Today's Bloggers Briefing at the Heritage Foundation featured two great guests: Congressman Pete Olson (R-TX) and John Solomon of the Washington Times.

Rep. Olson spoke first, and addressed the health care bill being considered by Congress. He said that there are three things people are upset about regarding this bill: the tax increase, long-term budget implications, and the public option. People understand that the public option will mean a government bureaucrat interfering in medical matters. And while there is some hope for conservatives regarding the health care bill, Rep. Olson said the GOP will not underestimate Speaker Pelosi – she is committed to passing the bill.

The Congressman also spoke about media bias against conservatives. He said it is a fact that the mainstream media does not treat Republicans fairly, and emphasized the need for conservatives to utilize blogs to get out their message.

Read more about Rep. Olson’s comments at today’s briefing in The Hill.

After Rep. Olson, John Solomon of the Washington Times spoke.

Solomon described the Washington Times as “platform agnostic,” meaning the news agency strives to be on every platform available - video, TV, the Internet, you name it. As of now, the news agency has 52 channels to get its news out to the public, and is constantly working on more (including an iPhone application.)

This strategy seems to be working. The Washington Times web site has seen a 500% growth in its visitors in just 1 year, and is now the 12th largest newspaper in the country, reaching 890 million people in 2009. This growth may also have something to do with the Washington Times' investigative reporting as the newspaper is constantly breaking important stories. On that note, Solomon advised us to check out the front page of the Washington Times tomorrow for a big story they will be running.

Solomon also spoke about a new project – TheConservatives.com – which he described as the "Google of conservative thought" and a “meritocracy of ideas.”

TheConservatives.com has enormous capabilities, including giving grassroots conservatives the ability to engage with major conservative leaders like Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist and Liz Cheney. It can also be used to activate grassroots campaigns, test messaging points, and introduce new ideas and get them out quickly. Solomon said the purpose of TheConservatives.com is to marry leadership with the grassroots, and provide a platform for the grassroots to bubble up to the top, versus the traditional top-down approach.

Importantly, TheConservatives.com monitors in real time, without any polling, what people are talking about. It also monitors what conservative leaders are talking about. Solomon said that former Governor Sarah Palin’s staff use TheConservatives.com to watch what she says on Twitter and Facebook.

Bottom line: be sure to check out TheConservatives.com. You can also follow @WTconservatives on Twitter.

Facebook has a lot of great applications, but by far one of the coolest is Causes. Not only can you use it to raise money for nonprofit organizations, there are a ton of other great features that can help organizations get their message out and engage their supporters – and Causes is constantly coming up with new ways to improve the application and help people make a difference.

Sarah Koch, one of two Nonprofit Coordinators at Causes, stopped by DAG to talk about the best ways to utilize the application. Afterward, she was kind enough to answer a few questions about why organizations should use Causes and the successes she’s seen during her time working there.

Some highlights:

Sarah describes Causes as a community of people that are coming together, rallying around an issue and working together to make a change. There are a number of ways that Causes can help to mobilize the community and get them involved.

As for her favorite success story, Sarah cites The Race to End Cancer cause. It was started by a 17-year-old named Michelle who wanted to do more volunteering at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital but didn’t have the time between work and school. So she started the cause to help the hospital out. It now has more than 5.7 million members and has raised over $62,000 for the Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Personally, Sarah thinks the coolest feature of Causes is the new media board. Now you can post a media item that can spread beyond the cause – you can post it to your profile and send it to your friends via Facebook message. This, Sarah says, is a great tool to get that media item out there in a personal and impactful way.

If you have any questions about Causes and how to use it effectively, you can email partner@causes.com or support@causes.com. And be sure to check out more about Causes and its new features at Causes Exchange.

The Bloggers Briefing at Heritage today focused on two very important and timely issues: health care reform and the prospect of a nuclear Iran.

