Matt Ortega

Progressive activists, organizations and influential leaders will descend upon Austin, Texas this week for the third annual blogger convention now known as Netroots Nation. The conference this year will be perhaps the most web 2.0 savvy of all as convention-goers prepare to Twitter, Flickr, and livestream from the panels to the after-parties.

Tag Twitter posts with #NN08 to join the conversation on Summarize, which was recently bought out by Twitter.

Flickr photos should also be tagged NN08 for easy viewing.

Ustream.TV will stream the feeds for six different rooms, including the remarks of Governor Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco, Calif.), and General Wesley Clark:

• Exhibit Hall 4
• Ballroom E
• Ballroom F
• Ballroom G
• Room 12
• Room 19

Friday, July 18, I will moderate the panel, “Our ‘Dos Centavos’: Strategies for Latino Bloggers” with Roger Garza, Mynor Rodriguez, Edmundo Rocha and Marisa Treviño, and held in Room 19 at 1:30PM local time. This panel will be streamed live online.

Read the full program here. [PDF]

This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain’s efforts to become the next president of the United States. [...] During this past week: McCain called the most import entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made — TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday!

–Max Bergmann
(Huffington Post, 07/10/08)

Conservative columnist and editor-at-large of the National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg, touted his terrible Los Angeles Times column about the voluntary national service plan offered by Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois).

In a post at The Corner, Goldberg stepped in it again.

One small point in response (I know, I know: Why bother?). The 13th amendment lists involuntary servitude and slavery as different things. If they were the same, the founders wouldn’t have wasted the ink repeating themselves.

One small point in response (I know, I know: Why bother?). The Founding Fathers were dead by the time the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865. Illinois was the first state to do so on February 1. Ratified was “completed by December 6, 1865.”