The point of a political protest, I always thought, was to increase awareness of an issue and make your opinions heard. So this Second Life anti-war protest makes absolutely no sense to me. For one thing, the only people who could witness this protest are the 25,000 maximum users who might have been logged into the virtual reality. For another, the only real opinion stated is that "war is bad" -- hardly a convincing argument for either side.

This video is essentially a music video of avatars with signs, inflammatory slogans pixel-rendered onto costumes. Featuring the stiffest posturing seen since the 2004 Kerry campaign, it's not hard to understand why this video has inspired so much mockery. Why can't supernerds use their powers for good? Not that I know what good is. I just know that this isn't it.

From the non-threatening slogan of "Let the Conversation Begin" to toning down the hairspray just a tad, it seems that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is currently focused on softening the candidate's image. You know, making her seem like one of "the common folk." Just a regular dame.

So perhaps it was an accident, leaving Hillary's mike on during the Star-Spangled Banner at this Iowa rally. But as Tony Kushner so eloquently put it in Angels in America, "The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it." It's nice to know that Hillary is just like the rest of us, vocal cords scrambling for that final note, knowing we'll never hit it.

Maybe next time, though, she can double-check that the mike is off? Fantastic. America can only take so much.

Like most political issues, it's impossible to find one fair and balanced perspective on last night's State of the Union Address. (Sorry, Fox News, but you are definitely not it.) So what to do? Do we link to the multiple clips of Bush's speech now online? Or do we instead feature the left-wing responses that have flooded YouTube in equal amounts?

Either way, we're going to piss somebody off. So instead of choosing between red and blue, we'll choose between red and green, and link to this video response from the Center for American Progress regarding the president's energy policies and climate change. Because presidents come and presidents go, but Mother Earth is here to stay.

We hope.

The junior senator from Illinois isn't exactly diving headfirst into his now-inevitable 2008 presidential campaign, but by announcing today that he'll be forming an "exploratory committee" (a definitive move towards running), he certainly seems to have waded in up to his knees.

This personal, direct appeal to the Internet generation is the sort of eloquent speech-making that helped skyrocket the man into the national spotlight after his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. And we'd be liars if we said that we didn't tear up a little over it. Whether Obama can truly bring about a new era in politics remains to be seen. But damn right we'll be watching for it.