What would a YouTube legislature look like?

Virginia is about to find out. Using a $2,500 grant from the Sunlight Foundation, the nonprofit Richmond Sunlight Web site will purchase the closed-circuit video of an entire legislative session.

The video will then be converted to QuickTime, posted on the online video-sharing site YouTube on a daily basis and integrated into the nonprofit's Web site. 

Once on YouTube, the videos will be available for embedding on any blog or Web site anywhere with minimal effort—opening the doors to the legislature 24/7 from now until forever.

In recent weeks, both Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Graham and the state NAACP have called for legislative Webcams. 

The Virginia experiment shows that's a less expensive proposition than you might think.