There's something interesting going on over on Senator Arlen Specter's Facebook wall. Hundreds of people--many, if not all of them, constituents of the Pennsylvania Democrat (who was not long ago a Republican)--are posting short messages urging him to defend the Clean Air Act, which has been weakened in the House version of President Obama's pending climate legislation. Same with Senator Dianne Feinstein's and Facebook walls. A kind of digital picket line has formed, with a steady beat of posts appearing from the Senator's fans online.

An addendum to that last post about what the new New Media Department has cooking up in its quest to revitalize the GOP and regain a foothold in official Washington, at a time when Democrats control the House, Senate, and White House. Republican Party headquarters has been spending its energies putting together an online "Welcome Memo Generator" that auto-constructs snarky messages of greeting for new Democratic Senator Arlen Specter.

Playing along is simple, if the personality-shifting required is convoluted. You, Average Jane or Joe, assumes the role of a high profile Democratic official. You can select to be "Senator Harry," "Speaker Nancy," or "Senator Chris D." -- that's Connecticut's Chris Dodd, for those of you not up on the list of latest Republican targets. For good measure, you can also choose to be the dread White House TelePrompter.

Select a character/machine to play, and out pops a welcome message for Senator Specter. You'll no doubt have guessed that those notes of welcome are really a chance to air favorite Republican charges against those officials. For Reid, it's land deals in Vegas. For Pelosi, it's flights on military plans. For Dodd, it's mortgages he received on his home.

As for the White House TelePrompter, turns out that inanimate piece of equipment is guilty of placing the country in hock to forces abroad: "Welcome to the Democrats. I look forward to working together to borrow more money from China and the Middle East."

SpecterVsToomey.com is two things: (a) a quick reframing by conservatives of the Pennsylvania Senate race as the inevitable pitting of the newly-(re)minted Democrat Arlen Specter against the former representative and Club for Growth head Pat Toomey and (b) an innovative kinda website. (via Dave Weigel) As political sites go, the format is a new one on me. It's something like a two-sided Tumblr to which everyone can add stuff. The way it works is that visitors vote for their preferred candidate and -- and here's the innovative part -- post anonymous comments that line up underneath their man. Not a bad way to capitalize on everyone's new favorite hobby: watching stuff they write pop up instantly on the web. (Weigel notes that it's also not a bad way for Rep. Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund to collect email addresses. So cynical!)

With 789 votes in, you won't be surprised to learn that Toomey is winning the vote count. But it's not a total rout. Specter is still competitive with 39% of the vote -- which might, you might think, give Republicans a moment of pause when considering whether to stick with Toomey as their candidate.

At least very least, comments like this can't bring a smile to DeMint's face: "I understand why Specter switched parties, though I don't like it. Even so, he's still the obvious best candidate." Notch one for Arlen.

It's days like this one when it makes perfectly wonderful sense to have a crack digital photographer on White House staff and an agile new media team in place to get his content distributed far and wide. The White House now owns the iconic image of the moment when Arlen Specter switched parties and put Democrats within sniffing distance of 60 votes in the Senate.

Man does that phone have a lot of buttons!