Via the magic that is Twitter and Qik, we're being treated to a front-row seat to what is in all likelihood a congressional first -- members of the House refusing to leave the floor, and inviting reporters, tourists, and staffers to join the party. At issue are legislative proposals to allow domestic offshore oil drilling, and Republicans are staging the protest to demand that the House take up the issue. We'll point you to some coverage of this on-going situation:

I'll be going live to the web from time-to-time during the next two-and-a-half days as Twitter (my handle is @mlsif), and every time I'm actually streaming live, Qik--the fabulous live video streaming service we're using--will send a tweet letting you know.

The Twittering congressman is now the Qik-ing congressman: Texas Republican Rep. John Culberson is doing live video streaming of interviews with his fellow members of the House during today's vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. You have to wonder what his colleagues think when they see John coming.

A fake superdelegate on YouTube; Hillary can't catch a break online; Grover Norquist shows up in the RNC's "Can We Ask" campaign; graphic designers get out the vote; new speakers announced for PdF 2008; John McCain shores up his tech policy; a McCain adviser answers Wired readers' questions; Hillary's t-shirt contest enters the voting stage; Ron Paul's been employing tons of family members; and a Member of Congress uses Qik.

A new Republican group swears web domination is all about the right tools; the presidential race is the best example of the impact of blogging on politics, says Technorati; Jose Antonio Vargas gets introspective about online politics; the DNC credentialing process is on the verge of becoming a fiasco; Second Life attacks made real in Russia; Google News and Google Earth offer cool possibilities; a new, smooth pro-Obama tune; McCain says none more black!; Hillary Tweets more, conducts blog outreach; and British PM reaches out to constituents on YouTube.

Here's the archived video of the "Transparency and Government" session at the Berkman at 10 conference that I participated in along with Sunlight Foundation head Ellen Miller this morning. (I am a consultant to Sunlight.) It was streamed live to the web by uber-video blogger Steve Garfield, who is the official videographer of the event.

I'm at Harvard today and tomorrow attending the Berkman Center's 10th anniversary, and boy is this is an idea-rich environment. If you want to peek in on the proceedings, there are lots of ways to join in:

You can watch Steve Garfield's live video streams on Qik.com, you can log into the IRC back-channel at irc.freenode.net/berkman, and there's a lot of blogging, twittering and flickring happening, all grouped around the tag "Berkmanat10".

Jose Antonio Vargas thinks Barack Obama's early popularity online pointed to his electoral success; Color of Change hits Hillary for "race-baiting"; Al Franken is annoyed by a pesky blogger; the New York Times botches superdelegate data, and Congresspedia gets it right; super-conservative Richard Viguerie launches anti-John McCain site; Micah Sifry livestreamed on Qik; Obama launches a huge voter registration drive; the RNC hits Obama with an attack ad, almost securing him as the Democratic nominee in the process; and Obama wins an award for its texting smarts

I spent a few minutes in the future last night, having a late dinner at an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica with Robert Scoble of FastCompany.tv and Loic le Meur of the start-up Seesmic. Both of them are tech pioneers who are working in the emerging world of the world live web. And when they say live, they don't mean simply the part of the web that gets updated often, otherwise known as the blogosphere and the news-sphere. They mean the direct streaming of live events onto the web, along with live feedback from audiences that are highly networked.