Very Creepy Widget From Huffington Post

The Huffington Post's FundRace2008 widget is creepy. Plug in a person's name, a zip code, a profession, or an employer, and you can retrieve all the individual federal political donations that cross the $200 threshold by each person's name with address info and a map, the amount donated and to whom. Include 2004 contributions or exclude them to limit your search to only 2008 contributions.

You can spend a lot of time digging around to see who among your neighbors, friends and co-workers have given to which candidates. Sample results from seaches executed on March 26, 2008:

• Search results for librarians, but not self-identified law librarians, medical librarians, etc:
  • $20,175 from 33 people to Republicans
    $154,874 from 245 people to Democrats
• ... for law librarians:
  • $0 to Republicans
    $7,923 from 18 people to Democrats
• Search results for Library of Congress employees:
  • $2,781 from 6 people to Republicans
    $27,936 from 31 people to Democrats
• Search results for my zip code:
  • $14,011 from 18 people to Republicans
    $8,760 from 10 people to Democrats

I think the map displaying contributor locations is the element that freaks me out. [JH]