A YouTube-enabled video retrospective highlights Barack Obama's past statements on the public financing of presidential campaigns; Newt Gingrich's online petition in favor of domestic oil drilling tops a million signatures; LinkedIn's Answer tool is applied to politics; a congressman is streaming live video of his colleagues during today's FISA vote; and more.

The Next Right launches; is Slatecard the "Republican ActBlue"?; Hillary Clinton's bad day; it's the network, stupid; Barack Obama is the jukebox favorite; Al Franken continues to get hounded by bloggers; Newt Gingrich hints at a 2012 or 2016 run; and Hillary and Barack dance in Puerto Rico.

A new video investigates Rudy Giuliani's "scheduling conflicts" on the day of an African American-themed debate; a video shows that Mitt Romney has invested a tidy sum of money in Iran, despite very public calls for others to divest from the country; some missing John Edwards videos turn up on YouTube; a new social networking site aims at online liberals; Ron Paul raises over $1 million in an end-of-quarter fundraising push; and Newt Gingrich will not be running for president in 2008.

The way things stand today, doing politics in Second Life is a lot like having sex in a car. Just when things hit a groove, something falls out of whack. Still, when all is said and done, you're glad you did it.

Barack Obama is the winner of the Huffington Post/Yahoo/Slate mashup debate; John Edwards will visit Columbus, KY, the winning town in his Eventful demands competition; Off The Bus introduces Roadkill, a guide to the goofy and wacky in the campaigns; Newt Gingrich posts on Mike Huckabee's blog, world explodes; Bill Richardson releases a new video featuring Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers, with a cool new site to boot; and Mike Huckabee hosts "Vertical Day," a 24-hour Q&A with supporters.

Discovering the major and minor edits made to candidates' Wikipedia profiles; Jonah Goldberg argues against the idea that the web is inherently suited to liberals; surprising findings about the effect of Facebook and MySpace on political opinion; Change.org gets into the presidential quiz game; Newt launches a new site called "American Solutions"; and the difficulties of registering and logging into candidates' sites.

The Web on the Candidates

The blogs are agog after New Gingrich, in an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, implied he would run for president. When asked how likely it was that he'll make a decision by the end of September, he replied, "I think right now, it is a great possibility." Although a statement on Newt's own website says that "Newt will not contemplate a candidacy until after September 29," bloggers from both sides of the aisle and gearing up for a Gingrich candidacy. Jack Ryan at the conservative Redstate thinks it's a bad idea: "At a time when the republican party should be looking for a new face that wasn't linked to the big spending congress of years past, Newt Gingrich would be a disaster as the face of the party. Nor should we have as our leader a guy with as many "personal relationship" problems leading the party. Nor should we have someone like Gingrich who still has an ethical cloud hanging over him from his days as Speaker." Meanwhile, Jonathan Singer at the liberal MyDD is "salivating over a Gingrich candidacy" given Gingrich's unpopularity.

"Though reporters, and blogs like the Drudge Report, take credit for scoops, the news of the day is more often than not produced by the invisible hand of one campaign or another," writes Salon's Michael Scherer. While most of us know about this symbiotic relationship, Scherer packs his piece with evidence and examples from the 2008 campaign that makes it clear once again that Matt Drudge -- and a host of other blogger/journalists -- is often feeding us oppo research.

Earlier this morning (and aired on C-SPAN2), Newt Gingrich and Sen. John Kerry held a "debate on Global Climate Change, specifically carbons in the atmosphere," in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.

John and Newt debated two views for an American solution to help reduce carbons emissions. The debate wasn't moderated; but was rather an open dialogue-style debate of back and forth question and response.

The Web on the Candidates

James Kotecki has been offering the presidential candidates free advice about using online video but he's disappointed in the one-way conversations most of them are conducting (read: they won't respond to him). John Edwards and Newt Gingrich wrote text responses to his videos analyzing their online campaigns; Joe Biden's campaign subscribed to Kotecki's videos. No other candidate has yet responded.

Jeff Jarvis responds to an article in the Politico by techPresident's Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej in which they compare the presidential candidates' use of video to the online videos of British MP David Cameron webcameron, in which the head of the Conservative party posts disarming and off-the-cuff videos that take place in his kitchen, on work trips, or anywhere else he happens to be. Compared to Cameron, Jarvis calls John McCain's videos "overproduced" and "overlong"; "Obama is spending too much time showing himself in front of big crowds and too little time just talking to us... Hillary is more casual but not candid. Yet they are all reveling in their ablity to make their own soundbites instead of being subject to the clipping whims of some network TV news editor."

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.