...continued spying on Americans

Two bills now before the Senate -- S. 2453 and S. 2455-- would
ratify the National Security Agency's continued spying on Americans, without a full investigation by lawmakers. The "Terrorism Surveillance Act" (S. 2455) and the "National Security Act" (S. 2353) would allow surveillance of Americans' domestic and international electronic communication without any evidence they are conspiring with terrorist agents. The government could monitor based on innocent contact with an agent of a foreign power -- allowing the monitoring of journalists, lawyers, scholars, business people, etc.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is proposing an amendment to an appropriations bill to cut funding for NSA surveillance. Call Sen. Patty Murray and Sen. Maria Cantwell, and urge them to support the Specter amendment, stop illegal spying, and demand the facts!

YouTube is a star of the Web

ONLINE MEDIA
Five months after debut, YouTube is a star of the Web

The closest Terry Turner comes to Washington politics is his job as a bureaucrat at the Pentagon -- until, that is, he fires up the camcorder pointed at a makeshift TV studio in his Arlington apartment.

It's there that Turner, 45, brings his dreams of being a political commentator -- the next Bill Maher, perhaps -- one step closer to reality. Once a week, Turner uploads homemade video of his political rants to YouTube.com, hoping people will watch.

Turner is among the growing number of amateur videographers trying to tap into the mushrooming phenomenon called YouTube, a Web site that
encourages users to "Broadcast Yourself" by posting short video clips to the Internet universe.

Though it debuted only five months ago, YouTube.com attracts 6 million visitors each day to watch two-minute video clips that amount to the Internet's version of "America's Funniest Home Videos" meets "American
Idol." Every day, users stock the site with 35,000 homemade videos of lip-syncing, dancing, silly animation and commentaries on any topic, all of which are commented on and rated by viewers.

Source: Sara Kehaulani Goo, The Washington Post