Announcing RightofTwitter.ca

Today, I launched RightofTwitter.ca, a communitizing website for the right-of-centre twitter community in Canada. In one stop you can view (and follow) Canada’s leading right-of-centre voices in one place and track the live discussion of right-wing Canadian politics at once by tracking the #roft hashtag. There’s also a handy how-to guide for new Twitter users.

Still not on twitter and wondering what it is? Think of it in a few ways. Imagine a Facebook status update about what you’re doing or thinking, make it more public and searchable. Also, think of it as micro-blogging. Twitter users are limited to 140 characters per post (the size of a SMS text message), so Twitter essentially lowers the threshold to online discussion and self-publishing because it doesn’t require that you keep an audience by writing something extensive and on a regular basis and it’s more transactional. Twitter “posts” are more like statements and a good way to pass on links and dissemenate information.

The value of it to the conservative community in Canada is that each and everyone of us on Twitter are following/being followed by members of other communities and interest groups. When you post on a Canadian conservative topic, that can be disseminated and retweeted through other communities. Blogging Tories communitized Canada’s conservative blogging community and RightofTwitter.ca aims to do the same with Canada’s conservative tweeps (twitter lingo for twitter users).

If your name isn’t on the list and you’re on Twitter, send me a tweet @stephen_taylor and if you’re not on Twitter, sign up here.

Preston Manning townhall tomorrow

Programming note: I will be joined here on the blog with Preston Manning tomorrow (Feb 13) at 1pm EST (11am MST) to talk about how conservatives should approach the global economic crisis.

Join us here tomorrow to put your questions to Mr. Manning and participate in the discussion.  The townhall will be live video with questions submitted via an embedded chat window on this blog.

I hope you can join us then.  Please spread the word.

I can’t hear you all over the foofaraw of Hope and Change!

From the Wall Street Journal this morning,

About half-way through President Obama’s press conference Monday night, he had an unscripted question of his own. “All, Chuck Todd,” the President said, referring to NBC’s White House correspondent. “Where’s Chuck?” He had the same strange question about Fox News’s Major Garrett: “Where’s Major?”

The problem wasn’t the lighting in the East Room. The President was running down a list of reporters preselected to ask questions. The White House had decided in advance who would be allowed to question the President and who was left out.

Presidents are free to conduct press conferences however they like, but the decision to preselect questioners is an odd one, especially for a White House famously pledged to openness. We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors. Mr. Obama can more than handle his own, so our guess is that this is an attempt to discipline reporters who aren’t White House favorites.

Few accounts of Monday night’s event even mentioned the curious fact that the White House had picked its speakers in advance. We hope that omission wasn’t out of fear of being left off the list the next time.

One wonders why President Bush, or as a matter of fact why Prime Minister Stephen Harper were unable to get away with “prescreening” reporters, making them sign up for a list, and running their own press conferences.

Our intrepid Washington reporters, some of which recently held tenure in our own Parliamentary Press Gallery holding the Prime Minister to a higher standard, will surely get to the bottom of this kid-glove treatment of President Obama.