With the 111th session of Congress kicking off tomorrow and a mere 15 days until President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office, getting his desired $700 billion (or so) stimulus package signed, sealed, and delivered before inauguration day would take a feat of super-human legislating. What could complicate that goal: a proposal promoted by top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell to put the stimulus plan online for a full week...Is it our turn yet? Pressure is building for Obama to finally name a Chief Technology Officer, the nation's first...The first round of Change.org's Ideas for Change in America contest, to which techPresident is a partner, has wrapped...and a good deal more.

The half dozen contenders for the post of RNC chairman gathered yesterday for an event that was threaded through with what might fairly be called an obsession with technology...When we discussed a report in the New York Times yesterday that Barack Obama would finally (cue whiny voice) be naming a Chief Technology Officer this Wednesday, we commented, "we'll see." Well, looks like we won't...The Obama transition has gone down a somewhat different road than Bill Clinton in revealing its donors -- though, of course, the motivations and expectations are entirely different...and more.

Presidential silver medalist John McCain jumped back into the political fray yesterday with the launch of a "grassroots organization" called Country First...Speaking of the PACs you launch after you don't quite make it to the White House, Democracy for America -- the organization that grew out of Howard Dean's presidential run -- is putting some pressure on his apparent successor as Democratic National Committee Chairman...It's worth reading the L.A. Times' Kate Linthicum's interview with Scott Goodstein, who headed up the text messaging program for the Obama campaign, just to hear what question prompted this answer: "South Carolina. Oprah Winfrey"...and more.

The highest-rated query for President-elect Barack Obama over on Change.gov's Open for Questions feature certainly isn't a softball along the lines of "What are you going to name the First Puppy?" It's whether, as president, Obama will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush Administration on everything from torture to wiretapping...Boston Globe's David Talbot looks back at how Blue State Digital became the Obama campaign's go-to web firm, with insight into the Massachusetts-based technology "boiler room" run by BSD's Jascha Franklin-Hodge...Obama may have bested John McCain when it came to campaign tech, but here's a reminder that the GOP isn't sitting around licking its wounds...and more.

The highest-rated query for President-elect Barack Obama over on Change.gov's Open for Questions feature certainly isn't a softball along the lines of "What are you going to name the First Puppy?" It's whether, as president, Obama will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush Administration on everything from torture to wiretapping...Boston Globe's David Talbot looks back at how Blue State Digital became the Obama campaign's go-to web firm, with insight into the Massachusetts-based technology "boiler room" run by BSD's Jascha Franklin-Hodge...Obama may have bested John McCain when it came to campaign tech, but here's a reminder that the GOP isn't sitting around licking its wounds...and more.

Bob Fertik, a longtime liberal activist, drew more than 23,000 votes on Change.gov for his question on investigating the Bush Administration. And yet, the response from the Obama transition last week? Crickets. So Fertik took his cause to George Stephanopoulos...With this second example, we're about to call a trend on the idea of journalists serving as the tenacious bulldogs who get crowd-sourced questions answered...One thing you'll notice about the just-launched Senate Hub and House Hub on YouTube: no ads...and more.

Joining the growing list of President-elect Barack Obama's experiments in interactivity is the Citizen's Briefing Book...Politico's Ben Smith points us to what looks like a new webisode of "The West Wing," but what turns out to be a new seven-minute video in which key soon-to-be Obama Administration figures make the case for the President-elect's stimulus package...Harvard's Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing how the Treasury Department's handles the Troubled Asset Relief Program, thinks Henry Paulson et al is guilty of delivering "non-answers."How do we know those juicy details? She said so, in a YouTube video posted to a new and improved cops.senate.gov site...and more.

• The LA Times' Peter Wallsten serves up what at first glance looks like some juicy details on what evolution of Barack Obama's campaign organization will look like once he puts his hand on the Bible Tuesday. Dig into it a bit, though, and it starts to read a lot like a super-charged version of the 50 State Strategy that Howard Dean pioneered at the DNC...
• In retrospect, writes Media Channel's Danny Schechter, we all failed to appreciate how much the Obama campaign created its "own media apparatus," one that shifted the balance of power between the candidate and the press...
• The White House Office of Drug Control Policy might be on Twitter, but they're having a tougher time taking to Facebook...
• And much more.

• Washington is going crazy over snappy domain names. First there was Change.gov, and now this...
• Remember that Silicon Alley Insider post a few weeks back that reported President-elect Barack Obama was looking to appoint a first federal CTO who was a Silicon Valley-rooted doctorate-holding scientist? Hmm, not so much...
• Silicon Valley congressman Mike Honda (D) was eager to use the Internet to "follow the exciting trail blazed by our next President." So he challenged his constituents to a Facebook contest...
• And more.

• Washington is going crazy over snappy domain names. First there was Change.gov, and now this...
• Remember that Silicon Alley Insider post a few weeks back that reported President-elect Barack Obama was looking to appoint a first federal CTO who was a Silicon Valley-rooted doctorate-holding scientist? Hmm, not so much...
• Silicon Valley congressman Mike Honda (D) was eager to use the Internet to "follow the exciting trail blazed by our next President." So he challenged his constituents to a Facebook contest...
• And more.