New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley writes that "Debates give candidates a chance to break loose of YouTube-ification and speak for themselves at length." She couldn't be more wrong about YouTube.

A new site does a great job of illustrating the candidates' health care positions; progressive liveblogging during the Michigan primary; the Caucus Calculator is updated for Nevada; why aren't the Republicans using the web to get out the vote in Michigan?; John Edwards once again teams up with Eventful; Dennis Kucinich successfully sues MSNBC, will attend the Nevada debate; and a new report says that most Congressional website are plain awful.

In last night's back-to-back Republican and Democratic Facebook/ABC debates in New Hampshire, the stakes were high, the chairs were comfy, and Facebook was jammin’. Too bad the Facebook part did little to affect the debate.

More on the CNN/YouTube debate: Save the Debate wants CNN out of the YouTube debate process; Factcheck.org finds a smattering of truth-bending among the candidates; IPDI gets their criticism on; regardless of criticism, the debate was the the most-watched of the season; gay advocates are compiling a list of Giuliani's pro-gay efforts; our own Micah Sifry and David Colarusso get interviewed; and Hillary answers questions on iVillage, doesn't break a sweat.

The Republicans finally had their YouTube debate, but it wasn't as participatory as the producers would like to think, since the public couldn't help decide which videos to show; in fact, only two of the forty most-viewed submissions were shown; conservatives and liberals alike are bothered that the questions were so narrow, focusing overwhelmingly on guns, immigration, and religion; and then there's the gay general, whose link to Hillary Clinton shook things up; the overwhelming opinion is that Mike Huckabee walked away with a victory; some of the candidates' teams liveblogged the event; and for something completely different, check out the New York Times' profile of ActBlue.

I'll be liveblogging tonight's CNN/YouTube debate, and I'm trying out new software from CoverItLive that lets me continuously post using their widget. My posts should appear in a beautiful, continuous stream below. The coolest thing is that you guys, the readers, will be able to add your comments to the flow. I can even throw out polls during the debate. Sounds cool, right?

There are no guarantees with this, as we've never used it before. It could fail for some unknown reason, so bear with us.

You can sign up to get notified in the box below, which is where my posts will also appear started around 8pm tonight.

Getting ready for tonight's CNN/YouTube debate; it's good to see all of the Republicans participating, and the introduction of user-submitted videos is a welcome change, but we're still wishing it involved the public in the question selection process; debate executive producer David Borhman continues to be skeptical of allowing the pubic to choose the questions; UStream is becoming a significant player in online political video; James Kotecki takes a bath, guest curates YouTube's front page; the DNC announces a new video library of Republican campaign appearances; John Edwards launches a new anti-lobbyist project; and Hillary and Barack both teach their supporters how to caucus.

As we all know, although the public submitted video questions for tomorrow night's CNN/YouTube debate, CNN's producers decide which questions will actually be asked. But what if the public had more of a role, and the questions were selected based on the number of views?