The Huffington Post's OffTheBus project hits a milestone; Color of Change, MoveOn and hip hop superstar Nas join forces to push back against Fox News' coverage of race; we have a look at who is a self-proclaimed card-carrying liberal: we've got your beach reading list ready to go; and a great deal more.

As Barack Obama responds to protests of his FISA stance, we consider how an online action's success might be judged; NPR focuses on Hispanic voters and how candidates are working to get their messages delivered to them; a new quiz tests your political smarts; we've got new video up from PdF '08; and much, much more.

We're early in the rise of of semi-pro journalism but we're well into the decline and of an old way of life within the tribe of professional journalists. I call them a tribe because they share a culture and a sense of destiny, and because they think they own the press-- that is theirs somehow because they dominate the practice.

The First Amendment says to all Americans: you have a right to publish what you know, what you think. That right used to be abstractly held. Now it is concretely held because the power to publish has been distrubuted. Projects that cause people to exercise their right to a free press strengthen the press, whether or not these projects strengthen the professional journalist's "hold" on the press.

A panel this afternoon on "The Rise of Semi-pro Journalism" featured NYU's Jay Rosen, conservative commentator Amy Holmes, and Mayhill Fowler. Fowler, you might know, is the OffTheBus contributor who has made news recently for two big scoops: capturing Barack Obama at an "off the record" fundraiser making comments about "bitter" Americans and Bill Clinton on a South Dakota ropeline tearing into Vanity Fair's Todd Purdham. So it was interesting to hear Fowler call for some agreement among bloggers about when reporters themselves can't be reported on.

The Web on the Candidates

The Media Bloggers Association has announced that PBS will be giving bloggers press credentials for next week's Democratic Presidential Forum hosted by Tavis Smiley at Howard University. Although the forum is not a debate, it will feature all eight Democratic candidates, who will answer questions from a panel of journalists. Viewers at home are being encouraged to participate in online forums but it's still unclear exactly how they'll be incorporated into the debate.

In his announcement of the new citizen journalism project OffTheBus, Jay Rosen wrote that "realistically," due to the Democratic backgrounds and physical location of Rosen, Arianna Huffington, Zack Exley, and Amanda Michel, "this is going to be seen as a project originating on the 'blue' side of red-blue politics." TechPresident blogger Patrick Ruffini, writing on his personal blog, finds the project similar to others that have a nonpartisan goal and asks, "are conservatives just perennially late to the party here? Or are the social circles in which the Rosens and Huffingtons run dictating personnel decisions about cool projects and thus perceptions of who is up and down online?" Rosen responded by saying that he never "imported or purported anything about 'bipartisanship'" but the goal is to make the platform open to all. It seems clear that the creators of the project need to reach out to Republican voters and influentials as much as possible in order to ensure balance with the project.