Part-Time Policy Wonk

New Pew Internet & American Life Project report:

Many Americans assume that China's internet users are unhappy about their government's control of the internet, but a new survey finds most Chinese say they approve of internet regulation, especially by the government.

According to findings from the fourth and most recent of a series of surveys about internet use in China from 2000 to 2007,1 over 80% of respondents say they think the internet should be managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85% say they think the government should be responsible for doing it.

Posted by Anne at 08:37 PM | Permalink

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

A leading open- government advocate says the Ohio Supreme Court is exceeding its powers by trying to take control of state court records.

Cleveland lawyer David Marburger, of the Ohio Coalition for Open Government, said a court- appointed commission drawing up rules on what court records the public should have access to does not have the constitutional authority to do so.

Posted by Anne at 08:36 PM | Permalink

Section 108 Final Report:

The Study Group’s recommendations, conclusions, and other outcomes of its discussions are described in this Report in three separate sections:

• “Recommendations for Legislative Change” addresses issues for which the Study Group agreed a legislative solution is appropriate and agreed on recommendations for legislative change. These recommendations often are subject to the resolution of related outstanding issues, discussed in detail in the body of the Report.
• “Conclusions on Other Issues” addresses issues on which the Study Group had substantive discussions, and agreed a legislative solution might be appropriate, but for which it has no specific recommendations on the major issues.
• “Additional Issues” addresses additional important issues that the Study Group discussed.

Read the full report of the Section 108 Study Group [PDF, 2.5 MB]

Read the Executive Summary [PDF, 1 MB]

Posted by Anne at 08:34 PM | Permalink

From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has told Congress that it will re-open its shuttered libraries in some form by September 30, 2008 but the libraries will not be restored to their former status and capabilities, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Several of the libraries will re-open with only minimal collections and any new holdings will be subject to a centralized, political approval process.

Posted by Anne at 06:33 PM | Permalink

From GPO Access:

Beginning with the 110th Congress, the Public and Private Laws on GPO Access have been digitally signed and certified. GPO has signed and certified the PDF files to assure users that the online documents are official and authentic. More on GPO’s Authentication Initiative.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

The U.S. Marine Corps has agreed to restore public access to unclassified doctrinal documents on its web site.

The official Marine Corps doctrine web site remains inaccessible. But in response to a Federation of American Scientists request (pdf) under the Freedom of Information Act, the Marine Corps said that all releasable contents would soon be made publicly available through the Publications directory of the main USMC web site.

Posted by Anne at 08:30 PM | Permalink

From the Indianapolis Star:

A new state law that requires sellers of adult material to register with the state has Hoosier bookstore owners fuming about government censorship and threatening a legal challenge.

"This lumps us in with businesses that sell things that you can't even mention in a family newspaper," said Ernie Ford, owner of Fine Print Book Store in Greencastle.

Ford was talking about HEA 1042, which Gov. Mitch Daniels signed into law last week. He was one of 15 independent Indiana booksellers who signed a letter last week urging Daniels to veto the legislation.

The new law that takes effect July 1 requires businesses that sell sexually explicit material to pay a $250 fee and register with the secretary of state, which would then pass the information to municipal or county officials so they can monitor the businesses for potential violations of local ordinances.

• Full text of the law (PDF)

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

SLA Press Release:

The Special Libraries Association (SLA) today met with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials to review the agency's report to the U.S. Congress on the future direction of its library network. The report, submitted on 26 March, explains the steps EPA intends to take to reopen libraries closed over the last two years, and details how the agency will allocate an additional $1 million dollars for libraries provided in the FY08 EPA budget earmarked for that purpose.

EPA National Library Network Report to Congress (March 26, 2008)

Posted by Anne at 08:30 PM | Permalink

From Deutsche Welle:

In a blow to Berlin's efforts to boost anti-terrorism measures, Germany's highest court on Wednesday, March 19 blocked parts of a sweeping data-collection law that had prompted large protests by civil liberties.

Germany's constitutional court on Wednesday severely curbed parts of a wide-reaching and highly controversial data collection law that requires telecom companies to store telephone and Internet data for up to six months, dealing a setback to government efforts to fight terrorism.

The law which went into effect in January gave the federal government broad access to data including e-mail addresses, length of call and numbers dialed and in the case of mobile phones, the location calls are made from.

Posted by Anne at 08:49 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Syria is cracking down more on Internet use, imposing tighter monitoring of citizens who link to the Web, as well as jailing bloggers who criticize the government and blocking YouTube and other Web sites deemed harmful to state security.

