Roll Call is reporting that the United States Senate has updated the "rules" governing a Senators use of the Internet.

Senators can now legally post YouTube videos on their Web sites, thanks to a long-awaited update to the chamber’s rules.

Until now, any Senator who embedded a YouTube video or linked to a Flickr album was in violation of outdated rules that required them to keep within the senate.gov domain. Some posted such links anyway, and few were reprimanded.

But last week, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee voted to allow Senators to use third-party sites. All the normal franking rules apply: No product endorsement, no partisan material and no unrelated personal information is allowed.

Howard Gantman, spokesman for Rules Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), called the change “a major step into the future.”

“The explosion of new internet technologies can provide Senate offices with important ways to better communicate with the public and increase the transparency of government operations,” he wrote in an e-mail. “When the regulations were last revised in 2005, many of these technologies were in their infancy and prohibitions were left in place on their use.”

Updating the rules to give citizens better access to their representatives is an issue I've been fighting for as part of the bipartisan Open House Project for well over a year now. (Read my op-ed in The Hill on the issue from June 2007.)

Updating the Senate Rules is a strong step in the right direction for giving citizens better access to their representatives. Doing so will encourage more direct, authentic communication and help inspire greater transparency in the process.

We can only hope that the Democratic majority preventing such reasonable updates in the US House of Representatives will follow suit.

(Cross-posted on the NRSC Blog.)

The online world of politics is moving at warp speed and we are proud of our ability to keep up with the pace of innovation and, in some cases, even stay ahead of the curve. In that vein, today I would like to alert you to the redesign of the National Republican Senatorial Committee's Web site and the launch of our Two Seats Program.

Our new site will be more user friendly and video driven, allowing our candidates' messages of smaller government, fiscal responsibility and lower taxes to come through more clearly. The new homepage will also provide visitors with easier navigation to our blog, press releases and the micro-sites that are dedicated to individual Senate races.

I am also excited to alert you to our innovative new Two Seats Program. Here, visitors will be able to donate online to a candidate, or slate of candidates, of their choice. This section of our new site will provide potential donors with information on candidates who share their views on government and allow site visitors to target their donations to those specific candidates.

There is so much at stake in November and it is important that people have a clear understanding of the stakes. On the left, Democrats offer Americans bigger government, higher taxes and a weaker national defense. On the right, Republicans offer Americans smaller government, lower taxes and a strong national defense. The choice is clear, and it is imperative the citizens of this country have the ability to support the candidates who share their views and values. We, as Republicans, will continue to work hard to fight for the American people and are proud to bring them an enhanced ability to support our shared cause.

Please come and check out the new site, www.nrsc.org, and our Two Seats Program located at twoseats.nrsc.org.

Two seats are all it takes to capture the majority and with your help we will achieve that goal.

I was able to jump on a blogger's conference call this evening with Senator John Ensign who chairs the NRSC. Sen. Ensign gave us a run-down of the key races that the NRSC is focusing on this cycle. I've paraphrased most of the Senator's remarks - I'm a blogger after all.

He prefaced his remarks by saying that we're heading into a tough election cycle. And although it looks pretty bad on its surface, if you dig into the details we're not doing too poorly.

Four Top Republican Incumbents the Dems. are Targeting

Gordon Smith - Oregon

He matches the state very well philosophically and I'm confident he'll be reelected.

Norm Coleman - Minnesota

Neither one of his opponents are catching fire... the national Democrats are pretty nervous about Al Franken.

Senator Coleman has really strong re-elect numbers.

Susan Collins - Maine

Moveon.org has been beating up on Susan Collins for six months. After all that effort she still has a 70% approval rating.

She works tirelessly up there. She goes home every weekend and she never misses a vote.

John Sununu - New Hampshire

He will have the toughest race; it'll be neck and neck all the way to election day. There will be a huge amount of money put into the race.
Jeanne Shaheen had a very poor record as governor. She has a very poor record to run on, John has an excellent record.

Open Seats

Virginia

It'll be the hardest state of any to hold. It's an expensive state, so we have to come out with our absolute best candidate.

Nebraska

I'm very confident we'll hold that seat. We have two great candidates, and even if Bob Kerrey gets in, I think we'll hold that seat very easily.

Colorado

In the past couple of races in Colorado the Dems. had moderates running who were pro-business and pro-gun. This time they have a true liberal running while we have a true reformer. In this anti-Washington environment I think our candidate is the perfect person to win this race.

Democrat Incumbents the GOP are Targeting

Mary Landrieu - Louisiana

The fact is the demographics have changed in the state, due to the tragedy of Katrina. She's definitely our number one target.

Tim Johnson - South Dakota
We're happy and thankful for his recovery. But it's a U.S. senate race in a red state, so we're in play there.

Questions

Ed Morrissey - Can you comment on Pete Domenici retiring?

I can't speculate until we've had an official announcement.

Weekly Standard - What candidates might you expect in the Virginia race?

Is it going to be a convention or is going to be primary? It'd be great if we just had one candidate, but that's not the way it's going to be in that state.

Rob Bluey - Asked about SCHIP. How big a deal is the veto going to be, and is it going to hurt Republicans this election?

I think our position is defensible and I think it's a winning position.

We want to extend the program to cover poor children, we don't want to extend it to people who earning $72,000 in New Jersey or $82,000 in New York.

Conservatives with Attitude - What about New Jersey?

It's a state that obviously is a very blue state, but there's a couple of dynamics there.

1) Frank Lautenberg will be over 90 years of age...

2) I"m very impressed with Anne Evans Estabrook. If she can put her own money in the race and raise some more, she could put together a very impressive race.

