Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and Congressional political news. This week I have highlights from Oregon, Nebraska, and Arizona.

Oregon Earmark’s Blog points to the Favor Factory and then highlights earmarks that the Oregon congressional delegation received. He quips “While I wear and like New Balance shoes, not sure they need the $2.4 Million earmark for cold weather equipment.”

New Nebraska has an interesting post about how the influence of lobbying has changed from term limits. Apparently requiring a new herd of legislators to come in every few terms causes lobbying to be harder because they have to start from scratch with new lawmakers. It will be interesting to see how the lobbying industry evolves in Nebraska to deal with this.

In Arizona, Expresso Pundit posts about earmarking and how it bypasses the checks and balances that the founding fathers put in place. He also examines some earmarking that Arizona legislators are doing.