Posted by Anne at 08:48 PM | Permalink

From the Guardian:

Chinese authorities appear to have stopped blocking the BBC News website, making the English-language version of the site fully accessible throughout the country.

The Chinese government has never officially confirmed that it blocked traffic to the site, but for years web users in China have been served an error message when attempting to access the BBC and other western news sites.

Twitter users and BBC staff in China have reported for several days that they can access stories on the corporation's news website which would previously have been blocked, including stories on the unrest in Tibet.

However, the Chinese-language site still appears to be blocked. Users are served a page that says "the connection has been reset" when attempting to access pages, giving the appearance of a technical error with the BBC's site.

Posted by Anne at 08:47 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

Organisations and individuals using Google's applications suite have no right to data privacy, a case in arbitration has shown.

Lakehead University in Canada was one of the first large-scale adopters of Google applications, but a storm has broken out after staff were told not to use it for personal or sensitive information.

The problem arises because the information is stored on Google's servers in the US where authorities have the right to read everything Google stores under the Patriot Act.

Posted by Anne at 08:46 PM | Permalink

From Public Knowledge:

PK and a group of film makers told the House Judiciary Committee last week what we would like to see as key elements of orphan works legislation. The testimony was submitted by PK and the following group of independent film maker organizations: Doculink, Film Independent, International Documentary Association, Independent Feature Project, National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, and Tribeca Film Institute, for the record for the March 13 House Judiciary hearing.

Posted by Anne at 08:44 PM | Permalink

New Congressional Research Service Report : “Organizing for Homeland Security: The Homeland Security Council Reconsidered,” March 19, 2008. Posted on Secrecy News:

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush established the Office of Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Council (HSC). In his June 2002 proposal for a Department of Homeland Security, President Bush appeared to anticipate the continued operation of both of these entities. However, the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which mandated the new department, statutorily rechartered the HSC as an agency within the Executive Office of the President (EOP). Thereafter, the HSC disappeared from the public record, and its status today remains uncertain. Recently, some have called for the merger of the HSC with the National Security Council. . .

. . . Thereafter, the HSC disappeared from the public record. It does not appear to have complied with requirements for Federal Register publication of such basic information as descriptions of its central organization; where, from whom, and how the public may obtain information about it; “statements of the general course and method by which its functions are channeled and determined”; and rules of procedure, substantive rules of general applicability, and statements of general policy.11 No profile of, or descriptive information regarding, the HSC or its members and staff has appeared, to date, in the annual editions of the United States Government Manual.

Posted by Anne at 08:41 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Legislation pending in the Russian Duma [parliament] would impose new Russian government controls on online content, according to an analysis of Russian news reports from the DNI Open Source Center.

See “Russia–Increased Attempts to Regulate Internet,” DNI Open Source Center, March 24, 2008.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

For the second year in a row, Google shareholders will be asked to hold the Web search giant accountable for protecting free speech, regardless of international borders.

One of the proposals to be submitted at the annual shareholder meeting scheduled for May 8, would require Google to create policies to protect freedom of access to the Internet, according to the company's proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and released publicly on Tuesday.

Posted by Anne at 08:39 PM | Permalink

From NARA:

Footnote.com and the National Archives and Records Administration held a press conference at the Archives in Washington, DC, to announce the release of an online interactive photo of the Vietnam War Memorial. In addition to releasing this unique version of the Wall, Footnote.com enables visitors to search the Wall for people they know and pay tribute by adding photos, comments and stories of those who lost their lives during the Vietnam conflict.

View the Interactive Wall on Footnote.com.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From the Telegraph:

As campaigning slogans go, it isn't exactly blood and thunder. The "Free Our Bills" campaign has as its logo a duck-billed platypus scrambling out under the Westminster portcullis, and as its subtitle: "The Nice Polite Campaign to Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21st-Century Way, Please. Now."

I can't help feeling that the whimsical computer geeks who thought this up - volunteers for the charitable organisation MySociety - are underselling the seriousness of what they're about. What they are trying to do is put pressure on the authorities to publish Bills online in a way that is "compatible with the internet age".

Posted by Anne at 08:35 PM | Permalink

From Free Government information:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has announced a draft "non-exclusive agreement with The Generations Network, Inc. (TGN) to digitize and further expand public access to archival holdings in NARA's custody." The contract restricts free public access for five years.

DRAFT PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Posted for comment: March 10, 2008
Comments due: April 9, 2008
Send comments to: Vision@nara.gov or by fax to 301-837-0319

The contract specifies that NARA will receive digital copies of all holdings that are digitized as part of this agreement and "[a]s with all of NARA's digitization agreements, there will be no charge for researchers at any time to access the digital copies in any of NARA's research rooms" and that users will have "the opportunity to purchase copies of the documents in digital format".

