The Web on the Candidates

• TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington — a powerful blogger who’s best known for writing reviews that make or break internet start-ups — has been interviewing presidential candidates, focusing on various tech-related policies. He first interviewed Mitt Romney a couple of weeks ago, posting a podcast on his site, and yesterday he posted an interview with John McCain. Arrington is doing a great service for the Silicon Valley crowd and the general public by asking about things like relations with China, H1B visas, Internet taxes, and more. Next up: a written interview with John Edwards.

• Barack Obama is doing a sweep through Googleland tomorrow (rumors have it that he’ll unveil a detailed tech policy). As has become tradition, YouTube politics editor Steve Grove will get a few minutes to ask Obama some user-submitted questions. Have a question? Post it as a text comment or video reply to Steve’s video here.

• Earmark targeting is the new black. The practice of singling out earmarks has become popular, in part, due to the good work of the Sunlight Foundation, and now, reports the Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown, Senate Republicans are getting into the act (techPresident’s Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej are advisors to Sunlight). Senators Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint are turning to the web — specifically, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Eventful and Flickr — to help expose earmarks and educate the public. “We got a tag team going: people on the outside, people running blogs, producers in talk radio trying to find some of these earmarks,” DeMint told Brown.

The Candidates on the Web

• Immigration crusader Tom Tancredo, whose single-issue campaign has failed to catch much fire, has posted a blunt new ad and video that, he hopes, will thrust him into the spotlight. In what is probably the most audacious ad of the campaign, Tancredo suggests that lax immigration laws directly lead to terrorism. Accompanying this none-too-subtle message are images of a hooded “terrorist” placing a backpack in a mall and the Boom! of a homemade bomb. What do you think — over the top or on message?

In Case You Missed It…

With less than two days to go, 10Questions is continuing to enjoy a healthy level participation and interest, including a question concerning a Nigerian dwarf goat.

A mere week after launching Students for Hillary and touting its support among young people, top advisers to Hillary Clinton were busy in the spin room Saturday night disparaging them, claiming that Obama’s supporters were young and unlikely to caucus. Obama supporter Peter Erickson noticed a demeaning (to young people online) message: Clinton supporters “look like caucus-goers,” Obama supporters “look like Facebook.”