TrackBacks

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c5bf353ef00d834e79c6253ef

Comments

OpenCongress Aggregates U.S. Politics

OpenCongress, a political information mashup, is a great resource for anyone strongly interested in politics on Capitol Hill.  By cataloging information (and there is a lot information) in an easy to navigate format, users have access to voting records, and statements by Senators and Members, including the always interesting breakdown of who or what is donating to a particular legislators campaigns. 

OpenCongress, a project by Participatory Politics Foundation and The Sunlight Foundation, leverages Google News to obtain news articles about Congress, and Google Blog Search and Technorati to obtain blog posts about Congress. OpenCongress also uses these automated services to search the internet widely for relevant search terms to display on OpenCongress pages for bills and Members of Congress. For example, if you are looking to find out about the latest status on the bill S.574, OpenCongress offers pretty healthy aggregation of blogs and other information and even offers a feed about it.

For those interested more in issues than politicians, the site offers a wide-angle lens look at the big issues such as health care or criminal justice as well as tracking of legislation before the House and Senate.  The site is a must stop after reading any news article to give readers access to all the information the political reporters, operatives, or politicians themselves have. Hopefully OpenCongress expands into polling information.  The community continues to lack a refined and sophisticated website providing detailed and extended polling data, not merely concerning which candidate is polling ahead, but also how certain issues are playing as well.  Overall, OpenCongress is a great resource for serious political junkies.