As the NARA announcement notes, projects like this "will enable the public to have electronic access to textual and microfilm records sooner than NARA itself can provide." Once again, lack of funding for public accessibility ends in a two-tier access: free if you get to a reading room, fee if you want to use the Web.

Posted by Anne at 09:00 PM | Permalink

From Yahoo! News:

The Cuban authorities have blocked access from Cuba to the country's most-read blogger, Yoani Sanchez, she said on Monday.

Sanchez, whose critical "Generacion Y" blog received 1.2 million hits in February, said Cubans can no longer visit her Web page (http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/) and two other home-grown bloggers on the Web site on a server in Germany.

All they can see is a "error downloading" message.

Posted by Anne at 08:53 PM | Permalink

From the Sunlight Foundation:

So this is a cool new resource. One with a definite opinion about the role of money in politics.

Follow the Oil Money is a new website that tracks which oil companies are pumping their money into politics, who is receiving it, and how it correlates to key climate, energy and other votes. You can check out the connections via relationship graphs, or tables of information.

Posted by Anne at 08:52 PM | Permalink

From Federal Computer Week:

The Environmental Protection Agency moved too quickly in closing some of its research libraries and may have lost some files as a result, government auditors recently testified before a House panel.

EPA’s push to digitize its libraries led to the rushed closings, said John Stephenson, director of natural resources and environment at the Government Accountability Office in testimony March 13 before the House Science and Technology Committee’s Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee.

Posted by Anne at 08:51 PM | Permalink

From the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission:

Consumers are bombarded with news and information every day. Important safety information may be missed by parents due to the hectic pace of the day. Now, caregivers and consumers in New York City and across the country have an easy way to keep their families safe in their homes.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) offers free safety information to the public through its Neighborhood Safety Network (NSN), an initiative designed to assist local organizations in providing lifesaving information to underserved members of their community. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a major health insurance company, fire departments, health clinics and numerous other organizations receive critical safety information from CPSC on poison prevention, carbon monoxide safety, bicycle safety and many other topics, which they provide to tens of thousands of parents and consumers across the country.

Today, The New York Public Library (NYPL) system announced that they have signed up to become a member of the NSN, joining a network of 5,200 grassroots organizations. In addition, CPSC encourages residents of New York City to join our “Drive To One Million” campaign – an initiative aimed at signing up one million consumers to receive free e-mail alerts on topics ranging from lead in toys to fire hazards with appliances to keeping babies and children safe at home.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

From Infopeople:

Libraries are making innovative use of their local treasures. The Library of Congress is sharing a sampling of its rich collection on Flickr, as well continuing to make its own American Memory site a must visit. If your library has been digitizing some of its treasures to put online, stop into this webcast for a concrete, understandable approach to understanding the copyright issues critical to your project.

Spend an hour of prevention watching this webcast, and minimize the chances of lengthy legal battles in the future. This webcast is recommended for all libraries participating in the Local History Digital Resources Program (LHDRP).

Webcast: March 27, 2008
Time: 12pm-1pm
Speaker: Mary Minow

Infopeople's funding limits attendance at live webcasts & Infopeople Webinars to anyone in the California library community. If you are outside California please do not attend the live event. However, you are welcome to see the archived version the day following the webcast or Infopeople Webinar.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From OpenSecrets.org:

Since Sunshine Week 2007, a few rays of sunlight have lit up Congress and the Bush administration in the form of ethics legislation and other bills mandating fuller disclosure. As these changes are implemented, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics is examining their effects on the public's ability to know what's going on in campaign finance, lobbying and other areas related to money and politics.

Last year CRP identified the issues related to money and elite influence in politics that could stand more disclosure in the name of a healthier democracy. In observance this year of Sunshine Week, a national government transparency initiative, we're revisiting those areas to see what's gotten better, what's gotten worse and what's stayed the same. Despite the new laws in place, our lawmakers still have a ways to go.

Posted by Anne at 08:36 PM | Permalink

From Boing Boing:

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes,

John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation alerted me to a situation about a month ago that we've been pursuing (with EFF's help) at the Government Accountability Office, which is an arm of the U.S. Congress.

The law librarians at GAO have compiled complete federal legislative histories from 1915 on. These are the definitive dossiers that track a bill through the hearing process and into law. If you want to divine the intent of Congress, this is where you go.

GAO cut a contract with Thomson West to have these documents scanned. Thomson West claims they have exclusive access to these public documents and even go so far as to boast that you should purchase this exclusive "product" from West because the GAO law librarians (public employees!) have done all the work for you!

