It was the "I Blog for McCain" t-shirt that caught my eye. Just outside the security barrier in downtown St. Paul for the Republican National Convention a handful of workers were handing out the shirts, as well as buttons with the same slogan, on what was quite frankly a gloriously beautiful afternoon. I spoke with one of them, Stephanie. She was rather friendly and explained that she was working for a public relations company representing iambiotech.org. That's a site that tracks new developments in biotechnology research -- from stem cell research to renewable energy, sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

I couldn't quite wrap my mind around why a biotech lobbying group would be in St. Paul hawking "I Blog for McCain" shirts. And I found it a bit striking that someone might be particularly driven to blogging in favor of John McCain if they had a particular interest in expanding research in those areas. But Stephanie quickly explained that it was a bipartisan effort: they were busy in Denver for the DNC last week, passing out "I Blog for Obama" t-shirts and buttons. Blogging, I guess, is sort of a nice bi-partisan hook these days.

But what's especially odd, when I check out i am biotech now, is that it's a closed site. So I suppose that if you want to "Blog for McCain" on biotechnology, you're doing it on your own domain.

I asked Stephanie how well the whole handing-out-shirts thing was going in this crowd, given their particular biotech focus. She reported that it was going quite well -- that people's interest seemed to be piqued enough by their swag's cool pro-bloggy message that they stopped to pick some up.