Now that the FCC has announced it will be auctioning off the 700 megahertz part of the wireless spectrum -- it will go unused once broadcast TV stations make a complete switch to digital in 2009 -- its use has become a political and commercial hot button. Internet activists have gone on the offensive to try to convince the FCC of the public importance of the newly-freed spectrum, and to be fair when assigning it, and today they've made a key ally in John Edwards.

I'm here at PdF '08 at a press conference marking the launch of InternetforEveryone.com, a coalition pushing for universal high-speed Internet, centered around four core tenets: access, choice, openness, and innovation. The unveiling of the broadband effort was a unique opportunity to witness some pretty, ehem, prolific talkers from the worlds of academia, advocacy, and business strictly held to just one or two minutes, and so I've tried to capture their mico-arguments in favor of universal broadband here.

Team McCain pwns the Obama campaign by tracking screen captures that show changes to the Democratic candidate's website subsection on Iraq; with an innovative and occassionally funny digital townhall, Rep. John Culberson gets one step closer to be a "real time representative;" JibJib has a new video; we highlight the latest development in the ongoing conservative battle over broadband; and much, much more.

Now's a good time to ask, what the heck happened with the defeat of the bailout bill on Capitol Hill on Monday?; Debate? What debate? Oh, there's a debate tonight. The Internet has bubbled up some ways to play along with Palin vs. Biden; Wow. The Obama campaign has released a gorgeous new iPhone app; Congress has okayed a bill that requires the government to regularly and accurately assess who in the U.S. has broadband access and who doesn't. If we may humbly advance an opinion: excellent!; and a good deal more. Honest.

Is this a peek into how the how the Obama Administration plans to handle the Federal Communications Commission when it comes to town in January? The Obama-Biden transition team has just named the staunchly pro-Internet Susan Crawford its co-lead in the review of the powerful FCC. Crawford, a leading expert on communications policy, is the founder of OneWebDay, called "an environmental movement for the Internet ecosystem." She was, until recently, also a member of the board of directors of ICANN, the organization charged with overseeing some of the Internet's operations.*

* Updated to reflect the face that Crawford ended her term on the ICANN board last week.

Covered: Online Right Sees a Chance to Take Root; While the Online Left Considers the President Elect; The Agenda Returns, Somewhat Tamed; Inside a Team Meeting; From World of Warcraft to Washington; Jobs in Internet Defense; and a good deal more.

Obama Campaign's Trickle Down Belief in the Bottom Up; GOP Insurgents Stump for the Fierce Urgency of Getting Wired Now; Political Discourse, YouTube-Style; Huh, Looks Like Facebook Really Can Get You a Job; Fixing the FCC Begins at Home (Page); The Most Depressing Tweet You'll Get All Day; Summit on Social Networking for Social Change; and more.

The Democratic side of the House Energy and Commerce Committee under John Dingell (for now) has issued a 110-page condemnation of the reign of Bush-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin...We know -- you've been dying for a mobile tool that tells you up-to-the-minute federal stats on the UV index in your city. You're in luck!...If you pay attention to these things, you get the sense that no one in the Obama campaign ever really did a head count in its much-celebrated Internet shop...and more.

With sitting Republican National Committee chairman Mike Duncan signing on to the tech-fueled Rebuild the Party movement, South Carolina GOP head Katon Dawson stands as the sole announced candidate for GOP chair not yet jumping on board the grasstops effort...The Center for American Progress (CAP) Action Fund's acting CEO Jennifer Palmieri has jumped into CAP blogger Matt Yglesias's blog space to issue a "special note"...The Sunlight Foundation's Labs project is starting to take itself a bit more seriously. They're shifting into the next phase of conquering Washington via API and databases, seeing themselves as less an experiment in transparency than as an ongoing concern...and more.

Joining the growing list of President-elect Barack Obama's experiments in interactivity is the Citizen's Briefing Book...Politico's Ben Smith points us to what looks like a new webisode of "The West Wing," but what turns out to be a new seven-minute video in which key soon-to-be Obama Administration figures make the case for the President-elect's stimulus package...Harvard's Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing how the Treasury Department's handles the Troubled Asset Relief Program, thinks Henry Paulson et al is guilty of delivering "non-answers."How do we know those juicy details? She said so, in a YouTube video posted to a new and improved cops.senate.gov site...and more.