John Hawkins - The Democrats are beating us at raising money, what are you going to do to change that?

1) I have dramatically cut expenses here at the Committee. Three times this year, I've sat down with our management to look at ways to make this place more efficient.

2) There's been a shift in the last few weeks, especially in New York and Chicago, and it's because the Dems. true colors are starting to come out. We are starting to see it tip a little bit.

One of the things that I think will help is once we have a defined nominee for both sides.

Overall, I was impressed with Senator Ensign's insights on the various Senate races, and I hope his slight-optimism about Republican fundraising is well placed.

ED. NOTE: TechRepublican is pleased to welcome U.S. Senator John Ensign to the discussion. He is the first U.S. Senator to jump in.

[Cross posted at the NRSC Blog.]

Welcome to our new NRSC blog. We've been working on this for the past couple of months, and now we're ready for our full launch.

Our blog is the latest in an aggressive outreach program we've embarked on this cycle. We're hoping to engage voters like you in the process this year and build for the future.

Not only will our blog serve as an information hub for the latest updates on Senate races across the country from the MSM and blogosphere, but it will also contain new information on incumbent and challenger candidates.

On a side note, so far, our online program has launched a few micro sites -- DontMarkWarner.com; CostofDemocrats.com; TheShaheenRecord.com and FranklyFranken.com -- please take a few moments to look around those as well. More will be coming in the next weeks and months, so keep an eye out.

We'll be updating the blog daily, so please visit often. Let us know what you think and thanks for your support.

The New York Times is hammering John McCain for making a phone call to donors in the U.S. Capitol using a non-government issued cell phone stating:

Senate ethics rules expressly forbid lawmakers to engage in campaign activities inside Senate facilities.

But if McCain were merely following the lead of Democratic Senator Harry Reid, who is known in the research department of the NRSC as "Dirty Harry," I'd say that McCain's "violation" wasn't too bad.

After all, at least McCain didn't have the boldness to put his violations on YouTube as GiveEmHellHarry may have done with at least two videos taped in November 2006.

The first video (which I've added a little TechRepublican sugar and spice to in case Harry Reid pulls it down) is a message from Harry Reid to DailyKos readers in what is clearly his office in the U.S. Capitol Building. Topics covered include the excellent work liberals are doing to raise money for Democratic candidates and the importance of voting:

In the second video, Harry Reid is clearly using what appears to be his government-issued phone in his U.S. Capitol office to urge people to get out and vote:

Did Harry Reid violate Senate ethics rules? Hopefully the NYT will investigate and report back to us.

I wanted to start by introducing myself to those of you I have not yet met. I am the ePress Secretary for the NRSC, which as most of you know has placed a much greater emphasis on reaching out to and integrating the Internet into our full campaign strategy.

I am planning on using this space to keep everyone updated and informed on our activities, including videos and new sites.

For starters, please check out our YouTube page: www.youtube.com/thenrsc which includes all of the videos we have produced to date.

Additionally, we recently launched a new site highlighting and quantifying the cost to each American (broken down by state) of a Democrat-led Congress: Cost of Democrats.

Please share this site with others, and if interested please blog roll on other sites, as it is incredibly important that people are well aware of the consequences they face when pulling the Democrat lever on Election Day.

Our efforts are already beginning to show results as Sen. Landrieu has been forced to address allegations of funneling federal dollars away from Louisiana and to NYC. In this instance Landrieu requested an earmark for a foundation in NYC that is supposed to set up an outpost in Louisiana. But the Dead Pelican blog exposed this and has forced Landrieu to release the earmark request and address these allegations on local TV. To read more check out Dead Pelican (currently in the middle column).

The stakes have never been higher as we work to take back Congress from the liberal left and keep the Presidency.

I look forward to working with all of you.

So, as most everybody knows, the immigration bill reared it's head in the Senate yet again this week. Personally, I think this a great legislative debate, as you have President Bush and Ted Kennedy on the same side of an issue. That doesn't happen very often, or does it...

Anyways, I found this interesting piece on YouTube, and thought I'd share. It's simple, almost boring, yet has a powerful message. So far, the video has over 9,400 views, which isn't bad considering it was posted yesterday.

I'm particularly interested in the interplay between policy and elections.

So, here are a few questions, I asked myself and thought i would pose to our readers.

Can an internet video focused on a specific policy issue, negatively influence donations/support to a candidate/campaign committee?

If so, is this a tactic our candidates should employ?

Can the strategy work in reverse?

What do you think...

Gary Officer is a project director with Political Media, Inc. a political advertising firm in Washington, D.C.

Governor Freudenthal picked state Sen. John Barasso to fill Wyoming's vacant Senate seat.

Get the story here.

So I was scanning the Hotline and found these two interesting tidbits:

First, it looks like Rep. Tom Allen (D-ME) is just a little pissed that Sen. Lieberman is helping his opponent Sen. Collins raise money for her re-election. So to counter the Joementum, he's holding an all day virtual fundraiser. Not a bad idea, I'm sure our candidates will do the same thing when Clinton/Reid/Kennedy swing through their states in the future.

Also, our good friends at Daily Kos put up a poll, asking which GOPer they'd most like to see go down in flames in 2008. The winners were... Sen. Minority Leader McConnell, Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Norm Coleman. It's nice to know that the left is using the Internet in such a productive manner.

We lost the Senate in 2006 because of the Internet, so to ignore it this cycle would be political malpractice. With that in mind, the NRSC has written a 39 page Web manual for Senate campaigns with tips on engaging bloggers, avoiding "macaca" moments and even how to ask for money online.