It was a small blurb in an unobtrusive sidebar in a 2006 issue of PC World. It advertised a citizen journalism site, where "anyone can write their own column". I loved technology, I loved writing, and I loved sharing my knowledge. So I signed up for a Newsvine.com account.

I was 13.

Newsvine

Newsvine was my first real experience with writing for an audience larger than my homeschool writing co-op. Like any 13 year old, I made some mistakes. I overused commas and exclamation points. Many of the comments on my technology writing went way over my head. But I persevered. I learned more about computers than I ever would have as a passive reader. Just as importantly, I learned how to write by copying excellent writers around me.

I also started branching out past "online apps". Newsvine was never really focused on technology; its strength has always been news. As a 13 year old, I had basically no idea why I believed what I believed. Going into the virtual world of Newsvine changed all of that. After a few years, I could defend my positions on abortion, Iraq, or taxes. I was sometimes wrong, but at least dogmatism no longer defined my political views. The comment threads also strengthened my logic and my rhetoric. In high school, I competed in both policy and Lincoln-Douglas value debate, placing at the national level in both. I doubt that my skills would have been anywhere near what they are now had I not engaged in more informal debate with my fellow 'viners.

It was really the community that means the most to me, looking back on my time at Newsvine. Before the MSNBC.com acquisition, the community was much smaller and much more closely-knit. With the exception of a few, almost everyone was cordial and respectful. They would disagree with you, but they would do so politely. I still read Kyle Baxter's technology column, Elliot Vos's shared RSS items, and Duane Lester's blog. Half of my LinkedIn connections are ex-Newsvine colleagues.

And of course, I would be remiss to leave out the wonderful Newsvine staff. Despite all the grief everyone gave the moderators, the staff was excellent. They really cared about the user experience. Calvin and the moderators always were polite, attentive, and willing to work to resolve conflict. They also did a great job providing ways to keep the community fresh. I still remember the Last Viners Standing 2 contest (I still have and use the iPod Touch) and the invitation from Calvin to cover the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Other columns

Newsvine acted as an effective springboard into other journalism ventures. One day, while reading Free Software Magazine, I noticed that there was a link on the sidebar saying "Write for us!" Had I not been a Newsvine columnist, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But with my "experience", even if it was from an non-peer reviewed, non-edited column, had given me confidence in myself as a writer. I submitted the article, got it published, and later became a regular columnist.

A few months after starting at Free Software Magazine, I noticed a Digg posting advertising "issue 0" of Full Circle Magazine, a free online magazine covering Ubuntu. After noticing they needed staff, I signed up as a columnist. To this day, I still write the back page column, reviewing the "Top 5" apps in various categories. Again, I doubt I would have even thought of applying for the position had I not had the experience Newsvine brought me.

Freelancing

My columns springboarded me to new heights. After learning that James Mowery, a fellow Newsviner, had just started blogging at Mashable, I decided to try to apply for a position as a freelance journalist at my favorite blog. Mashable accepted me, after looking over my credentials. I also wrote a few freelance articles for Linux.com (owned, at the time, by Sourceforge Inc.), where I learned how to sign a contract, request payment, file W9 tax forms, and work for a publicly-owned company. Finally, I got an article published in Linux Journal, an actual print magazine. All this happened before my sophomore year of high school was over. And none of this would have happened without Newsvine.

Princeton

All the top-tier schools I shot for wanted to see a "hook" in my application, especially in my essays. I did debate, but so did just about every other Ivy applicant. I did choir, but I didn't even bother trying for All-State. I played club ultimate frisbee, but no varsity or even town sports (my town didn't let homeschooled students play varsity, and didn't have rec for high school). I didn't do very much community service. When I sat down to start writing essays, it looked like they would be either about homeschooling or summer camp counseling. But then, I remembered something.  I did online journalism.

I played up journalism throughout my entire application. I talked about it in my main Common App essay. I mentioned it in every interview I could. I redid my website to focus on my journalism, just in case a college admissions officer happened to see it.

On March 30, 2011, after disappointing results from several other schools, I received my acceptance letter to Princeton University's class of 2015. Besides God (to whom I attribute all my successes), I don't think there was one single factor that got me into Princeton. But, out of all the things on my resume, I'm fairly certain that my writing stood out the most.

On September 3, I'll step through the gates of Old Nassau and become a Princeton freshman. I have no idea what I'm going to major in, or what I'll do after college. But I do know one thing. I really did "get smarter here" at Newsvine. I can't wait to continue getting smarter there.

Sweet fennel.

Economists are the real "Party of No." They keep saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch — and politicians keep on getting elected by promising free lunches.

