Never have so many waited so eagerly for the past tense.

Screenshot of George W. Bush's Wikipedia page, 11:58 a.m. Eastern time, January 20, 2009.

Screenshot of George W. Bush's Wikipedia page, 12:01 p.m. Eastern time, January 20, 2009.

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"Such was the fate of the son of Marcus, and so easy was it to destroy a hated tyrant, who, by the artificial powers of government, had oppressed during thirteen years so many millions of subjects, each of whom was equal to his master in personal strength and personal abilities." -Edward Gibbon on the death of Commodus

On a day of such relief to see the callow scion strangled in his bath retire to his Dallas mansion, it's easy to get carried away, but this passage would much exaggerate the credit due so many millions of subjects and with it the grandeur of George W. Bush.

Not my country? Nobody who remembers the dark pleasure of those post-September 11 days -- the voluptuous joy of unsheathing the sword without qualm or restraint, the relief of casting off tiresome pieties and giving rein -- can say that without reservation.

George W. Bush was not our Commodus. He was our Smerdyakov.

"You stood before me last time and understood it all, and you understand it now."
"All I understand is that you are mad."
"Aren't you tired of it? Here we are face to face; what's the use of going on keeping up a farce to each other? Are you still trying to throw it all on me, to my face? You murdered him; you are the real murderer, I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was following your words I did it."
"Did it? Why, did you murder him?" Ivan turned cold.
Something seemed to give way in his brain, and he shuddered all over with a cold shiver. Then Smerdyakov himself looked at him wonderingly; probably the genuineness of Ivan's horror struck him.
"You don't mean to say you really did not know?" he faltered mistrustfully, looking with a forced smile into his eyes. Ivan still gazed at him, and seemed unable to speak.

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All politics is local, after all.

TechPresident toots the horn of Wired For Change -- which provides the Salsa CRM platform for political campaigns and basically anyone that isn't a 501(c)3 -- for its innovative DLCCWeb product.  DLCCWeb enabled Democratic congressional state legislative candidates to set up an entire "website in a box" for $40 a month. (Sure could've saved Charles Rangel some cash.)

Quoth TechPrez:

many have missed one of the more fascinating online programs this cycle: The Democratic Legisative Campaign Committee’s DLCCWeb program.

Developed for the DLCC by Wired for Change the concept is simple: For $40 a month any Demcoratic State legislative candidate can have a website, online contribution system with ActBlue, and the web marketing tools they need to make their web program successful.

Compared to just one cycle ago and the dizzying array options at the time – ranging from too expensive to taking too much time – the DLCCWeb is a much simpler and cheaper option for your state legislative campaigns. With this price tag everyone from low-cost campaigns in New Hampshire to high-cost large campaigns in states like Texas and California found ways to use it to help their campaign.

Which is not only nice, but it's a price point cheap enough that campaigns can keep the doors open easily in between elections.  In fact, DLCC is already landing signups for the next election cycle.

Ultimately, all these accolades are for Salsa, the toolset used by both Wired and its nonprofit cousin DemocracyInAction -- for the flexibility and extensibility of Salsa, which was built precisely for the plasticity to plug into new features, applications and uses.

With the November launch of Salsa Commons and its developer zone, we're already starting to see some fascinating tinkering, like this rebuild of our donation page by Public Citizen.  And if you hit one of our public forum calls this week on feature set buildouts -- like extensions to incorporate a full donor database into Salsa -- you got a sneak peak at some of what's cooking in our part of that kitchen.

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Like most of the blogoverse, I've consented to the unsatisfying and barely compensated practice of selling myself to Google Adsense on my hobby blog, which I should add is pointedly non-partisan. I hardly monitor religiously the stuff Google pitches my paltry readership, but you get the occasional one that makes you scratch your head and flip back to the entry to figure out how it made the match. Other times, there's less mystery than an episode of Columbo. Like when you post about an execution in Iran, and you get ...

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Our friends at Politics and Technology ran a "punditology challenge" asking readers to pick the winners of all the January presidential primaries, Republican and Democratic alike. The winners are here, (gosh, an A-list political blogger wins ... but it wasn't all favorites this weekend). So, here's the bullet point for that wisdom-of-the-crowds slide you need to update with fresh data:

Our collective picks scored 117 points - and were better than 96.2% of the individual punditologists.

Out of 563 entrants, "collective picks" would have tied for 20th. We saw much the same thing (in a smaller sample) for last year's Oscar pool. (Dear readers, should we reprise this?)

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At least the healing, back-to-fundraising process can begin in the bosom of YearlyKos, whose namesake shared these observations on FISA capitulation day:

We are a full-fledged partner in the progressive coalition ... with our allies in the labor movement, our friends in the issue groups, and our party leadership. ... [E]arly hostility – based on substantive differences – is now giving way to new respect and trust.

We in the club, yo! What's systematic, institutional betrayal if not a call for more and better Democrats?

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Someone could have dined well on my dime by wagering me on the proposition that this now-renowned "ObamaGirl" video would be -- well -- renowned. I guess I'm a fogey. When I saw this thing Thursday morning it registered a big "meh." Three days later, the needle hasn't budged. Actually, the citizen media that caught my eye that day came via the UK-based nfp2.0 blog -- a spot of guerrilla marketing. [I know you want the SILF t-shirt] This charismatic piece hit me as an interesting juxtaposition to last summer's viral-marketing Hindenberg, the Agency.com Subway pitch which went viral for its cover-your-eyes awfulness. (All the original's video links seem to be pulled, but the below is the piece plus smartass subtitling.) Despite my mixed reactions, and despite the contrasting purposes at play, there's a kinship between the first two of these videos that's wanting in the third. What is this quicksilver "genuineness" that decodes a piece's meaning and foretells its prospects as citizen media?

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A number of DIA users and friends are among scores of signatories to open letters sent to both the DNC and RNC demanding that debate footage be openly licensed to facilitate remixing, mashups, parody, commentary, and every other manner of citizen intervention free from any possible fear that some intellectual property law could be used to shut down discussion. The letters suggest one of two solutions: place all debate footage in the public domain; or, place it under a Creative Commons license. Here's a pdf version of the letters. That's such a damnably obvious thing to get behind that kos and Michelle Malkin are taking the same tack. And while the danger of an actual lawsuit may be scant -- "suing the anonymous person who made a YouTube skewering you during the New Hampshire primary" is a good working definition of "political suicide" -- one has to appreciate the opportunism of using the situation as a teachable moment on intellectual property for politicos. The parties should do this, of course. But so much the better if it normalizes in some small way the idea that statues surrounding content control and distribution are not fixed on Sinai but open to discussion.

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