Lithium Cola, contributing editor

Once upon a time, we used to wait until the end of the year before adding new voices to the front page. This year, we retired the old way of adding contributing editors. We're now moving to rolling admissions.

We started with Jed, who joined us a couple of months ago. And today, we're adding Lithium Cola. From the bio I'll soon be adding to our About page:

LithiumCola, 37, grew up in Ohio and after bumbling about in Las Vegas and New York in his 20's 30's, ended up back in Ohio, which he is sure is indicative of something. He has worked in academia, technical construction sales, and on factory floors. The only thing he knows for sure is: never match.

Moving forward, we'll be more aggressive adding new voices that catch our fancy anytime during the year.

Also, we're launching several new initiatives to make sure our existing important voices get more "airtime", so to speak.

For those who want to keep a closer eye on what happens in our nation's Capitol, Kagro X is ruling the roost over at Congress Matters -- where we hope to do for the legislative process what we've been doing to the electoral one: democratizing it. Remember, once legislation hits the floor of the Senate or House, it's usually too late for us to do anything about. That's why the lobbyists hang out in the committee rooms, not the floor. Our goal with Congress Matters will be to keep a better eye on what's happening in those committee rooms, identify pressure points, so we can direct our activism at the right time and place. The site should prove immensely important in 2009.  

We're also going to launch, sometime early next year, a weekly email political newsletter, covering both legislative and electoral developments. It will feature original content (so few-to-none site reprints) from me, brownsox, and Kagro.

And we've got yet another site on the drawing board slated for a late Q1 launch. More details on that one when it's closer to reality. Right now it'd be too much vaporware for any announcement.

So lots of exciting things ahead for the site. No rest for those seeking to foster change.