Stuart Butler – Heritage’s vice president of domestic and economic policy studies – started off his discussion of health care policy by emphasizing that we are in a critical phase in the battle over health care reform, especially because Congress comes back to work next week. He said ObamaCare could very well be collapsing but, as a veteran of the HillaryCare battle, he is wary of what will happen next.

Specifically, Butler warned of what he described as the nightmare scenario – President Obama and the liberals in Congress coming back with a different strategy in which they slowly bring out their desired “reform” by expanding SCHIP, implementing price controls and passing a federal rights bill that says everyone has a right to affordable health care with the help of Republicans.

Importantly, Butler also emphasized the need to talk about what you are for, not just what you are against. He explained that we must articulate a different vision of reform that includes:

Federalism: implementing legislation at the state level, not the federal level, in order for governments to compete

Deregulation: come up with innovative solutions, which will not come about with more centralization

Tax Reform: abolish tax penalties currently associated with health coverage, especially by divorcing coverage from employers

Be sure to check out Stuart Butler’s posts at the National Journal’s health care blog.

The second guest today was Ambassador Dore Gold – president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and formerly Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. He spoke about the serious yet underestimated issue of a nuclear Iran (be sure to check out his book, The Rise of Nuclear Iran).

Ambassador Gold began by expressing his sincere concern about the complacency that exists when it comes to this issue. He warned that this is not just Israel’s problem (although both Ayatollah Khomeini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have called for Israel to be wiped off the map). Iran is projecting power all over the Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen) in its quest for regional hegemony, and is developing missiles that can reach European territory.

But Ambassador Gold also emphasized that Iran can be stopped if action is taken now. His suggestions include:

Placing gas quarantines on Iran (which he described as the most powerful lever the West has short of a military option)

Ratcheting up sanctions by Western countries

Of course, time is of the essence, and Ambassador Gold is skeptical of policy engagement as endless negotiations would lead to an increase in Iran’s supply of uranium. Instead, Ambassador Gold said that the U.S. must lead this effort and be quick, firm and achieve results in a short period of time.

If you weren’t able to make it, you can listen to today’s Bloggers Briefing here.

Earlier today, I had the opportunity to attend The Bloggers Briefing at Heritage for the first time. The guest was former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao - the only cabinet member to serve the full eight years under President George W. Bush. Overall, I was impressed with her knowledge and commitment to the safety of all workers in America.

Secretary Chao highlighted the efforts of the Bush administration to increase transparency of labor unions. Most of the time was spent talking about the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) – what she described as the only department that protects the rights of labor union members.

During her tenure, the OLMS worked to improve the availability of information on UnionReports.gov. Interestingly, Secretary Chao said it took her team years to update the site because of the career bureaucracy in the federal government. But on January 21, 2009 - the day after President Obama was inaugurated - the site had been changed.

On UnionReports.gov, you can search annual financial reports (LM-2s) that are submitted by labor unions. Secretary Chao’s OLMS wanted more transparency included in these reports, like requiring specific names of people or entities who did business with unions so that suspicious transactions (that seem like sweetheart deals) could be investigated.

Secretary Chao also pointed out an interesting statistic: only 12% of the entire American workforce (only 7% of the private workforce) belongs to a labor union. This, she said, is a big reason that the current administration and majority party are working to help the labor union bosses, who have been stalwart allies of liberal Democrats. Besides supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, the administration has also cut the budget of the OLMS while increasing the overall budget of the Department of Labor. Ultimately, this means less oversight of union elections and financial reports, and less money that can be used to update UnionReports.gov and increase transparency of labor unions.

You can read more about Secretary Elaine Chao’s comments at today’s Bloggers Briefing at http://openmarket.org.

Technology alone will not help the GOP; we need to also focus on our principles. So, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich stopped by the GOP tech summit to address the crowd.

