Rick Mercer comes at the importance of the internet in politics from a slightly different direction - what aspiring politicians leave lying scattered in the Google-able past themselves.

The whole article is worth a read. So is the whole blog, IMO. I love Rick Mercer.

"But now I love blogs again. Blogs are serving an exciting new purpose: making politics interesting again. When I turn on the news and hear that another candidate is in trouble because of something they said on their blog I am like a kid at Christmas.

We are in a brave new time. In this election, like all of them before, there are people stepping forward for the first time. Candidates in their 20s and 30s (Reid is 28 years old, Warwa is 32) represent a generation of Canadians who's every movement from the womb to the ballot has been electronically recorded." - Rick Mercer

http://www.rickmercer.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/9/28/Who-can-survive-a-good-googling