Stung by the recent passage of legislation to expand government surveillance powers, two prominent liberal bloggers are teaming up with right-leaning libertarians on a new political action committee to combat perceived threats to civil liberties.

Trevor Lyman, who worked on behalf of the presidential campaign of Representative Ron Paul, spearheaded Mr. Paul’s “money bombs” in which thousands of supporters made nearly simultaneous online donations. After those efforts on behalf of Mr. Paul resulted in record fund-raising drives, he is now offering his company’s services to the “Strangebedfellows” – named for the left-right coalition – and their effort to raise money for the new AccountabilityNowPAC.

“We want Democrats in Congress to perceive that there’s a price to pay when they betray the values of their supporters on these issues,” said Glenn Greenwald, host of a liberal blog on Salon.com.

Organizers are hoping Friday’s money bomb will bring in $1 million to add to the approximately $350,000 the group collected to oppose the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which it used to placed ads attacking three Democrats who supported the surveillance legislation: Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader, as well as Representatives Chris Carney of Pennsylvania and John Barrow of Georgia.



AccountabilityNow, which aims to play a political role from which groups like the American Civil Liberties Union are barred, plans to buy print ads with the new funds criticizing Mr. Hoyer and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami-area Republican, for co-sponsoring a measure endorsing a naval blockade of Iran, and they also plan to buy space to call for Congress to look into the F.B.I.’s handling of the anthrax investigation. By 2010, AccountabilityNow hopes to field primary candidates that support its civil libertarian, anti-war positions.

“We think politicians are vulnerable on these issues even though it doesn’t make it into our mainstream discourse,” Mr. Greenwald said.

Although the Strangebedfellows cast themselves as a left-right coalition — the Libertarian candidate Bob Barr endorsed the effort, Mr. Greenwald and Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake (among the blogs most instrumental in Ned Lamont’s victory over Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic primary in 2006) call the shots.

Mr. Lyman’s firm, Basic Media, Inc., will receive compensation for helping with the fund-raiser.

Furthermore, Mr. Lyman said, right-leaning supporters who gave generously to Mr. Paul are “experiencing some serious donor fatigue.” A recent money bomb for 25 down-ballot candidates allied with Mr. Paul yielded disappointing figures.

“The anger on the left is much more fresh,” said Rick Williams, co-founder of Basic Media, adding that the Libertarian right feels it has been “sold out by the Republican establishment for years,” while liberals are only more recently frustrated by the new majority.

Mr. Greenwald said his group would stay out of the presidential race, even though Senator Barack Obama faced criticism from the netroots for supporting the FISA bill.

“Democrats will be very wary of anything that jeopardizes the White House,” said Mr. Greenwald. “Democrats are going to control both houses of Congress inevitably, and the only question is not who’s going to control the Congress, but what are they going to do with that control.”