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Weclome to SpeechWars, a great way to see what the candidates are saying. Simply type in a word, click "Go", and SpeechWars shows you how often the candidates used the word in their speeches. You can also compare two words by using both text boxes.

The United States Library of Congress has selected SpeechWars for inclusion in its official historic collections of Internet materials related to Election 2008. The United States Library of Congress preserves the Nation's cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library's traditional functions, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to the Congress and to the American people to foster education and scholarship extend to digital materials, including Web sites. The Library will make this collection available to researchers. The Library's vision is to preserve these Web materials about Election 2008, and to permit researchers from across the world to access them.

As featured on CNN. Which 2008 Presidential Candidate Agrees With You? Answer the questions below to find the 2008 presidential candidate that best aligns with your beliefs. More than 1.5 million people have already filled it out.

Another great lesson plan from the Dirksen Congressional Center's Congress in the Classroom workshop. Designed for students in grades 8-12.

During The Dirksen Congressional Center's annual Congress in the Classroom® workshop participants are asked to introduce the lesson plans, resources, and techniques that have proven successful in teaching about Congress in their classrooms.A 2008 participant, Jan Loyd, Cabot Junior High South, Cabot, AR, presented a lesson entitled, "Elect Me! Creating a Campaign Platform and Advertisement." Students will be a candidate for an election as a United States Representative or Senator in the upcoming election. They will need to decide which party fits their political views best. Next, they will plan and present a 3-5 minute campaign commercial about them as a candidate, their platform, and why the voters should vote for them.

The plans of presidential candidates are never set in stone, if only because circumstances and the makeup of Congress change after the election. The uncertainty is even deeper in this election because Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain laid out most of their agenda before the government committed up to $700 billion to address the financial crisis. Obama acknowledges what is true for both: "The next president will have to scale back his agenda and some of his proposals." Yet neither candidate has spelled out what promises might have to be postponed or changed. With that caution, here's a look at where McCain and Obama stand on a selection of issues.

What would happen if one of the presidential candidates were to die or become otherwise incapacitated before Election Day: Would Palin or Biden assume the nomination?

Latest 2008 election news & information from MSN; presidential election opinion & analysis; compare Republican & Democratic presidential candidates on issues; political video & blogs; current polls; election map; more.

The number of voters under 30 in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections remained stagnant at just 17 percent. Teens become apathetic because politicians are unresponsive, politicians become indifferent to teens because they are apathetic and don't vote.
The way to break this cycle is to make teens feel like they have a voice that politicians will listen to. Politicians have been reaching out to youth by holding events on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. CNN even held the YouTube debates, allowing users to submit questions directly to candidates. Making politicians answerable to young people forces their interests to be considered.\n\n

Expert Voter lets you compare candidates on issues. It's all done as video clips from speeches they've given.

YouTube gathers video content from the debates, the super-recent sound bites, best of the week videos, the candidates voices on particular issues--economy, healthcare, education, energy, immigration--election news from YouTube's partner sites, and videos organized by upcoming primaries. This is a wonderful resource for promoting media literacy, rhetorical analysis, as well as political awareness. It may also be a lobbying tool for expanded video access.

Just as the candidates have learned to use novel technology tools to reach young people during this year's presidential campaign, teachers like Mr. Sherif are turning to electronic resources to capture students' interest in the election. At the same time, they want to help students decipher the barrage of related images and information and to engage them in lessons about the democratic process today and throughout American history. "The technology is fun and helpful, but it's also a tool you can use to get a better understanding of what the political and historical issues are," said Mr. Sherif, who teaches history and science at the Science Leadership Academy, a public high school in Philadelphia.

A host of energy policy experts agree that true "energy independence"-a key catch phrase of this presidential campaign-would be far more expensive and disruptive than either candidate is telling you. Our oil addiction hamstrings America's foreign policy and military, contributes to global warming and has robbed the nation of trillions of dollars. One of the country's leading energy modelers estimates that foreign-oil dependence cost our economy $750 billion this year, a little more than the daunting price tag of the proposed Wall Street bailout.

With national, state, and county maps, CNN.com's Campaign Fundraising Interactive Map provides an in-depth view into the campaign fundraising of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.

* Over $15 million spent in presidential TV advertising since conclusion of conventions * More than 55% of McCain ads are in conjunction with RNC * Nearly all Obama ads all paid for with candidate money * Obama airs larger percentage of negative ads than McCain * Traditional battleground states receive majority of ad spending

Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future is an online writing and publishing project for students, ages 13 - 18, co-sponsored by Google and the National Writing Project. We invited young people to write about the issues and concerns that they feel are central to their future, issues they would hope our next president would act on. Topics were chosen by the students themselves to reflect their specific personal, regional, and age-related interests. Teachers and mentors guided students through the process of writing a persuasive letter or essay to the presidential candidates using Google Docs.

Have students review the origin, purpose and function of the Electoral College. Ask students: What is the "winner take all" system? Are there any states that do not follow this system? If so, how do they determine their electoral vote allocation? How many electoral votes are needed to win the presidency? Next, divide students into small groups and assign each group a current swing state in the 2008 presidential race. Consult the CNN Electoral Map Calculator for a list of swing states. Then, refer groups to online resources, including CNN's Election Center 2008 on the CNN Politics site, to identify the following for their assigned swing state: * the number of electoral votes that are up for grabs * the state's key political issues * the U.S. presidential candidates' stances on these key issues * the state's demographic composition * the state's voting record in past presidential elections

The time frame for the unit is 8 weeks, although it may not take you as long, depending on how many class hours you devote to it. I suggest that you divide the project into a Democrat and Republican team using two classes, but it could be done within one class. Classroom teachers will need access to computers for the project.