Home » Politics & Society » Congress Watch » Congress.org: A Valuable Populist Resource

Congress.org: A Valuable Populist Resource

© James Cook

This page, Congress Watch, was developed with the intention of bringing the unheralded shenanigans of the United States Congress to light. The underlying complaint behind Congress Watch is that the very people who are supposed to be represented by the Congress are kept in the dark. When we are able to learn more about what our delegates are up to, we're better able to hold them accountable.

A new website has recently come to my attention that does a great job at bringing the citizen closer to the political process. Congress.org (at http://www.congress.org) is dedicated to the practical realization of three related propositions:

* 1. Political information should be easy to obtain; * 2. Writing to one's representatives and local news outlets should be a breeze; * 3. Maybe we can pull somebody into buying our products in the meantime.

Getting Political Information I'll get to proposition 3 in just a bit, but first let me dwell on the altruistic aspects of Congress.org. Congress.org makes it incredibly easy to get information about your representatives in washington and their latest major activities. Simply enter your zip code on the "Elected Officials" page, and the site will automatically pull up the four elected officials that are supposed to represent you: the President, your two Senators, and the member of the House of Representatives from your district. That's nice, but it gets even better. Below each representative's name, links to their phone numbers, e-mail addresses, regular mail addresses, brief biographies, committee memberships and campaign contributions are provided. A description of their votes on recent major legislation follows, with links to read more.

Write Your Representative! Above all this is a handy link entitled "write all your representatives with one click." That's right: you write a single message, and Congress.org will automatically send e-mails with that message to all of your representatives. You might prefer to send a paper letter - folks in Washington pay more attention to them. No problem! The same function allows you to generate customized letters to send out in the mail.

The same kind of features are available when it comes to writing news organizations. Enter your zip code and a list of local media - newspapers and TV stations - will pop up. Major national newspapers and TV news organizations are added to the bottom of the list. You may then select up to fifteen of these organizations and send a single letter to the editor to them all. What could be simpler?

The copyright of the article Congress.org: A Valuable Populist Resource in Congress Watch is owned by . Permission to republish Congress.org: A Valuable Populist Resource in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.