Zotero: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3504
Renee introduced me to this site earlier this year. It’s the best tool for bookmarking online research/keeping notes. It’s a plugin for firefox/modzilla you download, so it has:
- Automatic capture of citation information from web pages
- Storage of PDFs, files, images, links, and whole web pages
- Flexible notetaking with autosave
- Fast, as-you-type search through your materials
- Playlist-like library organization, including saved searches (smart collections) and tags
- Platform for new forms of digital research that can be extended with other web tools and services
- Formatted citation export (style list to grow rapidly)
- Integration with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org

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Muckety: http://news.muckety.com/
See the news with interactive relationship maps visually showing the connections between people, companies and organizations.

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Silobreaker: http://www.silobreaker.com/
Silobreaker aggregates news, blogs, research, audio, video and other digital media content from global news, shared, user generated and open access sources.

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Political Friendster: http://www.politicalfriendster.com/
A crowdsourcing site of political and business connections.

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Opensecrets.org:
Presenting political news, and the actual political positions of the parties and candidates, as well as disclosing how much campaign money they have raised.

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House Lobbying Disclosure Database: http://disclosures.house.gov/lc/lcsearch.aspx

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Senate Lobbying Disclosure Database: http://soprweb.senate.gov/

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Maplight: http://www.maplight.org/
Public database that illuminates the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways.

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FEC: Campaign Finance Database: http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/mapApp.do

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Huffington Post’s Fund Race: http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/

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Seattle Time’s Earmarks Datasbase: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/favorfactory/

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Taxpayers for Common Sense (Earmarks crowdsourcing): http://www.taxpayer.net/
Taxpayers for Common Sense is an independent and non-partisan voice for taxpayers working to increase transparency and expose and eliminate wasteful and corrupt subsidies, earmarks, and corporate welfare.

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Well-Connected Media Project: http://projects.publicintegrity.org/telecom/
Technology has created a chessboard of corporate and government interests in telecommunications and media. The players battle it out in Congress, at the Federal Communications Commission and in state houses. The “Well Connected” Project tracks this inside influence game.

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Project on Government Oversight Misconduct database: http://www.contractormisconduct.org/
The government awards contracts to companies with histories of misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations. In the absence of a centralized federal database listing instances of misconduct, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is providing such data.

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TOP Government Contractors (Government Executive): http://www.govexec.com/features/0808-15/0808-15s1s1.htm (August ‘08) and previous top 200: http://www.govexec.com/top200/