The Web is watching the government. You can too.

Web Mashups Turn Citizens Into Washington’s Newest Watchdogs by Michael Calore Wired

Sites I linked from this article:

Maplight.org  non-partisan connecting of dots. Searches state politics by “interest group,” “legislator,” “subject,” & “bill number,” Did some searches on local legislators and got nothing. It does look interesting, though.

Opensecrets.org This one has an RSS feed. I added it to my google page. On the feed it calls itself “Center for Responsive Politics.”

Follow the money.org  more non-partisan state politics. This one had a hit on my local rep, Kuipers, and showed that he had received $ 1,050.00 in donations from A,T&T.  I recently wrote to him about a state iniative that I felt was completely in favor of AT&T’s need to tier the internet. He is the chair of a state committee that considers this stuff and completely disagreed with my point of view. According to this web site, he has also received money from Comcast ($1000.00) and Telecommunications Association of Michigan (250.00). Both I suspect would support this non-consumer web iniative that would enable them to charge for services that are currently free.

And of course Wikipedia has Congressapedia which just watches congress and makes info available in an easier format (it’s already available on Government web sties).