DISQUS

This is good news, but I hope this means there will be a 2-way conversation with citizens. I'm curious as to how the administration will make use of Q&A/video responses.

great list. one politician that tweets (and qiks!) on his own from the House floor is Representative @JohnCulberson. he should be on yr list.

Inspired by conversations like this, the Sunlight Foundation (ahem, where I work) was inspired to do something to rally citizens to ensure lawmakers can freely connect with us all online.

In that spirit, we are launching a new campaign, Let Our Congress Tweet, http://letourcongresstweet.org/ - an experiment in Twitter-based advocacy. You can express your support of a petition that tells Congress to "embrace the communication technologies that we already use" like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace.

On the site, you can watch who's tweeting to sign the petition. We'd love to hear any feedback on this experiment or on the broader dialog regarding congressional Internet use. Join us and tweet the petition!

I think you're onto something there. Maybe MAPLight.org has something like this? (Their site has a section dedicated to California legislation.)

Hi there. I work at Sunlight and am thrilled you like our Capitol Words site. Thanks for mentioning it! Thought you might like to know that we just created a widget to make it easier to display the congressional word of the day on your site. You can get the widget code here: http://capitolwords.org/about/

Thanks for the post! I'm Gabriela Schneider, Sunlight's Communications Director. In record time, citizens like you finished the first round of research, but your investigative skills are still needed to complete this project. So far, only a few of these potential revolvers have been verified. If you want to participate, go to http://wherearetheynow.sunlightprojects.org/nee...
Thanks again!

Hi. I'm Sunlight's Communications Director. Thanks very much for the kind words! (BTW, our URL is sunlightfoundation.com, not .org.)

You might be interested in some more back story about the new database: Sunlight funded OMBWatch to build FedSpending.org (the first searchable database of all govt contracts and grants), for $325K.

They built it. Then the Obama-Coburn bill was passed (with help from a cross-partisan coalition of bloggers like you and other fellow Porkbusters, who smoked out the Senator who had put a secret hold on the bill) mandating that the OMB build its own official database, for $15 million.

OMB Watch offered to help OMB get the job done...even though the watchdog group and the government agency are usually major adversaries.

After some hesitation, OMB's director decided to work with OMBWatch, and they licensed the software from OMBWatch for $600K. The new site, USASpending.gov, just launched, two weeks ahead of schedule.

NOMINATE: MAPLight.org Presidential Fundraising Widget. http://www.maplight.org/widgets

This customizable widget makes FEC data user-friendly to allow anyone to track fundraising by the presidential contenders on their own blogs, social media sites, and personal Web sites.

I'm biased (MAPLight.org is a Sunlight Foundation grantee), but love how this widget makes political fundraising more transparent in what will surely be the most expensive election campaign in U.S. history. (PS: MAPLight.org also made an API of this data available.)