So the results are in from the MoveOn.org virtual primary and none of the candidates polled the required 50 per cent to win the endorsement.

Indeed, apart from the top three of Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and John Kerry; no-one else finished in double digits, but that might be largely due to the sheer size of the field.

The poll was open for just over 48 hours, during which time a total of 317,639 votes were cast.

As the AP reports however; probably more important than the votes were the 49,132 people who pledged to contribute to a candidate during the process.

MoveOn.org estimates that based on the average donation per voter of $35, something in the region of $1.75m could be raised by the candidates.

The AP story quotes Michael Cornfield at GWU as describing the event as a "straw poll with a cash prize".

It's hardly surprising that Dean came out on top - with an estimated 44 per cent of the votes - given his well-publicised, and well-organised efforts to gather virtual volunteers; particularly through the MeetUp site , where as of this evening more than 40,000 potential supporters have registered.

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Leroy Sievers writes in today's Nightline email:

Periodically, people will say that they are tired of bad news, that they want to hear some good news. But every time someone tries to do it, it fails. In the end, people care about when things go wrong. If we came on each night and said, "Everything was fine today, tune in tomorrow," I would very quickly be out of work. But do we distort the whole story by just focusing on the bad things?

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More Note-isms...

According to Romenesko, a story in the LA Times reports that "NBC News is about to debut its "concise and crisp" First Read dispatch. Elizabeth Jensen writes: "In a swipe at how lengthy ABC's missive has become, some NBC insiders are jokingly calling their shorter version the Half Note."

The story also quotes Mark Halperin saying ABC's online political report: "allows us to be on the phone with all kinds of sources.... It builds relationships and proves to people that we're not unsophisticated when it comes to following politics."

Strom Thurmond died.

It's just possible that his ultimate purpose in life was to help ruin Trent Lott's reputation. That achieved, he could exit quietly...

Well, well... seems someone wasn't quite quick enough with the password encryption over at Bush-Cheney 2004.com

Those of us who toil in the arena of providing online information have been doing this long enough to realise that the lesson is perfectly clear - don't, under any circumstances, commit to a page anything you don't want the outside world to see.

Otherwise you might end up the subject of an NPR spoof. Right, Eduardo?

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Howard Dean another Jimmy Carter?

Don't laugh... according to probably the nearest thing Iowa has to a guru, The Des Moines Register's David Yepsen, Dean has a lot of the same characteristics as the former President; and those will stand him in good stead when it comes to mobilising idealistic young volunteers to stand in snowdrifts and wave placards.

Yepsen mentions specifically Dean's online efforts:

One of the most interesting stories of the 2004 campaign is Dean's use of the www.meetup.com Web site to connect supporters with one another. Other candidates have used the Internet to raise money, but Dean uses it to get campaign operations to self-start around the country. Nationwide, more than 34,000 people have identified themselves for Dean via the Internet, he said.

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Even though the Michigan affirmative action non-decision will probably get most of the headlines tomorrow, the Supreme Court also ruled today to support Congressional efforts to require publicly-funded libraries to install anti-pornography internet filters.

Even though I am passionate about the First Amendment and what it represents, the position of Justices Kennedy and Breyer supporting the judgment - that it was "allowable as long as libraries disable the filters for patrons who ask" seems not unreasonable; particularly when we're talking about public spaces with no age restrictions.

But the whole issue, of course, raises the spectre of exactly who decides whether or not something is pornographic in nature? And what if someone wants the filter extended to other material they - and perhaps only they - might consider "inappropriate"?

We know how innacurate a lot of filtering software can be in practise; so what redress does someone have who finds that their - perfectly legitimate, non-pornographic - site is being filtered out in error?

Here's what the American Library Association has to say:

The American Library Association again calls for full disclosure of what sites filtering companies are blocking, who is deciding what is filtered and what criteria are being used. Findings of fact clearly show that filtering companies are not following legal definitions of “harmful to minors” and “obscenity.” Their practices must change.

To assist local libraries in their decision process, the ALA will seek this information from filtering companies, then evaluate and share the information with the thousands of libraries now being forced to forego funds or choose faulty filters. The American Library Association also will explain how various products work, criteria to consider in selecting a products and how to best use a given product in a public setting. Library users must be able to see what sites are being blocked and, if needed, be able to request the filter be disabled with the least intrusion into their privacy and the least burden on library service.


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Mark Halperin, ABC News's political director and the genius behind The Note, has some interesting things to say in the Post today about how and why the networks cover formal declaration announcements from candidates who've effectively been running for months.

Here's the Halperin pars from Mark Leibovich's story :

" The implicit pact we have with the campaigns is, if you say this is [your] announcement, we will cover it," says Mark Halperin, ABC News political director. This pact is akin to the willingness of the networks to broadcast the prime-time speeches at political conventions even though the identities of the nominee and (most likely) the running mates have been revealed beforehand, and it's unlikely that any real "news" will take place.

Halperin, who plans to be in Burlington today, says announcement events can foretell the essential themes and fortunes of a campaign. "If you look at the announcement speeches for Bush and Clinton," he says, "they contained the same elements in language, topics and attitude that propelled them to the White House." As such, Halperin says political insiders will focus intently on Dean's speech today, "even if he gets up there and performs a ritual sacrifice of a Ben and Jerry's cow."

As Leibovich says: "Every candidate gets his or her special day, like every 8-year-old gets a birthday party."

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