Tom LoBianco, Maryland politics reporter

Sen. Barbara Mikulski just launched her Twitter account about a week ago, and the best part? She does her own tweeting!

Check out some of these gems:

Here’s a great little snapshot of Maryland’s left-right politics debate. Conservative activist Mark Newgent going up against Democratic hack Steve Lebowitz, all on Twitter (God bless ‘em.)

Steve Lebowitz argues the Democratic angle from the left

And conservative hack Mark Newgent Tweet-beats Lebowitz from the right

For full disclosure, I write for Center Maryland, so I won’t address the topics being debated here. But expect plenty more of this as we wind through the campaigns. The hardest of the hardcore political nerds are nitpickers more than anybody and Newgent and Lebowitz are emblematically nitpicky.

What’s the difference as opposed to any other election? The Twinteractivity of the argument. (Which is a godawful merging of Twitter and interactivity … the word, that is.) Anyway you can track the play by play better than before and you can actually read through some of the backup information used to argue the point. And smartasses like myself can take screenshots for perseverance (shift+apple+4).