(via Mark J. Perry)

Top physicists from several major American universities appeared before a Congressional committee Monday to request $50 billion for a science thing that would further U.S. advancement science-wise and broaden human knowing.

[D]oes the U.S. actually trade with Japan and England?

In other words, is it members of the U.S. Congress trading with their counterparts in the Japanese Diet or the English Parliament?

That's nonsense. Trade occurs between individuals in one country, through intermediaries, with individuals in another country.

(via Mark J. Perry)

The rights that Americans wisely cherish as being essential for a free society require only the refraining from action. Your right to speak freely requires me simply not to stop you from speaking; it does not require me to supply your megaphone.

Really interesting read from the Foundation for Economic Education's The Freeman. Old, but still highly relevant.

By my count, there are 24 people who are beneficiaries of nontrivial presidential buzz: Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, John Thune, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence, Rick Santorum, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, David Petraeus, Ron Paul, Jeb Bush, John Bolton, Bob McDonnell, Jim DeMint, Chris Christie, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson, Judd Gregg, Marco Rubio, and Rick Perry.

With a heavy heart, I take it upon myself to winnow the field down for you.

According to a new report, tax payers spent $11.5 billion in 2010 to enhance zoos with poetry, honor the Greatful Dead, and subsidize the Department of Energy’s “inefficient” energy use. Here, some numbers (read the full list of ridiculous expenditures):

$175 million
Amount spent by the Department of Veterans Affairs to maintain unused buildings, including an octagonal, pink monkey house

$615,000
Cost of helping the University of California at Santa Cruz digitize its Grateful Dead memorabilia

$2.5 million
Amount spent by the U.S. Census Bureau on a critically derided, 30-second 2010 Super Bowl ad called “Snapshot of America”

And just a reminder:

$1.3 trillion
The size of the federal budget deficit in 2010

$13.7 trillion
The size of the national debt

Gameloft's already responded. What's interesting is that a lot of their games (like NFL 2011) directly compete with a lot of EA games (like Madden 11).

In short, EA has kicked off a price war, and there's a time limit on this one. Apple is freezing the charts on December 23, which means that any games in the top 200 at that time will remain there over the all-important Christmas holiday, the point at which we've seen the biggest jumps in App Store sales (due to all the new hardware out there under the tree).

The WikiLeaks founder — no stranger to the leaking of documents — cries foul as humiliating details of his alleged sexual assaults are leaked to the British media

At an all-hands meeting for the Yahoo product team following a round of layoffs yesterday that significantly impacted that group, EVP of Americas Ross Levinsohn and Chief Product Officer Blake Irving announced plans to “sunset” eight products and consolidate others.

Products to be shut down include MyBlogLog, Yahoo Picks, AltaVista, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz and Delicious. Some of those came from acquisitions and others were internally generated.

(via Alexia Tsotsis)

A single licence for Avast security software has been used by 774,651 people after it went viral on a file-sharing site, according to the company.

*cough*http://www.thatssaulfolks.com/*cough*

We don't doubt he will continue to be an asset to the party and to the conservative cause in any number of ways, but he has turned out to be ill suited to the RNC job.

Occasionally, the justices slip their personal views into their judicial opinions

To paraphrase Orin Kerr's take, understatement of the day month year century.

Dahlia Lithwick and Sonja West in Slate Magazine (via Orin Kerr)

One of Facebook's biggest markets has always been photos. Given that one of its main competitors have already been doing this for quite some time, this definitely makes a lot of sense.

Facebook Photos, one of the social network's most popular features, is getting a big and potentially controversial upgrade with a new feature that automatically suggests who users should tag in photos based on facial recognition technology.

The new feature, Tag Suggestions, will begin rolling out to U.S. users next week, according to Facebook Vice President of Product Chris Cox. He told us that the product utilizes technology that was built in-house, as well as some technology that came from partners. Cox did not disclose the partners Facebook (Facebook) worked with for Tag Suggestions, although we have our suspicions.

Earlier this week, the president signed into law the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which sets nutritional standards for food served in schools and will provide $4.5 billion over the next decade for healthier student lunches. When talking up the bill at a Washington, D.C., elementary school, Michelle Obama raised eyebrows by stressing that childhood obesity is not just a public health issue but a "national security threat," since one in four young Americans is too overweight to serve in the military. (Watch her comments below.) Are chubby kids really putting the nation in danger?

From the other side, Dr. Michael Siegel disagrees.

Surgeon General Regina Benjamin released a detailed report last week analyzing the biology behind the deadly effects of a single cigarette. "Inhaling even the smallest amount of tobacco smoke can also damage your DNA, which can lead to cancer," says Benjamin. When you take a puff, more than 7,000 chemicals rapidly spread through your body and cause cellular damage in nearly every organ, the report says.

Since 1930, party control of the House has flipped seven times. And each time, Senate control has also switched.

Be sure to check out the newest sites in the RealClear network: RealClearReligion and RealClearScience. Both sites will offer readers the best analysis and commentary from a wide array of sources on the most important topics facing the worlds of religion and science.

Corroborating widespread reports during the series' taping in October, NBC on Monday finally announced that deposed Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is among the desperate-for-attention or just-plain-desperate competitors on developer Donald Trump's game show, "The Celebrity Apprentice."

Democratic Sens. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota won't seek re-election this fall, party officials say, bringing to four the number of open Senate seats Democrats must defend to protect their majority.

In an unusual press release announcing the resignation of his legislative staff, former aides to party-switching Rep. Parker Griffith, who is now a Republican, wrote that he had "abandoned the legacy of conservative leadership" provided by, among others, Alabama's segregationist Civil Rights-era Senate delegation.

Today I rise in defense of President Obama's love of golf. Michelle Cottle of The New Republic has written an ignorant, superficial and odious little piece this morning, slamming the President for his "dangerous obsession" with the game.

Cottle obviously doesn't think much of the game of golf, so she spends what little intellectual firepower she can muster arguing why Obama should give the game up.

Cottle's only legitimate criticism is that golf can be a dangerous game for presidents from a public perception standpoint, especially when duty calls. As she points out, there's nothing quite as visually jarring as an image of a president fiddling about on the links while something, somewhere goes up in flames.

But that doesn't mean Obama should be forced to quit the game. It just means he has to be smarter and more acutely aware of how a particular situation might look politically while he's out on the course.

E-mail-theft-gate? I agree. But could this possibly be the same Boxer who once sponsored the The Military Whistleblower Protection Act.

The same Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer who held hearings over a Environmental Protection Agency whistleblower who claimed the Bush administration had an unwillingness to address greenhouse-gas emissions.

The same Boxer who believes in whisteblowing on defense contractors and for nurses?

Many of those seem like reasonable protections. How about protecting the people who exposed potential scientific fraud funded by government?

Andrew Revkin, the New York Times's global-warming reporter, has several e-mails in the purloined batch of CRU material and seems to be embarrassed, if not implicated, by a couple of them. His reports in the paper, so far, have been strictly damage control. Under any other circumstances, a more objective reporter would be assigned to cover the story. But no, the Times still has Revkin as its point man, blogging on the paper's dot.earth page.

In December of 2008, MSNBC talked about the GOP's "new star": first-term Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who was emerging as the "folksy, wry" stand-out of the auto bailout talks.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday she would not run for president again, and brushed off suggestions that she is being marginalized in the Obama White House.

Clinton, who lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama, said "No" three different times when asked by NBC's Ann Curry "Will you ever run for president again? Yes or No?"

In the war on the czars, Glenn Beck and the GOP are picking up reinforcements from an unlikely source: the Democratic Party.

A well-known anti-abortion activist was shot multiple times and killed Friday morning in front of a Michigan high school and another man was shot and killed just miles away in what police are investigating as related incidents.

Our fifth monthly national survey matching up Barack Obama against some possible 2012 opponents comes to the same two primary conclusions as the other four:

1) Obama leads all comers
2) Mike Huckabee, at least at this early stage, is the strongest GOP candidate

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, a doctor from Oklahoma, offered an amendment to the current healthcare bill being developed in the Senate that would require all members of Congress use the public option if passed. "Let's demonstrate leadership—and confidence in the system—by requiring that every member of Congress go into it," Coburn said. Surprisingly, the Senate Health Committee approved the amendment 12-11.

But don't hold your breath. As John Fund points out today, this amendment is almost certainly going to get pulled out of the final bill.

Minnesota's Supreme Court has dismissed former Sen. Norm Coleman's challenge to the state's November election results and declared Democratic challenger Al Franken the winner.

In the '80s, it was the politics of dancing. In the '90s, the politics of caring. Today, in bailout nation, we have the politics of driving.

The Volvo-driving liberal and the redneck in a Chevy pickup are long-held stereotypes. But a map of car ownership - produced by R.L. Polk & Co. - overlaid on the electoral map reveals the surprising extent to which how we vote corresponds with what we drive.

It's a laugh riot, isn't it? Actually, they might be laughing more at Gibbs's feeble way of ducking the question than The One's looming broken promise, but in Gibbs's defense, what's he supposed to say? Obama pounded McCain for wanting to pay for health care by taxing benefits, rode into D.C. promising Change, and now he's going to eat a crap sandwich by reversing himself because it turns out personal charisma doesn't work on hard economic numbers. So Axelrod and company have to go out and face the firing squad and "explain" via stuttering half-answers why Barry O lied about this last year. It's a political microcosm of Obama's economic M.O.: They borrowed political capital by pledging "no new taxes" to win the election and now down the road the bill's finally come due.

