http://foreignlobbying.org/

“Foreign Lobbyist Influence Tracker, a joint project of Propublica and the Sunlight Foundation, digitizes information that representatives of foreign governments, political parties and government-controlled entities must disclose to the U.S. Justice Department when they seek to influence U.S. policy.”–From the Website.  You can select a legislator and find the contacts and contributions from foreign sources to him or her and track foreign lobbying in other ways.

www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Citizens_Briefing_Book_Final.pdf

As the Obama Administration was transitioning into power, they asked for Americans to play a part and suggest changes that needed to be made.  Using the change.gov website, the Administration collected over 44,000 ideas.  The most popular ideas (determined by over 1.4 million votes cast) are presented in this document—-a citizen’s briefing to President Obama.

http://innovation.cqpolitics.com/atlas/district_08

CQPolitics offers this map of the 2008 Presidential and House election results by Congressional District.  If you click on any District, you will see the percentages of the vote won by Obama and McCain, and the percentages won by candidates who ran for the Congressional District seat.

http://whorunsgov.com/

The Washington Post has unveiled a new database to provide profiles of elected and appointed officials.   It is in the early stages, so I am sure there will be much more to come.  Currently, it covers administration officials, presidential advisors, congressional members and military leaders.

Previously from the Washington Post:  Congress Votes Database

http://inaugural.senate.gov/index.cfm

The official site for information on the 2009 Inauguration.  Information on the events, tickets, history, and more is found on the site.

Thanks to Doris Dixon for alerting me to these two sites:

ACLU Voting Rights – www.aclu.org/votingrights/index.html

Voter Suppression Wiki – http://votersuppressionwiki.wetpaint.com/?t=anon

With the election just weeks away, it’s a good time to get up to speed on voting rights and issues.  The first link offers a thorough examination of voters’ rights and election issues.  The second site, the Voter Suppression Wiki, is a nonpartisan site that explains the various tactics that can be used to attempt to suppress votes.  The site also offers a place for citizens to report incidents of vote suppression.

http://thomas.loc.gov/

Doris Dixon pointed out that we don’t have a link to Thomas on the Highway, and she’s right.  We should!  THOMAS was created by the Library of Congress to make legislative information freely and easily available to the public.  You can use THOMAS to search for bills, resolutions, schedules, treaties, committee information and more. 

For the text of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, click here.

www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/situation-report-russo-georgian-conflict

The Institute for the Study of War has put together this backgrounder on the current situation in Georgia.  It includes a very useful map and is updated regularly.

www.maplight.org/map/us

From the Scout Report: “This rather innovative database brings together three unique data sets including bill texts, legislative voting records, and supporting and opposing interests for each bill. This data allows users to determine the contributions given by interests supporting and opposing each bill and the average donations given to legislators voting ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ on each bill.”  Search by bill, legislator or interest group.

[From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2008. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/mapApp.do

The Federal Election Commission offers this map which provides information on each Presidential candidate’s campaign expenditures and information on campaign donors.