As you might have heard, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account was violated and its contents -- including family photos and contact information -- splayed across message boards, gossip blogs, and elsewhere across the web; The Commission on Presidential Debates and MySpace have gotten together to spawn MyDebates.org; The House Committee on Financial Services recently considered the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, a bill opposed by commercial banks, local chambers of commerce, and others in the financial industry. So it just might be interesting to know how much money those interests where kicking into the coffers of the members of Congress vetting the bill, right? That's precisely what you can do with Maplight's remarkable new congressional committee tool; and much more.

While we probably won't be hearing "mail-dot-White-House-dot-gov -- the only SMTP for me!" on the campaign trail anytime soon, it sure would be music to my ears.

It appears that someone has hacked into one or more of Sarah Palin's personal email accounts on Yahoo! and published some of the contents on the web. According to an entry on Wikileaks:

"Circa midnight Tuesday the 16th of September (EST) activists loosely affiliated with the group 'anonymous' gained access to U.S. Republican Party Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account gov.palin@yahoo.com and passed information to Wikileaks. Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private email accounts to conduct government business and in the process avoid transparency laws. The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin's inbox, two example emails, address book and a couple of family photos. The list of correspondence, together with the account name tends to re-enforce the criticism."

The Center for Independent Media's Michigan Messenger is taking some intense GOP heat after a reporter broke the news of a local Republican official's comments that they planned to use foreclosure lists to block Michiganders from voting; The Palin Truth Squad is the new response team assembled by the McCain campaign to "counter recent attacks on Governor Sarah Palin, her family, her friends and her record of accomplishment." And ThePalinTruthSquad.com is most definitely not their online home; How did Robert Greenwald go from a little known filmmaker to the force behind a great many of left-leaning video clips you'll come across on the web?; and much more.

Two current examples of how bloggers are not just commenting on the political news of the day, but actually making it: Al Giordano and Bill Conroy of NarcoNews broke the Sarah Palin tanning bed story, and Eartha Jane Melzer of the Michigan Messenger broke the story of plans by the state GOP to disenfranchise voters whose homes have been foreclosed.

The McCain campaign quickly backtracked from its Tuesday announcement that the Republican presidential nominee invented the BlackBerry, explaining that the declaration was really all a joke. But the joke may be on McCain.

On August 30, 2006, Senator John McCain co-signed a letter to "Ms. Sarah H. Palin" of 245 West 5th Avenue #28, Anchorage, AK, 99501. He, along with his co-signers former Governor Michael Dukakis, former US Rep. Bill Frenzel, and former US Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, were acting in their role as members of the board of Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan citizen group. They were asking Palin, who was then one of several candidates for Governor of Alaska, to agree to take the "National Political Awareness Test" and tell citizens her positions on issues of concern to voters in her state.

The letter noted that her answers would be reported as verbatim and distributed through PVS's website, which at the time was receiving upwards of 16 million hits a day, along with its printed "Voter's Self-Defense Manuals," its 1-800-Vote-Smart hotline, and thousands of libraries and community centers.

Palin never answered the letter from McCain and crew. Of course, she was not alone.

The Wall Street Journal's Emily Steel highlights a fascinating example of a seemingly new online tactic we focused on yesterday when it came to DNC's new "Count the Lies" compendium. Let's call it pushback by proxy; "How can graphic designers best support Barack Obama?" That question was the inspiration for a new project that aims to mine the talent of the more artistically-gifted Obama fans among us; Next Friday kicks off the start of the McCain-Obama debates, and Current TV will be trying out a new way of framing the match-ups: overlaying Twitter traffic over the feed; McCain policy advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin tried making the case this morning that McCain's long-time service on the Senate Commerce Committee gives him tech cred. "He did this," said Holtz-Eakin, holding up his BlackBerry. The "John McCain invented the BlackBerry" joke writes itself, but we're not going to make it; and much, much more.

This video of Ralph Nader in a soliloquy with a parrot is just too good to pass up.

CNN reports:

Tina Fey may be the best but she's far from the ONLY Sarah Palin impersonator. CNN's Jeanne Moos rounds up the imposters.

CNN has a piece about Sarah Palin impersonators, and posts links to most of the videos as 'FROM YOUTUBE.COM.'

You'll notice when CNN displays video from NBC they show a graphic that says, 'Saturday Night Live from NBC', or 'Nightline From NBC News.'

They also add a graphic for Funny or Die, but most YouTube comedians don't get credit.

Can we get some link backs to the YouTube comedians?