Elected politicians have proven once again that unless citizen advocacy groups apply constant pressure, we won't be seeing any ethics reform.

This reminds me of that short time period which followed the Abramoff scandal, where politicians everywhere were advocating serious ethics reform. Eventually, as time passed and the public eye turned to other issues, the government passed weak ethics legislation. It is clear as ever that our politicians will never clean up their act unless we prod them along.

Hi, I'm Jon, a Common Cause intern, and I wanted to tell you about an event I attended on Wednesday.

At a time when Congress has received their lowest approval ratings ever, it is important to be reminded that there are still politicians who care about those they represent (or at least it seems like they do according to their actions).

Senators Olympia J. Snowe (R-ME) and Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) stood in front of a mountain of stacked up petitions sent in by 1 million concerned citizens that wrote in to support the Snowe-Dorgan bill, S 2917, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. They explained that this bill is meant to preserve the internet status quo, which is what has allowed the internet to be an open extension of our democracy. Could this no-nonsense treatment of an important issue by these two be a precursor for a Congress that is actually receptive to constituents? We'll find out as the battle over net neutrality moves from the House to the Senate...