The Web on the Candidates

• The progressive blogosphere has been waiting with baited breath for news about the fate of John Edwards' bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen after they were criticized for writing anti-Catholic slurs before working for Edwards. Salon reported that they were fired yesterday, but TAPPED and others have heard otherwise. And Glenn Greenwald has been building an unbelievably long list of links to other blogs covering this.
• The MSM has been covering the story with mixed value; for example Time Magazine does a decent job of putting it into larger context, but oddly claims that the story has an antecedent in "Democrat" John Thune's hiring of bloggers in his run against Senator Tom Daschle in "2005." Hello, rewrite? (Read our seminal story on the Thune bloggers episode here.
• Meanwhile, Matt Stoller of MyDD writes about a precipitous drop in Edwards' netroots support, from 35 points in January to 26 points according to two DailyKos poll. According to Stoller, "this is probably due to the Iran flap, where he spoke belligerently to a group of a neoconservatives, walking back his rhetoric a few days later."
• The blogosphere is buzzing about the undecided Rudy Giuliani's presidential prospects. Captain's Quarters has fun with the latest Quinnipiac poll showing Giuliani coming out on top in Florida; he's more popular than Hillary Clinton.
• Although most GOP candidates have a miniscule presence online, Mitt Romney has been garnering some honest online grassroots support. A Technorati user named parachutegirl gives a rundown of his appeal to conservative voters and links to a bunch of pro-Romney sites and blogs.

The Candidates on the Web

• Rudy, we know you're "undecided," but can't you build out your exploratory site a bit more? Right now it's little more than a glorified email address harvester, complete with a giant red CONTRIBUTE command button front and center.
• It was five, then it was three... the home page of Joe Biden's web site now features six images of his face! Not a good way to convince the American public that this election is about them...
• Meanwhile, Tom Vilsack's site gives supporters a chance to respond to Vilsack's winter DNC meeting speech on the front page (just one image of Vilsack!).

Hillary's blog countdown

• Seventeen days since Hillary Clinton said "I'm in" but still no campaign blog...