Given his aversion to the bubble of the presidency, willingness to admit when he screws up, and experience as a professor of constitutional law, it seems fair to conclude that while Obama may disagree with you on a particular issue, he's at least conversant with the counterarguments. Indeed, it's said that a good lawyer—and Obama graduated from Harvard Law magna cum laude—can argue both sides of a case.

As such, I think the President would be open to the following question, which I submitted this morning for his upcoming online town hall meeting on health care:

What do you think—without caricature—is the strongest, most serious objection to your health care proposal, and how would you reply?

YouTube says the winning questions will be among the most popular ones, so if you're interested in which conservative criticism is most cogent, why not watch and share the above 16-second video? Let's see if we can replicate what Patrick Ruffini did in 2007 with YouTube's "10 Questions" contest.

Yesterday morning, I received an e-mail from NARAL Pro-Choice America. It began:

I was stunned when I saw the recent exchange between Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly [link added]. The one where she said, "I don’t really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester."

This is the kind of rhetoric we ask you to stand against today.

To honor the legacy of Dr. George Tiller, and as a symbol of your commitment to furthering his pro-choice values, NARAL Pro-Choice America recently launched the “Trust Women” wristband campaign. Donate today and get your “Trust Women” wristbands.

Since you're reading this blog, this sort of missive likely is familiar: An advocacy group uses a current cause celebre to gin up donations. (Incidentally, Coulter inspired a similar campaign two years ago when she called then-presidential candidate, John Edwards, a "faggot.") Such ad hoc initiatives tend to be especially effective (even if their ability to counteract the given evil is questionable).

Yet as critical as they are, fund-raising e-mails today seem all-too common. By the same token, the opportunity to engage your members as activists rather than donors is all-too uncommon. Indeed, the ability to see its supporters as more than ATMs was one of several tactics that distinguished the Obama e-campaign from its peers. As Tim Dickinson observed in Rolling Stone,

Before long, the campaign had transformed hundreds of thousands of online donors into street-level activists. "Obama didn't just take their money," says Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000. "He gave them seats at the table and allowed them to become players."

As such, it seems that NARAL's e-mail would have more been more powerful as an action alert. Instead of hitting people up for money in this still-dismal economy, the organization could have asked us to contact Fox News and/or our local affiliates, and request that Coulter's contract be cancelled or that O'Reilly issue a clarification.

The resulting buzz might even have spurred some donations.

Earlier this month, Kathryn Stetz of Qorvis Communications e-mailed TechCrunch, the world's second most popular blog, asking to "order[] a reprint on an article" that appeared there.

The response, a couple weeks later, came from the blog's founder and co-editor, Michael Arrington: "We're a blog. We don't do prints, let alone reprints."

Oops. Or as former Qorvis staffer Jesse Thomas comments, "Selling digital PR and not knowing that TechCrunch is a blog is definitely an embarrassment."

Yet before we scapegoat Qorvis, it's instructive to consider the context in which this snafu might have taken place.

First, I'd bet that Kathryn isn't an account executive. People who exclude a title from their e-mail signature tend to be interns. Indeed, the task of requesting a reprint is one usually delegated to interns.

Second, the request to reprint is probably prudent. After all, reprints take place offline, and in the absence of a hyperlink, which is the conventional form of credit online, it's worth asking if the blogger wishes to be cited in a particular way, or if he wants it noted that the material is copyrighted. (Indeed, one benefit of such a seemingly trivial request is that it establishes goodwill and opens the door for future pitching.)

Still, the fact remains that Qorvis screwed up: Bloggers should be treated with the same respect accorded to their old-media counterparts.

Of course, if such blunders can happen at a powerhouse firm like Qorivs, can't they happen at your firm, too? In fact, it's likely they already have.

I often say that half my job is persuading people to embrace new media, to get buy in. Unfortunately, the reply is just as often that the given idea is too risky, too unknown.

How to overcome this admittedly reasonable obstacle? Show that the benefits outweigh the costs, as Mindy Finn, who ran Mitt Romney's e-campaign for president, explains in an interview with TechPresident:

Q: The Create Your Own Ad contest was a bit risky, given that you were putting material out that anyone could use, and indeed some opponents of Gov. Romney did make satirical ads. Were there concerns inside the campaign at trying this? Was it a success?

