Kudos to the Tribune for suddenly covering Congress. This kind of rocks.

Went on the warpath and blocked all access to this site from Russia, Romania, Turkey, and other countries that provide no commenters and 99% of the comment spam.
If you or someone you know is unintentionally blocked, please let me know.

The earmark database that has been mentioned in recent postings is here at earmarks.omb.gov. As of this writing it appears to be a little broken.
USA Today questions one by Ed Pastor:
An earmark application for $500,000 to give anti-terrorist training to Phoenix police doesnt mention that the amount is six times the cost of the program. [...]

Commenters can now register for accounts, which should make posting easier. I will turn this feature off if the spammers go nuts with it

When the House and Senate return from Easter break, theyre going to tackle embryonic stem cell research (again and Bush will veto it again), the HOPE Act (adult stem cell research) and the DC House Voting Rights Act (apparently transferring a seat in the House from Utah to DC. What is that?).
Stay tuned!

Many commenters pointed out that the P in the PHONE Act of 2007 is for preventing harassment, not promoting.
Heres a screen cap of where I got it from.

Tags: PHONE act, preventing not promoting harassment, supper funny clerk typos

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

OpenCongress is live. But still in beta.
This is a great tool for watching your elected Congressional officials; I highly recommend it. There are some known issues (like that the news and blog searches dont work really well for people like Ed Pastor), but I still think its reallllly neat.
Tags: wonk, wonk, wonk, [...]

Everybodys favorite commenter, The Screaming Centrist, now has a Fancy RepublicBlog. You might want to check it out.

Just got back from the Berkman-Sunlight Congress geek conference.
The most surprising thing about Harvard is that inside the buildings, it pretty much looks like ASU with better carpeting. No gold toilets with mechanized seats, Im afraid.
We had breakout sessions in the Harvard Law classrooms, and this was left on one of the walls from [...]

Arizona Congress Watch will be going to Harvard in a couple of weeks to talk about the blog and the 06 election. We were one of about 15 blogs from around the country to be asked to present.
Even though Arizona Congress Watch used to live in Massachusetts, we possess a cactus-like tolerance of cold weather [...]

Just wanted to let my readers know that weve been taking a break and will be back to posting all about our crazy delegation tomorrow. Meanwhile weve been:

Spending time with family (in person! Face to face!)
Redesigning many websites (this one will be relaunched in January)
Learning JAVA struts (boring)
Watching U of A trip, fall, drop that [...]

One thing Harry Mitchell did right – really right – was target independent female voters. I joke about being stalked, but their campaign really did a tremendous amount of work to swing women voters to Harry.
Today I was on Clancy Jaynes show. I was trying to explain this to the listeners, but I was nervous, [...]

Wednesdays are pretty high-traffic days, so lets do something fun. If youre an Arizona resident, respond to this post with the name of your current House representative (so if youre in CD8, put Kolbe). If youre not an Arizona resident, just put down where you live and why you came here. If youre in the [...]

Ive been watching my search terms over the last few weeks. Far and away, most people who come to Arizona Congress Watch are looking for info on J.D. Hayworth.
In second place is the race between Rick Renzi and Ellen Simon lots of interest.
Good amount of interest in Kyl/Pederson, though people still seem to [...]

Lefty bloggers everywhere are listing politicians names with links to their misdeeds in their blogs, hoping that the posts will collectively increase the Google ranking of the misdeed sites and give voters a negative picture of the candidates. Heres one example.
For the love of God, stop. Bloggers like me depend on Google to find relevant [...]

Had a late date last night, didnt get to blogging. If you saw the CD8 debate or went to any other events, consider this an open thread and post your thoughts here.

State Sen. Russell Pearces endorsements page is BEING UPDATED A FEW DELETIONS AND A BUNCH OF ADDITIONS.
Maybe they can also fix the gigantic broken image that takes up the entire above-the-fold space, too. Just saying.

I know who Andy Chasin is. And Jonathan Neal. And Seth Scott. And Brian Hummell. And Natalie Luna.
I know who they are because theyre in my inbox at least 3 times a week. Usually 4 or 5.
A good campaign has a candidate whose name you recognize. A great campaign has a spokesman whose name you [...]

Tomorrow night, Rula Bula on Mill Ave. in Tempe. Well kick it off around 6:30 7ish. Will end when we end.