Sunlight is Running the Numbers on Congressional Wealth, Sunlight Foundation.

"Fortune 535" relies on the personal financial disclosure database at OpenSecrets.org and archive, but since that data only dates back to 1995, we dug through the archives of the Library of Congress Law Library to retrieve personal financial reports (required by law since 1978), that were previously only available on paper. We made available PDFs of these first personal financial disclosure reports filed by lawmakers, as part of Sunlight's goal to make more government information publicly accessible on the Internet.

For each of the 535 members of Congress, there are 535 individual stories told through stock portfolios, rental houses, mortgages, student loans and ownership of stock in multi-million dollar corporations. The data we reveal should certainly raise questions for citizens and journalists to ask about the rising and declining fortunes of their elected officials.

Grover Norquist on the The Colbert Report to talk up Leave Us Alone. Funny stuff.

Six ways the GOP can save itself, Politico.

3. Beg for help: The Republican infrastructure is crumbling. Making matters worse, Democrats are erecting a pretty impressive network of donors, think tanks and activist groups that is exploiting the GOP’s structural weakness. The GOP “needs to realize what the opposition is and how formidable it is,” said former GOP leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). “The Democratic Party is organized chaos, but it is so much better than what we are doing.” It will take no less than three to five years to fix, smart Republicans estimate.

For now, Republicans need their rich backers to crack open their wallets. Democrats such as George Soros are so much more willing than rich Republicans to fund get-out-the-vote operations and clever negative campaigns. The GOP needs to somehow cajole its big donors to fork over millions of dollars to counter Democrats and then achieve a competitive edge.

It needs to be smart while spending it, too. Influential Republicans feel the party must fortify intellectual think tanks, establish new activist groups and get a clue about using the Internet to rally its forces. The GOP also needs to fund programs to train young Republican candidates and activists.

“There is an entire infrastructure that needs to be thought through, and it seems to me no one is interested in building that,” said former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.).

Now Blogging: Fred Thompson, The Hill.

Former presidential candidate and "Law & Order" star Fred Thompson has a new gig: blogger for Townhall.

Thompson, who will also pen columns for Townhall Magazine, writes in his first blog post that conservatives need to stick to their principles.