[We're going to post text or excerpts from the proceedings of PdF2007 here as fast as we can get them. (And we're also working to get footage from the mainhall sessions up online too, but that will take til tomorrow.) MyDD blogger Matt Stoller gave a great talk explaining the rise of the netroots, which he abridged slightly because time was tight; we're thrilled to publish the full text below. The editors.]

A few years ago, I had what's called a 'crazy uncle' theory of internet politics. I noticed that the figures who did well online all seemed like a crazy uncle saying things that are true but extremely uncomfortable, that power and authority was built on silly illusions. You know, it's like when you're a kid at Thanksgiving and your uncle starts telling you about how much pot your parents smoked, which you had never really known about. It's uncomfortable but kind of awesome.

Big entities just keeping mucking around with the internet. This time it's AOL, which has proposed charging senders a fraction of a cent per email to reign in costs and increase revenues. This scheme uses a service from Goodmail Systems, which authenticates email through a small per email fee. Creating a two-tiered internet, where groups have to pay-to-send email, has provoked a response from such email dependent groups as Rightmarch, The American Academy of HIV Medicine, The Association of Cancer Online Resources, and Moveon. Other groups joining the nonpartisan coalition include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Working Assets, Common Cause, Craig Newmark (from Craigslist), and a range of others encompassing technology providers, consultants, nonprofits, and political groups.

Here's the gist of what AOL's proposing:

The best investigative journalism is no longer happening solely in the traditional newspaper industry. I bring you exhibit A, the new report from the Committee on Government Reform on the politicization of Social Security internal communications. The Congressman who heads this effort is Henry Waxman, who has worked tirelessly to expose abuses in contracting in Iraq and the prescription drug boondoggle. It's not that papers aren't doing this work, but that a new symbiosis is emerging where third party actors do the research and journalists distribute it in conjunction with their narrative structure of 'he said, she said'. The important driver here is the ease of research and opening of distribution channels (such that Blogpac can now do professional quality research as well. Newspapers are now playing a filter

Rick Heller has an important post about a guy named Ricky Vandal 'taking' the name 'New Democrat' for his blog despite the protestations of a blogger who already used the name 'New Democrat'. Vandal claims that it's too late to change the name of the blog because people have linked to it. This is obviously a transparent excuse, because it turns out he's a right-wing operative with no respect for copyright or honesty. And yet Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, and Wizbang approvingly link to him, juicing his traffic and google ranking.

This is pollution of public discourse, informal fraud perpetrated by the highest members of the online right-wing echo chamber. I'm in a conversation about the nature of our partisan wars, and how they are really centered around control over the public's right to participate politically. The strategy of the right is not to argue, but to pollute discourse so that the public has no choice but to delegate its decision-making role to a small group.

I'm blogging my impressions over at BOP.

Blogs all over are chattering about the DNC race. But they aren't just chattering - they are doing real journalism and telling a story about what's happening. KtinTX on DailyKos and MyDD has a three part series on the Atlanta caucus (one,two, three) with inside dirt from the Texas group. There are local committee members being elected and blogged, and heavily involved local political people blogging and endorsing. And then there are all the emails flying around from DNC members.

I'm tracking it at the Simon for Chair blog at http://blog.simonforchair.org. Texas and California are the blog-heavy states.

Alan Taylor talks about his daughter's experience with TV. She's three years old and has grown up with TIVO - more to the point, things that seem obvious and irksome to us simply engage her curiosity. Like ads. She also expects to be able to watch anything she wants whenever she wants and pause or forward anything at any time, and is mystified when she encounters a TV that doess't let her.

Jay Rosen has an important guest-post from Mark Glaser on the new type of media company emerging out of the 2004 cycle. It's hyperlocal, conversation driven, community-based, and niche. It's wikified, multimedia, and web-based. These are the places where politics will begin to happen, the constant public soapboxes where community leaders develop and are nurtured. My guess is that they will function very much like the DailyKos and MyDD did in 2002 for the Dean campaign - as breeding grounds for campaigns, only on local levels.

Blogad revenue has returned to liberal sites. This just after I posted that blogad inflow had crashed. Great. As I post this, I'm sure that the blogad info is drying up once again, just to make this post inaccurate.

(Seriously, it is interesting to see advertisers returning to the political blogs.)

There are two tiers of blog advertising for liberal blogs - the big boys and everyone else. Atrios, Daily Kos, and Talking Points Memo are still doing ok, although their revenue has tumbled. Everyone else is nearly dry, as marketers try to figure out what kind of political content will still sell.