The blogger led move to fight amendments to bills to fund pork, also called “earmarks”, is one of the most important stories that of 2006 at the intersection of blogs and politics. The Porkbusters movement has been heavily promoted by conservative blogs, although I have no reason to believe that liberal blogs are not also behind it (I just don’t read those ones) and started to show traction in the summer of 2006, unfortunately for Republicans they failed to broadly embrace it and it was one factor that cost them in the election because this is an issue that brings conservative voters to the polls.

Senators Coburn (R) and Obama (D) jointly sponsored a great bill that created a public database detailing pork earmarks and who voted for them. It barely passed in the last congress but it did pass and get signed into law.

The new Congress is in session and once again the subject of earmarks is on the agenda, although like the old Congress there is resistance among the leadership about just how enthusiastically to embrace limits and disclosure of pork spending. One would like to think it has something to do with politics but once again there is evidence that money trumps political ideology when convenient.