This week with Congressman J. Gresham Barrett

Today Waldo intended to have a look at Second District Congressman Joe Wilson's official website, following his plan of reviewing congressional district sites in numerical order. But Joe Wilson's site seems to have crashed again, so we'll catch him on the roundabout, and move on to the Third Congressional District, that of J. Gresham Barrett.

Barrett's website leads with statements by the Congressman on issues of interest to him. In the last week he has put up one arguing that including a hate crimes bill in the defense appropriations act is an affront to freedom:

“Congressional Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for trying to attach this wrongheaded policy to legislation which provides funding for our troops. No one supports our military more than I do, but we can and we should provide them the resources they need without sacrificing that for which they are fighting.”

Barrett has links to two committees on which he sits, and sidebars devoted to his bio, news, issues, legislation, constituent services, and an eight point pledge about congressional earmarks and how he deals with them. That's interesting reading.

The News tab repeats his statement on the hate crimes bill, followed by a late September statement against abortion. There are links to two floor speeches, from February and April.A righthand sidebar has links to articles he wrote back in the spring. Clearly not a section that's considered very important, except maybe to benchmark some party base issues since Barrett is running for SC governor.

The Issues tab highlights six areas the congressman believes are pivotal to our times: energy, fiscal restraint, immigration, global war on terror, social and constitutional issues, and health care. Each subpage is a three to five paragraph boilerplate essay referring to the congressman in the third person, with links to various other related press releases and comments.

The Legislation tab features bills Barrett has introduced or cosponsored. The most recent was introduced in September 2008. They're all red-meat conservative stuff in between request to name federal buildings after military personnel.

Congressman Barrett has no Kids' Page.

Overall rating: mediocre. Barrett announced for governor March 5, 2009 and the timing of much of the material posted on his site reflects an apparent desire to gin up the base in advance of his announcement. Since then, the tone of the website is, "Whatever, it's up or out."

UPDATE: Barrett evidently hasn't learned you should search the Balloon Boy's attic before Tweeting.