We've been doing some housekeeping on our charts, and wanted to alert you to a few things. First, we've started tracking former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on our Facebook chart looking at likely 2012 presidential candidates. (Any national Republican who felt he or she had to weigh in on last week's special election for that upstate New York seat in Congress is at least thinking about running, we figure.) Let us know if there's anyone else you think we should be tracking.

Second, we had a little hiccup with the Facebook tracking data a few weeks ago, when Facebook changed how it displays friend stats. So that bump you see for everyone around early October isn't a sign of a sudden leap in friends for people like President Barack Obama or former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, it's just our bad for not catching the format change sooner.

Remember when MySpace first became really popular, and the thing to do was to set up profiles for characters from TV shows and movies and the like -- Ari Gold from "Entourage," for example -- and then have them act out their supposed lives on the page? This is kinda like that, but with more history.

Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House and historian, has written a book with co-author Bill Forstchen called To Try Men's Souls. The subject is the Battle of Trenton, that turning point in the American Revolution where George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776, and then went on to have their way with Hessian soldiers stationed in Trenton. Well, a friend on Capitol Hill passes along word that, in conjunction with the book, Gingrich and team will be staging what is likely the world's first "Twitternactment" this weekend. In other words, we'll get a glimpse of what those fighting men would have tweeted, had they had cell phones and had their fingers not been frozen together by the mindblowing cold:

The “Twitternactment” will begin on Sunday, October 25th, starting at 4:30pm ET. Twitter users can follow General George Washington (@genwashington76), Jonathan Van Dorn, a private in the colonial army (@pvtvandornNJ), and Hessian commander Colonel Johann Rall (@colonelrall), as they simulate the crossing of the Delaware River and the attack on Trenton the following morning in real time.

Rall didn't make it out of the Battle of Trenton alive. Does that mean his Twitter account will get deleted at the end of this?

Is Twitter the great leveler? Maybe. In real life, Newt Gingrich is the former Speaker of the House and, it's probably fair to say, in most observers' top five list of the most highly-regarded conservative thinkers in America today. Then there's Michael Patrick Leahy, a guy who had a clever idea, who turned Top Conservatives on Twitter from a simple hashtag (#tcot) to a meme with real legs. Leahy's been on the front lines of what's arguably been the conservative domination of Twitter.

Yesterday, Leahy invited Gingrich to teach a class on American exceptionalism at his TCOT University. Gingrich is a Twitter newbie who's quickly racking up followers (though he trails Leahy at about 2,000 to his 6,600). And he isn't above asking for a little educational help from the wired Republican new guard. His tweet in response to Leahy revealed a humility that will serve him well in Twitterland: "what does it mean?#tcot."

New vs. Traditional media is apples and oranges, Cybersecurity advice for the next President, DNC responds to "Democrats Praising McCain" ad, McCain offers prizes to spammers and realizes his recent YouTube dominance, and the #dontgo Twitter debate continues...

A YouTube-enabled video retrospective highlights Barack Obama's past statements on the public financing of presidential campaigns; Newt Gingrich's online petition in favor of domestic oil drilling tops a million signatures; LinkedIn's Answer tool is applied to politics; a congressman is streaming live video of his colleagues during today's FISA vote; and more.

The Next Right launches; is Slatecard the "Republican ActBlue"?; Hillary Clinton's bad day; it's the network, stupid; Barack Obama is the jukebox favorite; Al Franken continues to get hounded by bloggers; Newt Gingrich hints at a 2012 or 2016 run; and Hillary and Barack dance in Puerto Rico.

A new video investigates Rudy Giuliani's "scheduling conflicts" on the day of an African American-themed debate; a video shows that Mitt Romney has invested a tidy sum of money in Iran, despite very public calls for others to divest from the country; some missing John Edwards videos turn up on YouTube; a new social networking site aims at online liberals; Ron Paul raises over $1 million in an end-of-quarter fundraising push; and Newt Gingrich will not be running for president in 2008.

The way things stand today, doing politics in Second Life is a lot like having sex in a car. Just when things hit a groove, something falls out of whack. Still, when all is said and done, you're glad you did it.

Barack Obama is the winner of the Huffington Post/Yahoo/Slate mashup debate; John Edwards will visit Columbus, KY, the winning town in his Eventful demands competition; Off The Bus introduces Roadkill, a guide to the goofy and wacky in the campaigns; Newt Gingrich posts on Mike Huckabee's blog, world explodes; Bill Richardson releases a new video featuring Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers, with a cool new site to boot; and Mike Huckabee hosts "Vertical Day," a 24-hour Q&A with supporters.

Discovering the major and minor edits made to candidates' Wikipedia profiles; Jonah Goldberg argues against the idea that the web is inherently suited to liberals; surprising findings about the effect of Facebook and MySpace on political opinion; Change.org gets into the presidential quiz game; Newt launches a new site called "American Solutions"; and the difficulties of registering and logging into candidates' sites.