The good folks at the Sunlight Foundation have been studying the correlation between campaign contributions and congressional earmarks, and in doing so they caught Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN) red-handed getting earmarks for major donors. Is it legal? Assuming that there was no bribe menu, probably. But it’s almost certainly not right. This is a great example of the value of data mining and how the unglamorous task of pawing through government data can yield great results—precisely the sort of thing that newspapers don’t have the budgets for and most bloggers are too lazy to do. (Via Boing Boing)