One way of following the proverbial (or not) money made available to us by the wonderful intersection of public disclosure laws and the information revolution is looking at personal financial disclosures. You can see what stocks, for example, your senator or House member owns and judge whether it had an effect on their legislating.
Thanks to the good work of my friends over at LegiStorm, you can now dig a little deeper. They already had the personal financial disclosures online, along with a wealth of other data that you had to troop up to the Hill to get. Now they've posted financial disclosure information for senior staffers as well.
The whole site is great -- enjoy.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2000/01/05/mccain_pressed_fcc_in_case_involving_major_contributor/
http://mikk2.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/john-and-vicki-icky/
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/012900b.html
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/02/7302_charlie_black_j.html
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/22/mccain_defends_pressing_agency_to_act_on_license/
http://www.newsweek.com/id/114505
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08053/859581-176.stm?cmpid=news.xml
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08054/859894-176.stm
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/21/72830/8261/667/461061
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/conason/2008/02/22/mccain/