Lawmakers Blogging Every Day

...or at least that's the goal!

Pat Powers and I both have had some folks questioning whether a political candidate or elected official can afford to blog. I say they can't afford not to.

The Lawmakers blog agrees. They contend that blogging is not just a choice for elected officials: it's a duty. From their declaration of priniciples:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that every elected official should blog for the people every day, that every lawmaker in America should file a report on their blog for the people every day, that every legislator should have a blog with reader comments and use that blog to report to the people every day.

The goal of this blog is to get every legislator in every state in the United States of America to blog for the people every day.

Welcome to the 21st century, South Dakota. Blogging isn't just a hobby or a way to make pizza money. For legislators, governors, commissioners, and yes, school board members, it's a fulfillment of the obligation of transparency and accountability to the public.

Rep. Kristi Noem of Castlewood is the only South Dakota legislator who's even come close to taking this obligation seriously... and at just a post or two a week, she still has a ways to go to catch up with Lawmaker Blog's standards. We can only hope that more legislators will catch up with the new state of American public discourse and realize that blogging is no more of a liability than showing up at a crackerbarrel. As a matter of fact, blogging is the new crackerbarrel, and if you don't show up, voters will start to wonder why.