate Democrats, is having some fun at Sarah Palin's expense by inviting people to create visual mockups of her comments at the recent National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. "Tell us what you think Sarah Palin is saying using our new whiteboard tool. Feel free to draw, add text, and decorate the scene however you'd like," reads the DSCC site, built on a tool called ScribLink. The DSCC is saying that they'll be selecting some of the "best" images to post on their website. Yep, you'd better believe that the artwork people send in is -- if any of it is actually going to see the light of day -- going to be filtered first.

In other DSCC news, they're also running a petition asking Carly Fiorina's campaign to create more web video, on account of the demon sheep episode.

My trip to Gov 2.0 Camp LA commenced with a comedy of errors: lost luggage, a flooded hotel room and flooded streets due to the rains. After a night of little sleep, I arrived at the BlankSpaces co-working location to the company of like-minded people from diverse professional backgrounds but all joining the search for using technology and innovation to improve government. In camp style, we each used the 3 word model to describe why we were there. I thought the focus really centered around engaging new paradigms since people from government, major corporations, start-ups, film industry and media were all together to learn and share ideas.

While there was no shortage of technical expertise present, most of the concepts discussed spoke to a high level of education and interest in the Gov 2.0 space, with sessions ranging from how to properly define gov 2.0 to specific tactics to use in social media within government. The biggest takeaways from the event: focus on people, build replicable solutions, and engage in expansive, multi-pronged outreach and public awareness campaigns.

For the hundreds, nay, dare I say thousands of you planning to come out tomorrow to the Atlantic's "State of the Union for Technology" event featuring, among others, yours truly, we just got word that it's be cancelled, in light of the fact that DC is frozen solid. The good folks at the Atlantic are working on rescheduling the event, and you'll certainly be notified as to when.

Credit: USDA/U.S. Army/MTV

Game designers were called to the White House's Truman Room last week to brainstorm. What the White House wants to know is what experts in the field of gaming interaction know that can be used to combat one of the United States' toughest foes: childhood obesity.

The target of the White House gaming project is young Americans in those critical "tween" years of 9 to 12, when many of us develop our eating habits for life. (Here's the attendee list for last week's White House session on gaming, led by U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra.)

Games and government aren't perfect strangers. The USDA, for example, has even experimented with nutrition-based games before; witness "MyPyramid Blast Off," aimed at a slightly younger set. But there's a growing interest both inside and outside government about how richly immersive and expertly crafted gaming experiences can help shape their players' ways of thinking about the world, whether that's the U.S. military's "America's Army" virtual war environment to MTV's choose-your-own-adventure-style "Darfur is Dying" online game to the massively collaborative "World Without Oil" experience.

Chopra is particularly interested in figuring how if small government-funded prizes might encourage game designers to build effective anti-obesity gaming experiences that young people will actually want to play. More here.