Politwoops: Six months of #FAIL on Twitter, brought to you by America's politicians
— -- If you're an elected lawmaker in the United States with a Twitter account, you'd better check twice before firing off that next post.
While the rest of us can rest easy once we hit the delete button after we make a mistake, the Sunlight Foundation is now tracking and posting all deleted tweets from hundreds of politicians.
The site is called "Politwoops," and no nationally elected leader is safe from its all-seeing eye.
The Sunlight Foundation launched the website Wednesday with more than 3,000 errant tweets from the past six months. Whether a politico sends off a mundane typo or accidentally posts a picture of his genitalia to a college student while his wife is out of town, if he deletes a tweet, the Sunlight Foundation will capture it in almost real time and post a screenshot directly to the site.
"The Politwoops archive serves as an illuminating rough draft of how politicians and campaigns hone their social media messaging and amend their record," said the Sunlight Foundation's Nicko Margolies when announcing the new site.
And for those keeping track, in the race for the White House, President Barack Obama has deleted eight posts; Mitt Romney has scrapped just one.
Here are some of our favorites so far: