Political Blogs

Politifact.com, a fact-checking site run by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly magazine, goes through statements by politicians and figures in the Presidential race to sift through what they say in order to find how much truth is there. It rates the amount of truth and truthiness is in each statement and grades it. The site is very well done and has a fun style that makes it very good all-around.

Factcheck.org is a very good at showing how truthful political statements and ads are, and their articles are extremely thorough in this aspect. They are also slightly faster than Politifact. However, Factcheck covers far fewer statements than Politifact, usually just going over ads made by the campaigns or affiliated groups, while Politifact goes over ads, statements, and attacks anyone who injects themselves into the debate. Expanding their range would help greatly.

The Congress Votes Database, run by the Washington Post, is exactly what it says: a database of votes made by the House of Representatives and Senate, and their reasoning for the votes and statements about the votes. It is an extremely valuable resource for researching the history of the legislators, but that's all it is - good for research. It doesn't really talk about ongoing events, and there is no information on the front page. A suggestion would be to take an issue on people minds today, like say the bailout, document what the politicians are saying about it, and put this information on the front page, so people know where they stand without having to sift through pages of votes.

Lastly, Project Vote Smart, is similar to the Congress Votes Database as it goes over decisions and votes made by politicians and stores them in a database. However, while the Congress database limits itself to only reporting on the national Congress, Project Vote Smart is much broader in scope, going over Congressmen, governors, state legislators and state office holders, and allows readers to find their representatives just by searching their zip code. It also goes over not just votes, but it also keeps track of public stances and speeches given by the figure. I still would like to see something on today's issues on the front page, but Vote Smart is still a very well done site.