The Koufax Awards, named for the lefty pitcher, is letting us vote for our favorite lefty blogs. Lots of categories. [Thanks to W. David Stephenson, nominated in the Best Single Issue Blog category, for the link.]

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Peter Daou’s Daou Report, which aggregates blogs left and right, is now under Salon’s umbrella, which is good all around. [Technorati tag: daou]

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Doris “Granny D” Haddock, 95, is in a Lebanon, New Hampshire hospital today. She is in surgery at this moment to remove a tumor in her throat. The surgery is expected to cost her her normal voice, though she said before surgery that she will find ways to continue to communicate her political message of reform and democracy. “Sometimes you speak loudest just by standing there,” she said, remembering her several arrests in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda for standing up for the Bill of Rights and democratic reforms.

For friends wishing to send cards, her address for the next five days will be: Doris Haddock, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, 1 Medical Center Drive, Lebanon NH 03756.

Granny D ran for Senate this year. She lost, but only in the technical sense.

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Personal Democracy Forum is sponsoring an IRC chat during the State of the Union. Since PDF is non-partisan, it’s actually sponsoring three: Democrats, Republicans, Free for All. If you want to participate, go here any time after 8:30 EST.

I’m not sure I have the fortitude to sit through the address – I’m a weak, weak person – but if I do, it will only be because of the IRC.

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From the State of the State address by the governor of Maine, John Baldacci:

“…Tonight I am announcing ‘Connect Maine,’ a broad and aggressive telecommunications strategy for this state. Connect Maine will give nearly every Mainer the opportunity to plug into the global economy from their community. It will ensure that 90 percent of Maine communities have broadband access by 2010; 100 percent of Maine communities have quality wireless service by 2008; and Maine’s education system has the technology infrastructure that leads the nation.”

Yeah, the details count, but still: Cool! (Thanks to Jock for the link. And thanks to Dewayne Hendricks for working on the Maine initiative.) [Technorati tags: broadband maine]

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The OpenNet Initiative has found that in the process of blocking access to 31 pro-North Korea sites, the South Korean government has blocked 3,167 unrelated domains. Apparently this happened because the NK sites were on servers outside of NK that SK blocked. (The OpenNet Initiative is sponsored by the Berkman Center, U of Toronto and U of Cambridge.) [Technorati tag: korea]

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From an article by Wes Simonds at Wifi Planet:

The terms of the bill essentially give Verizon and other local carriers the right to veto all citywide hotspot plans similar to Philadelphia’s in the state of Pennsylvania beginning Jan. 1, 2006.

As Jock Gill suggests, we could use some model legislation to preempt this type of anti-user, corporate welfare in other states. [Thanks to Dewayne Hendricks for the link.]

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Hooray for the elections in Iraq! The accounts are moving. For example, from the Boston Globe:

Wamidh Imad al-Zubaidi, an engineer, almost decided not to vote after death threats against would-be voters circulated in his mixed Sunni and Shi’ite neighborhood, Zayouna. Then, he said, he remembered his brother, who was executed for opposing Saddam Hussein’s regime.

”I feel a power inside myself, and there is a voice telling me, this should not happen to my son or to any Iraqi. I have to prevent this dictatorship from returning to Iraq,” he said, adding that he braved the polls with his pregnant wife. ”We put it in God’s hands.”

But declarations the elections have been are “resounding success” are obviously premature. Did Iraq just vote or did it just establish the fault lines of a civil war?

So, I find myself torn. I am thrilled Saddam is gone and people are voting. But it’s still not how I’d choose to spend the money and lives this war we were lied into cost.

Michael Prothero has a nice piece at Salon reporting from the scene.

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Zack Exley, ex of MoveOn and ex Internet guy for the ex Kerry campaign, kicks off his new blog with a Rosen-length piece — and it’s just part 1 of 4 — on what the Democratic Party ought to do to get itself back together.

Zack is not as much of a soft-headed, touchy-feely Web guy as I am. And that’s a good thing. We need people like Zack if we’re going to win elections, although, IMO, we have to do the touchy-feely stuff if we’re going to transform democracy. But let’s make damn sure we win some freaking elections already.

Zack’s ten-point proposal for “building a permanent field program with the New Grassroots” suggests a way to quickly build up a field organization that does the hard work of traditional politics. He says it combines the benefits of democracy and hierarchy. Conclusion:

Using the online assets that Democrats built in 2004, we should be able to jump light years ahead of the Republican field organization. If we do, it will not be thanks to Internet Magic, but rather thanks to mixing new online tools and resources with good old-fashioned grassroots organizing, focusing on results.

I don’t know enough about how politics actually works to be able to evaluate his plan, but I have a lot of respect for Zack. And, yes, his proposal is all about reinventing how the Democrats can do the work of traditional politics — building a clean database of vote information, organizing phone banks, raising money, etc. — and not about building communities and enabling lateral conversation. But, this is not an either/or. And if what Zack proposes can help us change our government’s current direction, I’m all in favor of it.

Besides, he has another 3 parts coming.

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My Congressperson, Barney Frank, is blogging live from the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. For example, here’s a post on the conference blog in which you can feel him trying to process the gap in values and even cognition between him and those he thought he agreed with. Barney’s not exactly a hep cat when it comes to technology (and he’s not exactly great on tech issues), so it’s especially good to see him bloggin’ away. [Technorati tag: davos]

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