Not to get too political on you, but I participated in a cool little project by Sunlight Foundation today that I thought I’d tell you about. Sunlight Foundation is all about bringing transparency to Washington (the government) and they are doing some very innovative things to do it.
The project I helped with is called ‘Where Are They Now?’ and the website describes it as:

The 109th Congress closed up shop nearly one year ago.
For those top staff members whose bosses resigned, retired or were voted out of office, the one year “cooling off period”–during which they are not allowed to lobby their former colleagues on Capitol Hill–is coming to an end. Lower level staffers have been able to work the Hill all year. Let’s see which staffers of former members have gone through the revolving door.

Basically, they are seeking to point out the close ties between elected government officials and the powerful lobbyist just down the street from them. What we are finding is that there are a lot of Congregational staff members who after leaving office have gone to work for those lobbyist firms. To put it another way, government staff are being bought by lobbyist who are offering them jobs (=money and power) in return for buying their votes in the Congress.

The ‘Where Are They Now?’ site is very well put together, and I’ve been making calls to Lobbyist firms checking to confirm that some of their new staff are indeed the same staff of Congress members who left office one year ago (the one year rule is to prevent this very thing from happening).

Take a visit yourself and do you part for government transparency by making some phone calls.

Also Of Interest:

• View a Directory of People passing through the Revolving Door
• Sunlight’s list of Insanely Useful Web Sites