Part-Time Policy Wonk

From the Washington Post:

Robert Shea is a Republican insider with a head for business and a yen for federal program performance standards. Gary Bass is a government watchdog with a mean bite who wants openness and knows how to get it.

Official antagonists, political opposites, brought together by a wild, crazy idea: federal budget transparency. Online and searchable. Free for the asking.

Today, the White House budget office officially launches USASpending.gov, a Web site that shows taxpayers where their dollars go and which legislators, contractors and regions get the most.

The site was created by Shea, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget. It was modeled on a site pioneered by Bass, director of OMB Watch, one of the budget office's harshest nonprofit critics.

Posted by Anne at 08:22 PM | Permalink

From OpenCongress:

We are really excited to be releasing our latest widget today. Our new "Congress, I'm Watching" widget lets you announce which bills in Congress you support or oppose, while also sharing links to clear, up-to-date information that encourages others to get involved the legislation themselves.

Any blog, membership group, or other organization can customize the "Congress, I'm Watching" widget to tell their readers -- and Congress -- which bills they want to see passed and which bills they don't. As with all our widgets, it's free, customizable to fit the look of your site, easy to integrate (just copy/paste a small chunk of html into your site), and can be set up in a manner of minutes.

Posted by Anne at 07:47 PM | Permalink

From Public Citizen:

Public Citizen today unveiled a Web site that provides an up-to-date listing of the 2008 presidential hopefuls’ “bundlers,” the super-fundraisers who are powering the billion-dollar race for the White House. The revitalized site, an expansion of Public Citizen’s similar effort during the 2004 campaign and the only such clearinghouse for the 2008 campaign, is at www.WhiteHouseForSale.org.

The site identifies nearly 1,900 individuals who are funneling money from other donors to the candidates. Of these, more than 230 were bundlers for President George W. Bush in at least one of his presidential campaigns, or for either Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) or former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in 2004.

Posted by Anne at 08:44 PM | Permalink

The Capitolist FAQ:

The Capitolist is an anonymous, uncensored message board for congressional staff members. Contributors are welcome to express their views and opinions on congressional affairs, politics or any other subject of interest. We encourage contributors to discuss their first-hand experiences with lawmakers and to report on the events of the day.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From the Sunlight Foundation:

The nation's top defense contractors were also the biggest beneficiaries of congressional earmarks in 2005, an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation has found. Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics led the pack. Those four corporations collected a combined $1.09 billion in earmark awards. Overall, the top 20 corporate recipients of 2005 earmarks were all defense contractors.

The analysis was based on the database of earmarks from 2005 produced, and posted online, by the federal government's Office of Management and Budget. OMB collected the data from the agencies responsible for dispensing the money. The database does not include the names of members of Congress who asked for specific earmarks to be inserted onto the books, since members were not required to disclose this information.

The Sunlight Foundation standardized the data, linking subsidiaries to parents.

Posted by Anne at 08:09 PM | Permalink

From Federal Computer Week:

With the 2008 presidential race already on the fast track, the Federal Election Commission has developed an online mapping application that will make it easier for the public to track where — literally — presidential candidates are getting their money.

The application, scheduled to debut June 12 on the FEC Web site, will enable users to view donations by geographic area. The interface will let users narrow down their geographical search to three digits of a ZIP code and will feature a database with the names of the companies contributors work for and the dates of their donations.

Posted by Anne at 07:15 PM | Permalink

From the California First Amendment Coalition:

Those enterprising members of the Tracy City Council have come up with a strategy to hide from public view all their written communications about government business. With a bit of legal legerdemain, they claim to be able to evade state open-government laws, transforming their communications from public records into private correspondence.

How can they do that? Simple, according to their legal pleadings in a lawsuit in San Joaquin County Superior Court: When sending or receiving email, as long as the council members use their own computer (rather than a city-owned computer), and as long as they use their own email account (rather than an account set up by the city), their messages are not subject to the Public Records Act, no matter what the emails say or to whom they’re sent.

The Public Records Act defines a public record as “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency . . .” (emphasis added.) Email that is not composed on a Tracy computer or transmitted via a Tracy email account or server is not “prepared, owned, used or retained” by the city of Tracy, argue the council members.

Posted by Anne at 07:41 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that you have one.

That's what I keep telling myself, anyway, to avoid becoming depressed by Maplight.org.

It's a new Web site with a very simple mission: to correlate lawmakers' voting records with the money they've accepted from special-interest groups.

All of this is public information. All of it has been available for decades. Other sites, including OpenSecrets.org, expose who's giving how much to whom. But nobody has ever revealed the relationship between money given and votes cast to quite such a startling effect.

Posted by Anne at 08:59 PM | Permalink

From Daily Kos comes the DOJ Email Database related to the U.S. Attorney firing scandal

To my knowledge, this is the first and largest collective effort by volunteers to assimilate open source data and convert it into a public, referenced, research tool. . .

. . . This database includes all of the 2086 unique emails included in the HJC [House Judiciary Committee]-released documents from the DOJ. It is fully searchable and referenced, so you can easily see the email "with your own eyes". Also included is referenced biographical information for many of the involved personnel. Finally, as a second functionality, we also include a "Text Search" tool that enables search of all of the text of all of the PDF documents.

Also online is a usable, electronic version of the immigration reform bill from theTruth Laid Bear.

Late Friday night, an electronic version of the "immigration reform" bill was finally published, and quickly found its way into the hands of KLo at the Corner. From there, it has spread all over the net, of course.

But the published version is a big, clunky PDF file (which, if you like, you can download here.) Good if you plan on printing out all 326 pages of it, not so good if you are a blogger who wants to comment on a particular section and show your readers exactly what you're talking about.

So I've taken the copy published by NRO and parsed it into a format that allows for easy browsing online. . .

. . . If those who forged this "compromise" have their way, this bill will be voted on as early as Tuesday. That's a crazily short amount of time for Senators --- let alone the American public --- to review, understand, and have a voice on the substance of such a complex bill.

My hope, however, is that by presenting the bill in this form, I will help make the bill more accessible to all, and provide a central spot where commentary, criticism, and suggested improvements can be assembled. Who knows --- maybe our erstwhile leaders on Capitol Hill will take notice, and take some of our comments to heart.

Posted by Anne at 08:10 PM | Permalink

League of Women Voters Press Release:

The League of Women Voters (LWV) is pleased to announce the release of Observing Your Government In Action: Protecting your Right to Know. This comprehensive resource guide, part of the League’s Citizen Transparency Initiative, provides useful best practices and tips for observing government activities and promoting transparency.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between money and politics. We shine a light on campaign contributions and show their related legislative outcomes, which leads to a more informed public and election reform.

The MAPLight.org database brings together information on campaign contributions and votes in the California legislature. The first of its kind in the nation, MAPLight provides an unprecedented window into the connections between money and politics.

MAPLight.org currently includes complete data for the 2003-2004 California legislative session. We are currently processing data from 2005-2006 and are seeking support to expand MAPLight.org to include the U.S. Congress.
MAPLight.org operates as a project of TakeBackCA.org, a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Current Data and Future Plans
MAPLight.org currently includes all 5,000 bills in the 2003-2004 California legislative session and all California campaign contributions from January 2001 through December 2004.

We are seeking financial support to extend MAPLight.org to include up-to-the minute data in California and data for other states and U.S. Congress. Thank you for your interest in this groundbreaking project to illuminate the connection between money and politics.

Posted by Anne at 08:04 PM | Permalink

From Wired:

Tread carefully, politicians -- concerned citizens are watching your every move on the web. Their tools? Custom data mashups that use public databases to draw correlations between every vote cast and every dollar spent in Washington. . .

. . . Anyone -- from bloggers and students to lobbyists and activists -- can use these sites to quickly drill down into the correlation between a politician's vote and the money he or she received from special interests. The graphs and reports are easily shared or posted on a blog. The sites give access to data by legislator, bill number, bill subject or special interest.

Posted by Anne at 08:39 PM | Permalink

From the Free Expression Policy Project:

Clearly, we can't depend on judges alone to put the brakes on an overly secretive and gag order-happy government. Only an outraged populace can give judges the necessary support for openness and executive officers the necessary message that it, not secrecy, should be the default setting for democracy. And only a vigilant press can assure that the public knows how much information is kept secret, and how undue secrecy can distort both democracy and history.

Posted by Anne at 08:24 PM | Permalink

From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today has released a report, WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act, detailing the legal issues behind the story of the White House e-mail scandal.

WITHOUT A TRACE covers the following areas:
• Presidential Records Act (PRA): Enacted in 1978, requires the president to preserve all presidential records, which are defined as those records relating to the “activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of [the president’s] constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties. . .”
• Clinton Administration Policy: In 1993, then-Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary John Podesta sent a memo to all presidential staff explaining that the PRA required all staff members to maintain all records, including emails. Podesta stated that the use of external email networks was prohibited because records would not be saved as required. The 1997 White House Manual and a 2000 memo issued by Mark Lindsay, then Assistant to the President for Management and Administration echoed this policy, requiring staff to use only the White House email system for official communications.
• Bush Administration Policy: The Bush Administration has refused to make public its record-keeping policy. A confidential source provided CREW with a 2002 document indicating the use of “non-EOP messaging-enabled mechanisms should not be used for official business.”
• Bush Administration Practice: In the wake of the scandals surrounding Jack Abramoff and the fired U.S. Attorneys, emails were released showing that top White House staffers routinely used Republican National Committee (RNC) email accounts to conduct official business. For example, J. Scott Jennings, White House Deputy Political Director, used an RNC account to communicate with the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales regarding the appointments of new U.S. Attorneys. Similarly, Susan Ralston, a former aide to Karl Rove, used RNC email accounts to communicate with Abramoff about appointments to the Department of the Interior.
• PRA Violations: 1) The administration failed to implement adequate record-keeping systems to archive presidential email records; 2) two confidential sources independently informed CREW that the administration abandoned a plan to recover more than five million missing emails; 3) White House staff used outside email accounts to conduct presidential business, ensuring that emails were not adequately preserved. In fact, former Abramoff associate Kevin Ring said in an email to Abramoff that Ralston had told him not to send emails to her official White House account “because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.”
• Hatch Act Excuse: The administration has claimed that Rove, Jennings and other staffers use RNC accounts to avoid violating the Hatch Act. This is untrue. The Hatch Act prohibits White House staff from using official resources for purely “political” purposes. “Political” refers to the president’s role as either a candidate for office or as the leader of his party. Email communications regarding presidential appointments for U.S. Attorney and Interior Department positions clearly fall within the PRA as making appointment is an official presidential function and does not relate to the president’s role as party leader.

