Today, there are more than 1,500 extensions available for the Firefox Web browser. If you need Firefox to do something, at this point, there'a a very good chance that you can find an extension capable of doing it.

Recently, however, a Firefox extension did manage to break some new ground. It become one of the first to delve into politics -- not by taking a political stand, but by helping you to make informed decisions about political issues and candidates.The PoliticianSearch extension allows you to search the Project Vote Smart site: a great resource for biographical information, public-policy positions, voting records, interest-group ratings, and those all-important campaign finance records, covering thousands of elected officials and political candidates throughout the United States.

Using PoliticianSearch is easy: When you see the name of a politician whom you want to learn more about, simply highlight their last name, right-click on it, and select the "PoliticianSearch" option on your Firefox context menu.

PoliticianSearch works with Firefox 1.5 and higher; while it actually uses a modified version of another Firefox add-on (the popular DictionarySearch extension), it will install everything it needs to work.

If you're new to the world of Firefox extensions, start here for more information about what they are, how they work, and how to install them (it's easy, really easy).