The contest may not be as heated as the battle over Iran policy, but it does provoke some politically-oriented trash talk.

"We are confident about the game tonight," said Republican National Committee Press Secretary Gail Gitcho. "Especially since we hear the DNC team is like the stimulus package — slow, ineffective and falls way short of expectations."

"Given how quickly their numbers are dwindling, we're surprised the RNC was able to find nine Republicans to field a team," said Hari Sevugan, press secretary for the Democratic National Committee.

When a Senate Republican left his party in 2001, elevating the Democrats to majority status, one member of the GOP was especially vocal about his displeasure: Arlen Specter.

Seventy-two percent (72%) of U.S. voters say the United States should take more military action to prevent further piracy against American and other ships off Africa's east coast.

It is high time Americans heard an argument that might turn a vague national uneasiness into a vivid awareness of something going very wrong. The argument is that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) is unconstitutional.

By enacting it, Congress did not in any meaningful sense make a law. Rather, it made executive branch officials into legislators. Congress said to the executive branch, in effect: "Here is $700 billion. You say you will use some of it to buy up banks' 'troubled assets.' But if you prefer to do anything else with the money -- even, say, subsidize automobile companies -- well, whatever."

FreedomWorks, a Washington-based libertarian advocacy organization, argues that EESA violates "the nondelegation doctrine." Although the text does not spell it out, the Constitution's logic and structure -- particularly the separation of powers -- imply limits on the size and kind of discretion that Congress may confer on the executive branch.

The Vesting Clause of Article I says, "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in" Congress. All. Therefore, none shall be vested elsewhere.

... A court should hear the argument that Congress cannot so divest itself of powers vested in it.

When Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified about the AIG bailout at a House hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was among those questioning them. She pressed them about what authority the Constitution granted for actions taken by the Treasury Department and the Fed in the past year. Both cited authority granted by Congress. Here's the video of their exchange.

The lines are forming at the stimulus trough, and the definition of 'shovel-ready' has proven to be amazingly broad and sometimes outright silly. The State of Ohio, for example, has received requests for everything from a pro wrestling team to an origami paper-folding company, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

Among requests (and please keep in mind these are requests, not grants, so blame the requestor) made to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland's office for stimulus cash include:

Karl Rove on Obama's rhetoric

Unlike the U.S., real GDP began falling in the second quarter of 2008 in Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. By no coincidence, that was when the price of oil rose as high as $145 a barrel. Soaring oil prices raise the cost of production and distribution for many industries, and reduce real household incomes and therefore consumption. Nine of the ten postwar U.S. recessions were preceded by a major spike in the price of oil.

All sorts of big government solutions are being proposed to combat the country's economic troubles, but Americans are clear on one thing: 75% say the federal government should not take over the U.S. banking system.

Only nine percent (9%) think nationalization of America's banks is a good idea, and 16% are undecided in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

If you put a tax cut into the hands of a business or family, there's no guarantee that they're going to invest that or invest it in America.

They're free to go invest anywhere that they want if they choose to invest.

Returning from services, a group of Christians were intercepted by 600 Hindu extremists; some were beaten. "Are we not Indians too?" says Rev. Caesar Henry.

A number of Catholics from different parishes who were celebrating the priestly ordination of the first priest from the island of Majuli, in the Indian state of Assam, were harassed, threatened, and in some cases beaten, after participating in a Mass celebrated by Bishop Joseph Aind of Dibrugarh.

According to the L'Osservatore Romano, upon returning to their homes, the hundreds of faithful who came to the ordination "were intercepted by a group of (Hindu) extremists. The members of the Catholic community of Mariani, the largest group present at the ceremony, were blocked by a mob of 600 fanatics along the road that leads to the wharf from which they were to leave the island."

Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1822 – January 16, 1901) was the first African American to serve in the United States Senate. Since he preceded any African American in the House, he was the first African American in the U.S. Congress as well. He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during Reconstruction. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hiram Rhodes Revels on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[1] As of 2009, Revels is one of only six African Americans ever to have served in the United States Senate.

They say taxes are a patriotic duty. So why did Geithner and Daschle have trouble paying them?

Tom Daschle failed to pay taxes on a quarter-million dollars of income related to the chauffeured Cadillac that ferried him about town for three years. But don't call the guy a limousine liberal.

Nancy Killefer, the management consultant and former Treasury official who had been picked by President Obama to serve as the country's chief performance officer, has withdrawn from consideration for the post, White House officials confirmed this morning.