If you're interesting in tracking this issue, I've created a Scribd group that has all the documents we've obtained so far. Next step: we asked for a copy of every document scanned under the FOIA laws!

Posted by Anne at 08:34 PM | Permalink

From the California Library Association:

Library Legislative Day in Sacramento will be held on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 and our network of Legislative Contacts is busy making appointments with legislators to discuss topics of interest to the library community.

Posted by Anne at 05:24 PM | Permalink

From the National Security Archive:

In celebration of Sunshine Week, the National Security Archive's Mexico Project publishes today a new study of Mexico's transparency law: "FOI in Practice: Measuring the Complexity of Information Requests and Quality of Government Responses in Mexico."

The study represents the first comprehensive analysis of the Mexican freedom of information law: what information requesters have sought and how the government has responded.

Posted by Anne at 05:23 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law.

So he drafted a bill, now gathering support in Albany, that would make it a crime — punishable by a fine to be determined — for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent.

Posted by Anne at 05:20 PM | Permalink

From the Associated Press:

At least four State Department workers pried into the supposedly secure passport files of presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, abashed officials admitted Friday in a revelation that had Condoleezza Rice promising a full investigation and telephoning the candidates to apologize personally.

Posted by Anne at 05:19 PM | Permalink

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) along with the National Security Archive urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to strike down the National Security Letter (NSL) provision of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

Posted by Anne at 05:18 PM | Permalink

From the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index:

Citizen satisfaction with federal government websites declines for a third consecutive quarter, according to the first quarter report of the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Government Satisfaction Index. The Index aggregate score for the first quarter of 2008 fell to 72.4 on ACSI’s 100-point scale, its lowest score in three years and a full point lower than one year ago.

Posted by Anne at 05:16 PM | Permalink

From the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Four dozen groups spanning the political spectrum today sent a letter to the Senate urging lawmakers to include federal scientists in pending legislation designed to protect whistleblowers. The coalition of academic, consumer, environmental, government reform and health groups -- which includes the Consumer Federation of America, Common Cause, Federation of American Scientists, Liberty Coalition and Rutherford Institute -- was organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Posted by Anne at 05:15 PM | Permalink

From the Sunlight Foundation:

Lawrence Lessig, Stanford University law professor and world-renowned expert in intellectual property, is announcing that he's going to invest a significant amount of his time and energy confronting the pervasive and corruptive influence of money in our democracy. You may have heard of the recent Draft Lessig movement that almost convinced him to run for Congress. He ultimately decided not to make the run, but he's not retreating from the fight.

Today, at a lecture here in Washington, sponsored by Sunlight and Omidyar Network, he's launching the ChangeCongress project where he'll focus his academic interests on the issue of the systemic corruption of American democracy. Lessig will outline his hopes for ChangeCongress and how it will help citizens reclaim their democracy from the culture of corruption.

A video of Lessig's Sunshine Week lecture is available at http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/video_of_lessigs_change_congress_launch.

Posted by Anne at 05:11 PM | Permalink

From the Associated Press:

The Environmental Protection Agency, peppered with requests from lawmakers for documents, is returning fire with an unusual request for confidential papers.

In the tug of war between Congress and the executive branch, that's tantamount to man biting dog.

EPA Associate Administrator Christopher Bliley recently asked for transcripts of closed-door interviews with seven senior EPA staffers concerning the agency's efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Posted by Anne at 05:10 PM | Permalink

From the Baltimore Sun:

With a few clicks of a mouse, Marylanders could soon be able to search through an online database to find out exactly how much the state is spending to construct the Inter-County Connector in Suburban Washington, or on Chesapeake Bay restoration projects, or even what taxpayers are coughing up for the King Barn Dairy Mooseum.

The proposed database, which earned preliminary approval in the House of Delegates and saw no opposition in a key Senate committee yesterday, would also allow anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to find out where the money is coming from, who was awarded the contracts and how much they received for anything else.

Posted by Anne at 05:08 PM | Permalink

From the Associated Press:

Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

Posted by Anne at 05:06 PM | Permalink

From NARA:

The National Archives and Records Administration has opened 534 cubic feet or approximately 1.3 million pages of historic Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records covering the Cold War period from 1946-1977.

This "Sunshine Week" event marks a joint effort of the National Archives and the CIA highlighting the importance of open government and freedom of information. It is also a part of the National Declassification Initiative program announced by the Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein in April 2006.

Posted by Anne at 05:04 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

A Defense Department-sponsored report that examined captured Iraqi documents for indications of links between Saddam Hussein and terrorist organizations is now available online.