A: There were concerns, and they were allayed. The reality is that a savvy editor could take our content and mash it up at any point anyway. I believe it was a success. It continued the story line that the Romney campaign was extremely innovative, sophisticated and committed to welcoming the best content—whether from pros, rookies, or those in between. As a politech professional, I always look for ways to not only tap into online activists and their talents, but also to introduce online activism to new audiences. Many of those who participated in Create Your Own Ad had never produced a video before, and they continued to improve their work based on the comments received from others in the contest. It was beautiful to watch. (Cheesy, I know.)

I also feel compelled to quote Mindy's answer to the question, "If you had your way, what strategies or technologies would you have focused on more?"

A: That's not a fruitful question. I didn't have my way. We were a team. The most important aspect of implementing an effective strategy is hardly ever a lack of good ideas and sound tactics, it's integrating ... that strategy and those tactics into the overall effort. You will never be able to execute your plan in a vacuum, and collaboration, even if it's frustrating and demands compromise, is critical.

In November, Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared, "It is just plain embarrassing that al Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the Internet than America [is]."

In that spirit, the DOD has produced the following video to showcase what it is doing to fight back online:

See also "Supporting the Troops via MySpace, Podcasting and Texting."

For some reason, MySpace automatically alphabetizes the tags for videos uploaded to MySpaceTV. Thus,

Paris Hilton Britney Spears Jennifer Love Hewitt

becomes

Britney Hewitt Hilton Jennifer Love Paris Spears

This is obviously problematic, since it breaks apart phrases.

After perusing some of the top videos on MySpaceTV, two solutions became apparent: (1) Deleting spaces among paired words ("JenniferLoveHewitt"), or (2) using underscores among paired words ("Jennifer_Love_Hewitt"). I opted for the underscores.

This isn't perfect—ideally, tags would permit spaces—but it's an easy and explainable workaround, the need for which is ever-present on the Web.

Anybody use a different workaround?

I'm sure there are other members—though not many—who use hyperlinks in their press releases, but Congressman Randy Forbes (R-VA) is the first I know about.

For example, this release from December includes links to the congressman's dear colleague letter and the legislation in question—and not as additional reading at the end, but integrated into the text.

(Hat tip, in a roundabout way, to Congress 2.0.)

Congratulations to Citizens Against Government Waste, which recently launched a blog, Swineline. Unfortunately, Swineline suffers from the same irritant that afflicts the blogs of the Cato Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Project on Government Oversight: It resides on a domain independent of the host organization (e.g., www.swineline.org instead of www.cagw.org/blog).

To me, this is myopic and counterproductive. Why build and drive people to an entirely new site when, by integrating the blog into your already developed site, you can centralize your traffic?

With two sites comes twice the administrative burden, whereas with one site, readers are never far from the organization’s press releases, action alerts, e-newsletters, op-eds, white papers and the all-important donate button.

Who agrees? The Sunlight Foundation, the National Taxpayers Union, the Capital Research Center, FreedomWorks, Judicial Watch, and American Solutions. (The Club for Growth doesn't count, since its Web site is its blog, and while the Acton Institute's blog shares the same domain as its site, the blog doesn't maintain the same template, which cuts off easy access to the press releases, action alerts, etc.)

Related: When will AEI and IJ enter the blogosphere?

Cross-posted at No Straw Men.

1. PR Week reports on a new study, from the Bulldog Reporter and TEKgroup International, which shows that reporters across all media are increasingly dependent on blogs, RSS feeds, online newsrooms, and other Internet sources of information. About 73% said they visit an online newsroom or corporate Web site to conduct research at least once per week and 69% said they read one or more blogs regularly.

2. Need to start an online petition? Try GoPetition.

3. According to Nielsen NetRatings NetView, 20% of nytimes.com readers are also on Facebook. Accordingly, Facebook has given the Times its own Facebook URL: www.facebook.com/nytimes.

4. Todd Zeigler points to another use of Google AdWords: As a "cheap and real-time focus group."

FishbowlDC has the memo from the Washington Post/washingtonpost.com. Excerpts:

Here's the full PDF.