Before the recess, Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) filed a bill to create a Google-like search engine to allow commonfolk to easily search federal grants and contracts. The plan is to bring some sort of transparency to the pork barrel system. It flew out of committee, but had a secret hold stuck on it by an anonymous senator who didn't want it to pass. Of course, now it's floundering in that netherworld of shoulda/coulda/woulda, where good bills go to die.
It seems, however, that a coalition of bloggers has taken to calling up every single Senator and asking them to go on the record as not having placed the secret hold on the bill. So far they've gotten 96 responses, whittling it down to 4 likely suspects. It's also given me the opportunity to learn that there is a senator named Crapo. How funny is that? At any rate, give some senators a call, ask them if they placed the secret hold on a bill that would help clean up the government.
For more info, see here and here. List of Senator suspects is here.
*Update* Word is, dinosaur Sen. Stevens from Alaska is the culprit. He may be afraid that an online database could take up too many tubes. Either that or he's emailed his internet and it's taking a few days for the internet to get here. Frickin' geezer.
THE INTERNET IS NOT SOMETHING YOU JUST DUMP SOMETHING ON.
FIGURE IT OUT, PEOPLE.
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Damn tubes!! Maybe he flushed his socks.