Organizers of the Get FISA Right movement turn to the wisdom of Clay Shirky to figure out where to go next; the RNC launches a new collaborative site that, they say, will inform the crafting of the GOP's 2008 party platform; we shine the spotlight on two new web projects designed to open up governing and legislating; and much, much more.

Today NPR launched their new Sunday Soapbox feature, in which a trio of bloggers will be writing about the election and posting audio podcasts of their commentary. The podcasts will be hosted on the Sunday Soapbox site and will air on Weekend Edition Sunday. Full disclosure: techPresident's Mindy Finn and I are two of those three bloggers/podcasters.

NPR launches a new hub for voters to post their political stories; does Obama's fundraising model remove the need for public financing?; why do government tax sites work better than government participation sites?; Obama's online tactics further illustrate the generational gap between him and Clinton; a video of Obama talking about the effect of social media on his campaign; Members of Congress may finally get to use YouTube; and an federal agency wants to pass the archiving of gov't sites to a nonprofit. Come on, disk space is cheap!

National Public Radio's staff liveblogs their own presidential debate -- is this a first?; a French writer aggregates all she can find about the presidential race; why aren't the candidates blogging? We're just asking for a post here and there; Fred Thompson surrogate George Allen curiously evades Why Tuesday's questions about election reform; an IPDI blogger implores Ron Paul supporters to continue to do their own thing online, but wonders how their zealousness will translate for mainstream voters; Chris Dodd may be the first candidate to utilize Google News' commenting feature; the RNC organizers announce the inclusion of bloggers at the 2008 convention; and who's Iowa caucus training video is the most popular?

Andy Carvin writes from the NPR annual membership meeting:

...yesterday afternoon I got to facilitate a group discussion on how public broadcasting should use social media tools to engage the public during the 2008 election cycle... No matter what we do, we need to remember the election is about all of us, so all of us should have an opportunity to participate in public debate. An informed citizenry isn't achieved through lecturing to them, or only giving them a choice of partisan talking heads as the sole perspectives on a given issue . It's achieved by creating an ongoing, thoughtful conversation not beholden to soundbytes. To paraphrase Dan Gillmor, the public knows more about what's at stake than any single institution within public broadcasting ever could, and we need their help to make this conversation happen.

Andy provides examples of some projects that he thinks could take place during the election cycle and concludes with this:

Again, time is running out, and the stakes are high. This is an opportunity to public broadcasting to shine. We can't do it on our own, and we can't do it without public involvement. It's their civic duty, but it's ours as well. It's about all of us. Public broadcasters, community partners and the public working together. Our voice, our vote.

Good stuff.