New 527 Ad Which Will Debut Tomorrow
Yes McCain-Feingold is supposed to stop third party ads in the last 60 days of an election, BUT, the way around it is to become a 527 (so named from the part of the tax code which you have to file when you organize). So Vets for Freedom, a 527, will come out on Wednesday with the commercial above.

Googe Election Video Search

Google Elections Video Search allows you and your students to directly query YouTube political videos for their spoken content. Using speech-to-text technology, videos from political channels are automatically transcribed and indexed. Simply enter a search term to find relevant videos and jump immediately to where your term was mentioned.

Slate.com

Slate has a number of articles, but for those of you who want cartoons, it also collects them together here. This week, it has a bunch of McCain ones, which are here.

Great News Site
The News Room is a great site that has local and national news clips. For example, the above clip from WRC4 is about the recent Gilmore-Warner debate. I went to the site, typed in "Mark Warner + Senate" and found it as well as clips from his speech at the Dem National Convention.

Latest McCain/Obama Ads
Click here for the first post debate ad from McCain (using lines from it) and here for the first one from Obama.

Word and Message Testing
Frank Lutz has long been one of the leading Republican pollsters. In this video he looks at what is called word and message testing and uses the first presidential debate to make his point.

Watch CBS Videos Online
Debate Prep 101 Give it 10 seconds to load.

Obama vs. McCain, Round One
Click on the video above to see the beginning of the debate. Click here to get see a series of videos broken down by topic. If you just want highlights, go here.

Political Fact Check Site

Here's a link to the to FactCheck.org, which is run by Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Free Response Question Strategy

Here's the strategy I place on every FRQ I give my students. I require them to write using these strategies. I believe it helps focus the student's attention and will hopefully help them earn as high of a score as possible. Some of these ideas are my own and some are from colleagues who have served as readers and table leaders.

Free Response Strategy

* Mark-up the question.
* Count up how many points you are trying to earn. (Look for number references, count the verbs)
* Write as many sentences as there are points.
* Write simple, declarative sentences.
* Answer the question asked. Nothing else.
* Look for time references. Patterns, passage of time.
* Do not argue with the premise of the prompt.
* Add an extra response just in case.
* Answer the question in the order asked.
* Skip a line between parts, but do not label.

Frank Franz
Madison HS

Yes it's Civics, but this site is made by a FCPS teacher and has a lot of great Power Points and even if you don't use the entire slide, you might want to incorporate some of the pictures.

vs. Gilmore
Lest we forget, VA has a senate race this year. The top ad is Warner's most recent and below it is Gilmore's. Click here to see Gilmore's money and here for Warner's and here for polling.

Historical Ads

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2008

This site has indexed all of the major party presidential campaign ads since 1952. The students get a kick out of "I like Ike" while the images of the 1964 Goldwater "Daisy" ad are still chilling today. They have been keeping up on this years ads as well.

Talking Points Memo
Be warned up front that this is a liberal site (please leave a message if you know an equivalent one on the conservative side) that has a lot of video (from the talk shows today (see above video), the latest political ads, polls, articles and more. Also all of the video can be embedded on your school sites or linked so you can show your students. Finally despite the date below, this embedded video is from Sunday September 28th.

Targeted Races in the House and Totals Raised by Congressional Campaigns
I can't find a comparable site at the NRCC, but click here or on the picture and you can find out about the Dem's targted races. If anyone knows of a comparable Republican one, please tell me with a comment. Also if you want to see what the Congressional or Senate candidates have raised this year, go here.