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.

A Trip Around Blogville

We have been asked to showcase three of our favorite blogs from the many corners of the Internet. Seeing as my interests are varied, I've chosen three very different blogs that appeal to me. Each one comes from a different subculture on the Internet.

Of course, some of the more well known blogs are political blogs, discussing the news of the day and how it affects you and those in power. There are thousands of these across the net, but one that does things very differently, and thus deservedly gets attention for it, is the political gossip blog Wonkette. Armed with a sharp wit and sarcastic style, Wonkette joyfully mocks the inner workings of today's politics, jokes about the major stories of theday, and revels in the occasional Washington sex scandal. The site takes little seriously, a rarity in the political realm, as can bee seen in their coverage of the recent bank failures:

GO GET YOUR MONEY PEOPLE: Collapsing investment banks are yesterday’s news, trendsetters! Now we can turn our attention to the biggest possible commercial banks failing miserably, like, say, Washington Mutual. And when that collapses on Sunday, probably, it will likely drain up what’s left of the FDIC’s insurance fund. The FDIC can always get more money from the Treasury, or we can just have a BANK RUN!!! EVERYONE RUN TO THE BANK!!! PANIC! CHAOS FIRE OBAMA BURN!!

Moving along, we go too a completely different corner of the Internet to another interest of mine: anime. My favorite blog within the anime community is Random Curiosity, a running diary of shows out in Japan. The editor, Omni, follows a number of shows as they come out each week, writing reviews and discussing the series with other fans. Omni also puts out a preview at the beginning of each season of anime, walking through the upcoming shows and giving fans an ideaof what to watch for.

And lastly, we move on to video games, anime's cousin in geek culture. One of the rising names in online gaming culture is Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, creator of the "Zero Punctuation" series of video reviews at The Escapist, an online gaming magazine. Yahtzee's reviews have been lauded for thier brilliant writing and engaging style. His personal blog, Fully Ramblomatic, has links to all these videos as well as an archive of his older work, including freeware video games which he wrote and designed. It's a good read for those who wish to keep up to date on Yahtzee's recent and past work.