Most people who are interested in politics know that Congressional Quarterly has a wealth of useful information on the web, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized that part of the site, Political Wire—Taegan Goddard’s political column meets blog meets newsfeed—does such a nice job of spoon feeding the breaking news and making it searchable after the fact.

The home page has brief, bite-sized posts ranging from Sarah Palin’s latest polling numbers to the latest on the New Jersey governor’s race.  It also features a twitter feed and you can subscribe to a site newsletter and have it delivered via e-mail, skype, twitter or an IM account.

The Breaking News page features a 24-hour news aggregator described in the following glowing terms:

This page automatically collects the latest political news from more than a dozen major news sources every hour of the day. There’s no faster way to find out what’s going on in politics.

Click on the Job Hunt tab at the top of the page and you’ll be able to search for politically-oriented full-time, part-time, volunteer and internship positions in your area.

An Archives page let’s you search the last 30 days worth of information by topic, while clicking on the Links tab (or just scrolling to the bottom of the home page) gives you an interesting list of sites grouped under the slightly suggestive heading “Beltway Buzz.” Oh– and all the usual polling suspects are there, as well.

When David Lindrum, Soomo’s founder, instructional design guru, and overall linchpin, shared Chapman Rackaway’s suggestion that we check out bailoutsleuth.com, I was a little confused. Chap has been using Americans Governing for years now, and we’re also in the process of peer reviewing a set of Chap’s assignments that feature Daily Show clips, so it sort of goes without saying that we think a lot of his ideas. But… bailoutsleuth.com?

So began one woman’s descent into the trail of acronyms economic policy types have been tracking closely since 2008. For the rest of us mere mortals, bailoutsleuth.com:

…monitors the government’s purchase, and eventual sale, of bad mortgages and other distressed assets. We provide regular reports on the process, tracking and analyzing deals and providing information about the companies and people involved in them.

BailoutSleuth seeks to add transparency to the bailout program, and will keep an eye out for favoritism, political influence or anything else that could undermine the potential returns to taxpayers.

So far, so good. And the level of detail here regarding congressional oversight, banks paying back TARP money (that’s the Troubled Asset Relief Program started during the Bush administration…but who’s remembering), or going under is fascinating stuff.

Want a little more overview before diving into all that detail?

Both the New York Times and ProPublica are tracking TARP as well as other stimulus programs. Click on the headquarters tab on the New York Times’ Tarp tracking page and you can determine which institutions in your town or city have accepted TARP funds (and which have paid them back). Propublica deserves its own post, but check out this colorful page overviewing the history of U.S. government bailouts. And don’t miss Eye on the Stimulus:

We’re tracking the stimulus from bill to building, and we’re organizing citizens nationwide to watchdog local stimulus projects.

Even the Intimidator might find that a little intimidating.