This weekend, Civicspace on Demand (CSoD) launched. For $50 bucks a month you get a "complete, integrated solution for your community website, online donations, blast email, and supporter database needs." If you thought Drupal and CiviCRM were too complicated, think again. CSoD has spent the past two years, rethinking the layout and workflow. Instead of harvesting the open-source community, they have spent a considerable about of time providing feedback and improvements to the community.

In her piece yesterday in the NY Times, Stephanie Strom reports on the increasingly willingness of national foundations, like Carnegie and Hewlett, to admit failures in their grantmaking. Hard to call it a trend with so few examples, but lets call it a trendlette.

Caroline Giuliani likes Barack Obama; Fred Thompson goes 2.0; Huffington Post exposes the money chase; vote-trading gets legalized; bloggers debate diversity issues; Mitt Romney defends his religion on YouTube; and Elizabeth Edwards explains that "We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman."

What do William Gibson, George Orwell, Karl Rove, Chris Shays, Wikipedia and the rise of YouTube have to do with each other? Browsing today's news offerings, I find a connection.

More news about the anti-Thompson site PhonyFred.org and its connection to the Romney campaign; the Huffington Post, Yahoo, and Slate team up to produce a "Mashup" presidential forum, though it might not allow for mashups after all; TechRepublican introduces a new policy series; Unity08 releases a study that suggests that Americans are fed up with the two-party system; Barack Obama is on LinkedIn; Fred Thompson needs to rename his FredCast section (any ideas?); and Hillary Clinton needs some widgets.

A new study indicates that text messaging can increase youth voter turnout; the Huffington Post/Yahoo/Slate mashup debate is rolling, and it turns out we can use Jumpcut to edit the footage after all, but we're somewhat disappointed with its format and execution; CBC radio produces a great piece featuring an interview with techPresident's Micah Sifry; and will Ron Paul be elected President of Web 2.0?

It's time to set the record straight on the history of online political debates, in the wake of press reports and claims that this week's Yahoo!/HuffingtonPost/Slate debate was the first.

Jose Antonio Vargas reviews Matt Bai's The Argument; according to CBS Evening News, the majority of Americans still get their political news from the newspaper; the Huffington Post/Slate/Yahoo "Mashup" debate was viewed by 1.1 million people, but how many actually participated?; a new website attempts to bring together all of the candidates' stands on issues but is missing important features; and more on William Beutler's critique of Googlebombing.

Barack Obama is the winner of the Huffington Post/Yahoo/Slate mashup debate; John Edwards will visit Columbus, KY, the winning town in his Eventful demands competition; Off The Bus introduces Roadkill, a guide to the goofy and wacky in the campaigns; Newt Gingrich posts on Mike Huckabee's blog, world explodes; Bill Richardson releases a new video featuring Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers, with a cool new site to boot; and Mike Huckabee hosts "Vertical Day," a 24-hour Q&A with supporters.

Google the words “DailyKos” and you’ll get about 2.6 million results. Google the words “Democracy Alliance” and you’ll get about 44,000 hits, and from them you won’t find out much. That's why I'm writing to praise journalist Matt Bai's new book, The Argument.