THIS WILL MAKE YOUR DAY: Doug Ross assembles a superb set of cartoons/graphics to illustrate how one young man with a laptop, cellphone camera, basic research and interview skills, and the assistance of a very capable “David” blew the roof off the biggest state-level fraud scandal in American history.

For those of us old enough to have been in the first generation of bloggers, what Nick Shirley has accomplished — exposing a scandal estimated to reach $9 billion with his self-produced 42-minute documentary that drew 120 million views in 48 hours — is yet more proof of what we’ve been saying about the power of citizen journalism since before 2004 when Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, Powerline’s John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson, and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs exposed CBS News Anchor Dan Rather’s reliance on fraudulent documents in a “60 Minutes” segment intended to help defeat President George W. Bush’s re-election.

Question: How do we encourage the two, three, many, many more Nick Shirleys that are out there even today? Odds are deep blue states like California, Illinois, New York are prime candidates for exposing similar and worse than what Shirley dug up in Minnesota.