Here’s my first IAB diary. This is a collaborative effort. I am going to try to post as much as I have and keep updating this as I go. Positive suggestions and critiques only, please.

DemFromCT is all over this one, so this is great, but let’s get more specific.

The vote is October 18th.

Democratic leaders scheduled the showdown for Oct. 18 to allow two weeks for pressure to build on Republicans. A union-led organization said it would spend more than $3 million trying to influence the outcome.

Still working on finding out exactly how many votes are needed in each house of Congress to win this, and what we know about who’s voting how. If you have that available, post in comments and let me know.  I’ll update.

Yesterday Armando was blogging about the Netroots being at a crossroads regarding specifically issue action and especially about Iraq, and I proposed a strategy for altering that trajectory called Investigative Issue Action Blogging.  I’d like to flesh out that idea here this morning.

Here’s the basic idea: Create blogposts about specific legislation or actions to be investigated that can be researched collaboratively and acted upon, in order to collectively lobby to move a piece of legislative action forward. This includes nominations (i.e. Attorney General), investigations (i.e. Blackwater or Wiretapping) and legislation (SCHIP, FISA, IRAQ, GLOBAL WARMING on and on and on.)