Gingrich spoke about three main points:

1. Every generation has to use the technology of its era to be able to communicate. He spoke about how the Founding Fathers used pamphlets like the Federalist Papers, the rise of partisan newspapers, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s use of radio, President John F. Kennedy’s use of television, and President Ronald Reagan who was good at all of it because of his acting experience.

2. What really matters in the long run is what you communicate, not how you communicate. Gingrich argued that the country is still center-right as 84% of Americans supports a one-page flat tax and 89% of Americans support the right to a secret ballot and for workers to not be coerced by labor unions.

3. This is, as Gingrich believes, the first time in history that we have a technology that is two-way that allows us to genuinely contemplate self-government on a grand scale.

Gingrich also stressed that we should not focus on outreach, but rather inclusion. We must listen to everyone before we develop our big ideas instead of coming up with ideas and then trying to sell them to the public.

“Because we actually share the values of the American people unlike our friends on the left,” he said, “we can actually reach out and work with them collaboratively.”

Newt Gingrich also just joined Twitter. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/newtgingrich

Newly elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele addressed the GOP tech summit today to rev up the crowd and tell us his plans for the technological future of the RNC. He welcomed all of us who were physically present at the summit, as well as those watching via UStream.tv and said that all of us are a part of the effort.

Steele said the bottom line is: “If we haven’t done it, let’s do it. If we haven’t thought of it, think about it. If it hasn’t been tried, why not? If it’s gonna be outside the box – and I usually hate that term – then not only keep it outside the box but let’s take it somewhere the box hasn’t even reached yet.”

He also said that the RNC is almost finished putting together an intranet for all of the state parties to connect and so that everyone can learn how to communicate in a technological, global marketplace.

Steele later emphasized that “you,” whether you blog, Twitter, Facebook or just sit in front of the computer, are at the forefront of the effort. We are all a part of the team, he said.

As he lifted up his blackberry, Steele explained that when we get to 2010, he wants all of his campaigns to be within his thumbs distance. That being said, there are two things that will get you “kicked off the team” according to Steele: to say, “we’ve always done it that way,” or “we’ve never done it before.”

Steele ended by saying that we will not just do what the Democrats did in ’08; that’s the floor. So, he said, get busy coming up with ideas.

RNC Chair candidate Ken Blackwell was scheduled to speak at the American Spectator’s Newsmakers Breakfast this morning at the Americans for Tax Reform office. Unfortunately, the weather prevented his plane from leaving Cincinnati so instead his campaign manager John Yob and campaign chairman Roger Villere, the GOP state chair of Louisiana, spoke on his behalf.

Al Regnery, the publisher of the American Spectator, opened the meeting by disclosing that he has endorsed Blackwell, but that this meeting was not meant to pump up support for the candidate as they have hosted other RNC chair candidates, including Saul Anuzis, previously. To see an interview with Saul after his appearance at a Newsmakers Breakfast in December responding to anonymous attacks on his use of technology for self-promotion, click here.

Most of the breakfast meeting consisted of Villere and Yob taking questions from the meeting attendees. Throughout the entire meeting, Blackwell’s representatives never talked about using the Internet and Web 2.0 strategies to engage people or the candidate's plans for reaching out to younger voters. The two representatives instead focused on the importance of building grassroots organizations.

American Spectator managing editor J.P. Freire asked whether or not Blackwell would get involved in policy disputes within the party, and Yob answered by saying that Blackwell's first priority is to have an inspired based and therefore he would take a strong stand if there is a policy item that is really important to the party’s base. Later, when Regnery asked how Blackwell would differ from the other candidates as chairman, Yob talked up the contender's resume and experience. He then argued that establishment versus change defines this RNC chair election, and Blackwell is dedicated to changing the RNC and getting it back to being successful. But again, there was no discussion of Blackwell's plans to to use technology to accomplish this. 

The vote will be held on Friday, January 30, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. There is no dropout provision, meaning that if someone receives 0 votes on the first ballot, they do not have to dropout of the race. A simple majority will decide the winner, which is a minimum of 85 votes.