Although Ben Smith noticed it yesterday ( http://blogs.nydailynews.com/dailypolitics ), it's still news you can use. The Drum Major Institute (http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/congress)posted on its website a report-card on how US Senators and Representatives voted on issues which affect middle-class Americans. As they did with state legislators, a few months ago, DMI has bought ad space on Google so that searches for the names of electeds will pop up a hot link to that official's DMI score-box. While the votes in Congress that the DMI picks to assess are useful, there is, in my view, one huge omission: the war in Iraq. As I see it, the hundreds of billions spent in that immoral and wrongheaded war, have been drained from the US economy. Because the score-card omits the word "Iraq", the otherwise thoughtful and care work that went into it is diminished. The war is a crucial issue to many. (Civil liberties votes are also omitted)

The report card is useful in a number of ways. It does hightlight the differences between Democrats and Republicans. It shows that a number of Democrats have been voting against the interests of many of their constituents. Interestingly, I could find no Democrat who got a "D" -- while somegraded at "C" had very bad voting records.

Thank you DMI, good work.