New technologies that may impact '08; one GOP consultant's Amazon wishlist; a relationship between online video and fundraising?; a peek at Election 2024; McCain's catatonic blog; the non-existent link between experience and presidential greatness; YouTube expands YouChoose; MoveOn gears up for '08; Mindy Finn on her Romney role; and a new networked investigative resource.

Imagine this scenario: One day, retail giant Wal-Mart decides that it’s going to open up a section of all of its stores to products devised by outside suppliers, as long as they meet some internal company standards for inclusion. They call this new service, “Wal-Mart Platform.” In advance of the launch of this new marketing opportunity, Wal-Mart quietly invites a bunch of companies as well as individual entrepreneurs to get in before the start, so that on launch day they have an impressive array of prominent participants. A section of Wal-Mart Platform is for causes, but they only invite one presidential campaign in early.

If this really happened, would it be ethical? would the Federal Election Commission deem it legal? Would campaigns from both ends of the political spectrum complain?

Although this is a fictional scenario, the giant social networking site Facebook engaged in something like it in the last couple of weeks, raising serious questions about how a private, but massively used, platform should behave in the brave new world of online politics.

It's Friday afternoon, and time to ask the burning questions that don't get asked at any other time of the week...

Why is it that one out of a hundred people who go to Amazon to check out Barack Obama's bestselling book The Audacity of Hope ultimately choose instead to buy The Secret by Rhonda Byrne and another one percent choose You: On a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management by Mehmet C. Oz? Is this just a quirk of being at the top of the best-seller list, or is there a connection between hope, gaining unearned wealth, and a thinner waistline?