How often do you think MoveOn's Adam Green and conservative firebrand Grover ("drown it in the bathtub") Norquist are of one mind? Trust me, not that often. But Norquist has just jumped on the bi-partisan Open Debate Coalition train led by Green, Change Congress's Larry Lessig, and others; No matter whether the thought of Sarah Palin as the next President of the United States puts a smile on your face or a chill up your spine, you have to admire excellent Flash work where you find it; The SEIU HQ down in DC has been busy putting together something of a web all-star team; and much more.

Time is running short, my friends. With the final scheduled presidential match-up set to kick off on Wednesday at 9pm ET at Long Island's Hofstra University, Larry Lessig is refocusing the Open Debate Coalition's call for McCain and Obama to take proactive steps to open up the debate to let a bit more sunlight in. While there's fewer than 60 hours left, there's still time left for the campaign's to flex their rapid-response muscles and begin the process of opening the debates.

The enormous number was breathtaking: six million people sent in questions through the Internet for Tom Brokaw to pose to John McCain and Barack Obama during Tuesday night's presidential town hall in Nashville. Breathtaking -- and entirely wrong; Building on what seems to be growing momentum behind using Twitter as an election protection tool, an online organizer has detailed possible standardized tags; Using donor data from ten large tech companies as a representative sample, ZDNet's Robin Harris finds that tech employees support Obama to McCain at a rate of nine to one; and much, much more.

I've twice now registered a note of skepticism that, as has been reported in some high-profile places, the questions submitted by the public through the Internet for last night's town hall presidential debate in Nashville numbered an extraordinary six million. MyDebates, the joint project between MySpace and the Commission on Presidential Debates, offered the chance to whisper in moderator Tom Brokaw's ear by submitting a question online for his consideration. And sure, there does seem to be a growing public hunger for finding some way to engage in these debates more fully. But 6,000,000 questions still seems like an implausibly high level of participation. (Not to mention that that's a fairly absurd stack of questions for Brokaw and his team to go through in the 72 hours or so between when submissions ended and debate day). It's looking like that skepticism may have been warranted.

Was last night's presidential "town hall" in Nashville hosted by Tom Brokaw was a bust?; NPR social media bloke Andy Carvin's launched an intriguing last-minute "distributed dial testing" Twitter experiment yesterday. To participate, you simply included a one to ten rating of the candidates in your tweet, set off by asterisks; expanding upon the idea of using Twitter as an election protection tool, Culture Kitchen's Liza Sabater lays out some provocative ideas for taking advantage of the decentralized, network world and the humble cell phone to mix things up; and a good deal more.

We're now two debates in to the general election, neither of which, I think it's fair to say, made a stellar case for professional moderation. Gwen Ifill seemed somehow restrained last night, pushing for consensus where none really existed. (I'm thinking of this exchange on marriage equality). And Jim Lehrer seemed to barely be a presence at the first debate. The whole thing kinda makes you wish for snowmen, doesn't it? The YouTube debate certainly had its ups and downs. But it did push the candidates outside their talking point comfort zones -- something that hasn't happened in the general election.

We're not sure if there's going to be a presidential debate tomorrow night or not, but either way it can't hurt to highlight some of the ways viewers can participate in advance or during the actual event. Here's a fun list.

Myspace and the Commission on President Debates announce a partnership, Paris Hilton responds to McCain campaign's video, McCain continues the "celebrity" attacks, and Republican Twitter movement is hardly a movement at all

This morning, the Commission on Presidential Debates and MySpace are announcing "MyDebates.org,," a "landmark partnership" that they claim "will do for the debates what TV did in 1960 for the Nixon Kennedy election." Their joint press release says this new site "will offer a host of interactive tools for viewers to virally engage in the political process." The release notes that "marks the first time that the CPD has paired with an Internet property to include online functionality into the event series and traditional debate format." Unfortunately, the CPD's landmark is little more than a shack. At best.

Based on a few recent experiences regarding the YouTube community, and specifically how the tool could help increase citizen participation in our upcoming general election debates, this post seeks to encourage the Commission on Presidential Debates -- the Old Guards if you will -- to truly embrace the Internet in at least one of its three scheduled debates.

Let's dig in...