Young Republicans, Blue About the Prospects Ahead: Gen-Nexters Are Feeling Left Out of the Party, Washington Post.

"I think the Republican Party is staring down a very long, dark, quiet night," All says.

"It's always darkest before the dawn," says Mindy Finn, 27, who ran Romney's site.

"It's a challenging time right now, and I think there's a lot of people searching for a new identity, new leaders," says Robert Bluey, 28, a blogger who is editor in chief of the Heritage Foundation's Web site and director of its Center for Media and Public Policy. "Sometimes it will take some cleansing before it gets better."

Republicans haven't always been so disconnected. A quarter-century ago, Reagan charmed young voters and won 59 percent of their vote in 1984. In 1992, on the heels of the Reagan Revolution, voters under 30 split their allegiance about evenly between the two major parties. But every presidential cycle since then, Democrats have gained ground. This year, according to the Post-ABC poll, 44 percent of those under 30 call themselves Democrats, and only 18 percent identify as Republicans.

GOP 'Caving' on Trademark Lawsuit Threats, Wired.

Hundreds of various GOP-related pieces of merchandise are for sale on CafePress -- some favorable and some not. The GOP did not discriminate against favorable or unfavorable paraphernalia.

On Thursday, Threat Level published one of a few letters (.pdf) the committee sent to CafePress before the flap was resolved.

"Please cease and desist from allowing vendors to utilize the federally registered trademarks of the RNC or we will be forced to consider a legal remedy," Sean Cairncross, the party's chief counsel, wrote CafePress.

Alex Conant, a GOP spokesman, said "We asked them to stop selling with our trademarked logo on them. They agreed."

The agreement, (.pdf) for example, would not require a license to sell a shirt with a design portraying a GOP-trademarked elephant trailed by two smaller elephants and the words, "I'm raising my children right." Before the deal, the committee maintained such a depiction was a trademark violation.

Twitter Fight: Netroots Nation vs. Right Online, Blog P.I.

Both conferences designated hashtags for attendees to use when tweeting their experiences and expoundances. For the Twitter illiterate, a hashtag is a short code word following a pound sign — #hashtag, for example — included in the 140-character message for the purposes of associating that particular tweet with a subject others are using the same hashtag to write about. For the conferences just concluded, the hashtags were #nn08 and #rton08.

Like we always do about this time, here’s a chart comparing their use over the past weekend.