How many people can call up Senator Hillary Clinton and get a sit-down interview? Or get their phone call to their Representative answered ahead of all those lobbyists lined up down the corridor of Rayburn or Cannon? Or just bump into a presidential candidate in the corridors of Capitol Hill or on the campaign trail and expect to get a question answered?

Not many. Till now, that is.

As a print and broadcast journalist for the past 25 years I've often been envious of the sort of questions so-called 'real people' ask, you know, the unvarnished, 'I'm asking this because it really matters to me' sort of question that politicians pretend to like, but can be loathe to answer. After all, straightforward honest questions beg for straightforward honest answers. Whenever non-journalists get to play journalist for 15 minutes and ask the questions, they often have a better strike rate than those who 'commit journalism' each day at getting the politician off their prepared script. Why is that? is it just more 'real' because the stakes to that questioner are personal, consequential, direct?

Late last year I had a crazy idea. Why not provide a place on the web where regular folk could ask any question they wanted of their lawmakers? We at Capitol News Connection would simply do what we already do each day - except this time, on top of our regular reporting duties for some 200 public radio stations, we'd ask citizen questions too. I thought it would be an excellent way for us as journalists to be better in touch with what people really want from their lawmakers, what their questions would tell us about the very real challenges and concerns they have - whether access to affordable health care, Iraq or Iran, rising gas prices, or illegal immigration.

But more than that, I wanted to create a space where voices could aggregate: It is hard for a lawmaker to dodge a question (or avoid an issue) asked by, say 1,869 in one city, or 16,932 in 29 states! This is a tool designed to hold power to account, by ensuring our lawmakers know citizens are watching what they do each day.

So after many months of theorizing, planning, web development, and now the latest rounds of bug testing...here we are. We think this 1.0 iteration is pretty d*** cool, and we're already thinking of the many other things we want to do to improve it.

And that's where you come in! Ask questions. Vote. Listen. Use the exclusive audio in your blogs. (We even give you the embed code!) Play with it. And by all means, please give us your suggestions for how we can evolve and improve. But most of all have fun...and keep our lawmakers on their toes!