Blog Posting From Annotated Bibliograpy

I completely forgot about this week's blog post, and I'm do not even recall when they are due (Monday's at five sounds vaguely familiar). Nevertheless, I submit my admittedly late blog post. 

I thought that the Time Magazine article The Citizen Watchdogs of Web 2.0. was the most interesting article I picked for my annotated bibliography. Of course, I only feel this way because it described events that I followed closely as they were occurring. So this is not necessarily the most informative or reliable source that I chose, but that doesn't concern me very much.

The article described how Democrats that voted with President Bush to give immunity to telecommunications companies were identified as having closer ties to these very companies. However, this description does not do justice to just how incredible and significant this was as it unfolded. 

Political blogs were able to identify the exact members of Congress that received the most money from telecommunications companies. Senator Rockefeller from West Virginia received some of the largest sums and also became one of the most ardent supporters of granting immunity. 

This ability to pinpoint exactly where the money was having an effect turned this in to a huge issue amongst liberal bloggers, which ultimately created problems for President Obama during his campaign. Obama voted in favor of the FISA compromise, which allowed for criminal proceedings against the companies but granted retroactive immunity for lawsuits. 

The bill passed rather easily, but Obama received a lot of criticism and scrutiny for his vote (such as Glenn Greenwald here). His immediate response was to post a defense of his position on the Huffington Post.

At this point, Web 2.0 tools are extremely useful for those that have access and competence with them. In this case, a notable portion of the party base made a much bigger deal about this issue because they could point to exactly who was acting outside their interests and fire away with their criticisms, and Obama had no choice but to respond. 

Down the road, politicians will be held immediately accountable in this fashion if more people can have access to raw data that reveals all of the connections between campaign donations and voting patterns.