The Senate has been debating H.R. 3221, The Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 this week, and modernization of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is a part of that legislation. But I want to point out a different FHA bill that has been very active here on WashingtonWatch.com.

The bill page for S. 2338, the FHA Modernization Act of 2007, has been a popular one for some time, and it has lots of intelligent discussion about the FHA and what is happening in both the House and Senate. There are several knowledgeable people, but one in particular, known simply as “John,” has been continually updating other visitors on the status of the issues.

It’s a delight to see this happening, as it fulfills one of the mission’s of WashingtonWatch.com, which is to give people more insight into the legislative process. John is sharing his knoweldge of the ins-and-outs with others, and one-by-one, thanks to John’s good work, the nation’s people are becoming more informed and empowered.

Now, the situation is not perfect. A comment thread is not the ideal forum for the many different topics that need to be covered. (Some folks have politely reminded others not to get too far afield of the legislative issues at hand.) The fact is that it’s very hard to draw out all the information that is involved in legislation. The substance of the issues is complicated, and the legislative process itself is verry complicated.

We created a wiki article for each bill so that information could be organized in a comprehensive way. Information about editing the wiki articles is here. There are a few examples where users have “adopted” a bill and maintained the wiki article about it periodically. The other day, I concatenated comments on the bed bug bill into one big wiki edit (click “read more” in the center column to see the whole thing).

Golly, this would be a great thing for WashingtonWatch.com Superhero “John” to do with the FHA Modernization Act of 2007. In any event, he’s doing his fellow citizens quite a service, and we appreciate it. All the folks commenting on that page are exhibiting the good citizenship that makes it fun to maintain this Web site.