Lawrence Lessig is kind of a hero to me. He's working to change congress by shining a light on the influence of money on legislation. His approach seems to be to find obvious examples where a reasonable person would conclude the trade of campaign money for legislation and then raise money to run an ad campaign in the politician's district with convincing evidence that the politician in question both ignored the best interest of his or her constituents and made a decision to benefit those who donated to him or her. The nice thing about this approach is that, as Lessig has pointed out, it is not required to prove corruption. It is only required to show examples of the possibility of corruption, because that possibility of corruption erodes the possibility of trust.

Recently, John Campbell (R-CA) introduced legislation to exempt used car dealers from laws designed to protect consumers from predatory lending practices. John Campbell both personally benefits from the profits of used car dealers as well as being a recipient of about $170k in campaign donations from used car dealers. Check out Lessig's video about it, and sign the petition there, if you want to.