John Edwards decided not to fire bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen for things they wrote before he hired them, receiving acclaim from the left and the right, respectively. "This is all being made up as we go along," said Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network in the Times' wrap-up, which compared the Edwards bloggers' statements to inflammatory statements made by Patrick J. Hynes, the conservative blogger hired by John McCain.

Glenn Greenwald claims success at getting the "MSM" to balance the story: "[the blogosphere] forced into the public discussion critical facts that were being omitted and which exposed the absurdity of this story, thereby providing a counterweight to the joint right-wing/media pressure on Edwards to capitulate to these forces." John Palfrey calls the attacks on Edwards' bloggers "an extension of classic opposition research. It points to some of the risks at having people blog on behalf of a campaign in an official capacity." Phil Noble adds, "we have a new technology that's disrupting the whole political process, and we haven't figured out what the rules are."

We're pleased to announce our newest feature: Technorati tracks, a series of dynamic charts that show how often bloggers are mentioning the presidential candidates over the last 30 and 90 days. The charts are broken down by party, and we've also included a third set showing how bloggers are also talking about prominent non-candidates like Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Wesley Clark and Michael Bloomberg.

The Web on the Candidates

Is Al Gore running? Leonardo DiCaprio couldn't get it out of it him, but after he won an Oscar for best documentary last night people are talking. Patrick Ruffini noticed that Gore's web site has a new splash page asking visitors to send their names and email addresses to Congress; Ruffini wonders if it's a sign of bigger ambitions. "A good e-mail list is something any candidate needs to hit the ground running. And if you’re smart, you capitalize on high-impact events like the Oscar win to collect e-mail addresses."

In a profile of Students for Barack Obama leaders, the Merced Sun-Star looks for ways that campaigns can use social networking sites like Facebook to get people elected. Meredith Segal, executive director of the group, knows it's about more than online organizing. "We recognize that we have tens of thousands of members online. But unless we get those people out knocking on doors, participating in phone banks, registering voters and obviously ultimately voting, (our) online organizing will be little more than a powerful way to demonstrate support for (Obama)."

Hungry for more Al Gore? You can get your fill and more at GoreHub.com, a new "one-stop news portal" created by some of his supporters. While you're at it, don't miss Ellen McGirt's fascinating cover story on how Gore got rich after he left politics, in the new issue of Fast Company. Details below the fold.

Nobel speculation heats talk of Gore bid; Facebook Political Summit Tuesday to face criticism?; Slatecard, GOP answer to ActBlue, launches; Evangelicals going progressive?; Michael Cornfield sums up the online field; Obama spokesman goes bottom-up; Rudy makes a fundraising boo-boo; and Meghan McCain goes-a-blogging.

Reactions to Thomas Friedman's piece on "Generation Q's" alleged lack of political activism; rumors about an alleged John Edwards affair are being vigorously denied and are failing to take hold in the blogosphere; Al Gore co-won the Nobel Peace Prize, once again raising speculations about a White House bid; a few candidates are experiencing a huge surge in blogosphere chatter; progress on Ron Paul's attempt to raise $12 million by Dec. 31; do blogger endorsements carry more weight that those from newspapers?; updates about the Spartan Internet Political Performance Index; Chris Dodd's can't bring a supporter along to a Red Sox game after all; and Barack Obama's new online-only ad.

Ron Paul supporters have put together some amazing charts showing his fundraising progress in real time; Iowans are not really using the web to engage with the campaigns, the New York Times reports; Jose Antonio Vargas is video blogging; Off The Bus organizes 18 citizen journalists to cover the Obama field campaign; and Draft Gore amasses over 200,000 signatures urging Al Gore to run.

Much to his chagrin, Ron Paul is attracting support from online neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups; MoveOn tells Google to allow its name to be used in critical ads; is 2008 the Year of the Gimmick?; Al Gore says he isn't running, but new videos suggest otherwise; more from Katherine Seelye about women and online politics; and new numbers from Nielsen suggest that Hillary Clinton is beginning to dominate online but former king of online fundraising John McCain has zero online buzz/

Democracy for America, the organizing network that grew out of the ashes of the Dean campaign, has announced the results of its "Pulse Poll" on the Democratic presidential race. With more than 150,000 votes cast, the winner is Dennis Kucinich, with 49,000. He did not get the 66% required to get DfA's endorsement, however.

On any given day, I've got about four or five books that I'm currently reading--or trying to finish--and I can understand why some people try to take a "reading week" (or month) where they do nothing but catch up with the piles of things that we wish we had time to read. I'm taking a break from my own piles to offer some capsule reviews of several books I did manage to read this year that cover the emerging world of technology and politics.