The five-volume report affirmed that there was “no ’smoking gun’ (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.” But it also said there was “strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism.”

Although the report was publicly released on March 13, the Department of Defense declined to publish it online, offering instead to provide copies on disk. The full five-volume study has now been posted on the Federation of American Scientists web site. See “Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents,” Institute for Defense Analyses, November 2007, redacted and released March 2008.

Posted by Anne at 05:02 PM | Permalink

From the Utne Reader:

During George W. Bush’s first and second terms, his administration has slowed the release of essential government information to a trickle, in most cases to avoid unflattering public scrutiny. This has gone largely unnoticed by the general public. After all, with a war going on and a different celebrity getting thrown in the clink every other week, what’s a suppressed report here, some redacted testimony there, a wee bit of executive privilege over there, there, and there?

Dick Cheney’s aversion to the sunlight has made headlines so often that his latest information crackdown is more likely to be fodder for David Letterman than it is to spark outrage. Still, if the average citizen saw a grocery list of all the instances of government suppression over the past seven years, it’s a good guess it would lead to an outcry. Something like: Hey, what the hell happened to the public’s right to know?

Posted by Anne at 05:00 PM | Permalink

From Free Government Information:

That leads me to a conclusion that we at FGI have long advocated: Libraries should be building collections of digital government information and GPO should facilitate this by depositing government information in FDLP libraries. If libraries created collections that could be text-mined by scholars and researchers, it would be possible to better audit, analyze, and preserve government information and make it more difficult for information to be scrubbed without being discovered and exposed. Indeed, it would remove, to some extent, the motivation to "scrub" if it was well know that the information was preserved and easily discoverable. The question we should be asking ourselves is: How much are we losing every day? The task is too big for any one library or any one government agency (i.e., GPO). And it is not a task that commercial entities like Google and MSN are likely to take on.

Posted by Anne at 04:59 PM | Permalink

From Perrspectives:

What a difference a week makes, especially when it comes to the rollercoaster American economy. No where is the impact of looming recession and the near-meltdown on Wall Street clearer than on the White House web site. Just days ago, the site boasted about President Bush's glorious stewardship of the U.S. economy. Now, the White House's economy web page reflects the mad scramble to ward off the twin crises of the housing market and the financial system.

Posted by Anne at 04:55 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

The National Archives and the William J. Clinton Presidential Library on Wednesday released more than 11,000 pages of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s public schedule for her eight years as first lady.

The long-awaited documents, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and a lawsuit, show her daily activities for the 2,888 days that her husband was president, from her meetings with foreign dignitaries to designing the White House Christmas card. In some ways, they provide support for Mrs. Clinton’s assertion that she played a central public and private role in the policies of the Clinton Administration.

But some of the documents also serve to conceal much more than they reveal. There are redactions — blacked-out sections — on more than 4,400 pages, and on many days there is an entry for a “private meeting” that gives no clue as to whom she met or what the meeting was about.

These records are now available on the Clinton Library web site.

Posted by Anne at 04:53 PM | Permalink

From Editor & Publisher:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is charging a newspaper $209,990 for records documenting the agency's response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a price deemed "absurd" by one lawmaker.

The Advocate of Baton Rouge must pay that amount before FEMA will turn over copies of more than 2 million pages of documents relating to inspection and maintenance of government-issued trailers and mobile homes, the newspaper reported yesterday.

FEMA also gave the newspaper 10 days to pay or said it would consider the request withdrawn.

Posted by Anne at 04:50 PM | Permalink

From the Sunshine Week blog:

Citing "some good days recently" for the Sunshine community, Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley said, "After years of playing mostly defense, and mostly getting beat, we've finally been able to get back on offense and score a few points."

Speaking to a Sunshine Week dinner crowd at the National Press Club in Washington, Curley pointed to legislative gains in Freedom of Information Act reform and toward a reporters' shield law as particular bright spots. "Accomplishments," he said, "that not long ago seemed unattainable."

Posted by Anne at 04:48 PM | Permalink

From the Sunshine Week blog:

Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) used the occasion of Sunshine Week to speak out against excessive delays by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in releasing information to the news media and public about disasters and their aftermath — particularly regarding Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Posted by Anne at 04:47 PM | Permalink

From OMB Watch:

OMB Watch today [March 19th] released a report that names the top five open government questions that Americans would like candidates for federal office to answer before the November elections. Top Open Government Questions for Candidates, based on a survey of more than 2,000 people, was released in conjunction with Sunshine Week.

Posted by Anne at 04:44 PM | Permalink

From the