Posted by Anne at 08:35 PM | Permalink

OMB Press Release:

Today, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) updated its earmark database with details on 13,496 earmarks totaling more than $19 billion for Fiscal Year 2005 appropriations. This database is available to the public on OMB’s web site http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/earmarks/index.html TARGET=_blank.

As OMB Watch notes:

This is a remarkable achievement in terms of advancing government spending transparency and, worth noting, of OMB's own initiative -- no statute or Presidential order compelled them to produce this database.

Posted by Anne at 08:04 PM | Permalink

From Common Cause:

Common Cause Vice President for Advocacy Celia Wexler testified Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to urge support for a proposal to require disclosure on contributions made to presidential libraries. Wexler testified in support of Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA)'s proposal that would require quarterly public disclosure through the Internet of donations of $200 or more to presidential fundraising organizations.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

This hearing will examine the need for public disclosure of donations made to private foundations established to fund presidential libraries and related facilities. The committee will consider possible legislative proposals to require such disclosure.

Wecast of the hearing

Posted by Anne at 07:39 PM | Permalink

OpenCongress brings together official government information with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress. Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists know what's really going on in Congress. Now, everyone can be an insider. OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation.

OpenCongress brings together, for the first time in one place, all the best data on what's really happening in Congress:
• Official information from Thomas, the website of the Library of Congress, made available by GovTrack.us: all the bills, Members of Congress, votes, committee reports, issue areas, and more.
• News articles about Congress from Google News.
• Blog posts about Congress from Technorati and Google Blog Search.
• Campaign contribution information from OpenSecrets.org, the website of the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Posted by Anne at 07:48 PM | Permalink

OMB Watch Press Release:

OMB Watch today (Feb. 22, 2007) launched the first in a series of upgrades to its popular FedSpending.org website, which is a searchable database of nearly all government spending since FY 2000. The site updates make FedSpending.org more comprehensive, more searchable, and more customizable. Journalists, researchers, and the public, among others, will benefit from the upgrades

Posted by Anne at 07:43 PM | Permalink

2006 Gold Mouse Report

No, it has nothing to do with Mickey.

Since 1998, the Congressional Management Foundation has been tracking the use of the Internet by Congress in an effort to identify best practices to cope with new technologies and utilize them to meet the needs and goals of congressional offices. . .

. . . The purpose of this report is to recognize the congressional Web sites that successfully utilized the Internet to better serve their constituencies and the goals of their offices. We encourage all offices to view a dynamic Web site as critical to their job and an integral part of the services they provide for Americans. To that end, we investigated and identified the best practices, guidelines, and necessary approaches to making a successful Web site. We present them as resources for all congressional offices seeking to improve their presence on the Internet.

Posted by Anne at 07:41 PM | Permalink

From the SLA Government Information Division Blog:

The White House Office of Management and Budget launched the initial version of the FedSpending.gov database today, February 15. The website is intended to provide a searchable database of federal grants, contracts, loans, and other spending. This initial version fulfills a requirement in the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (PL 109-282), known as FFATA. The deadline for launch of the fully developed site is January 1, 2008. FedSpending.gov helpfully includes links to text of FFATA, the implementation schedule, and similar websites from the government and elsewhere. The primary goal of this first phase is to give the public an opportunity to provide input on what information they would like to be able to access.

Posted by Anne at 08:08 PM | Permalink

LegiStorm has now released the latest staff salary data from the U.S. House of Representatives. The second quarter of 2006 is available.

We have many more improvements planned for LegiStorm in the coming months. We are broadening our database of salary data to include more data from years past. We are also adding new ways to browse and search salary data. We will let you know as soon as major improvements are online. We have added to our staff so that in the future, our salary data should appear more rapidly after the publication of the House and Senate expenditure reports. We are planning other products too which we hope to share with you soon.

Posted by Anne at 09:29 PM | Permalink

"The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act: Background, Overview, and Implementation Issues" (pdf), October 6, 2006.

This report summarizes the legislative history and key provisions of P.L. 109-282 (S. 2590), compares it to H.R. 5060, and discusses challenges that are associated with implementing the new law’s proposed database and that may prove to be areas for future congressional oversight. This report will be updated as events warrant.

Posted by Anne at 08:01 PM | Permalink

Join Us Oct. 10, as OMB Watch and the Center for Responsive Politics Draw the Curtain Back on Federal Spending and Congressional Conduct!

Do you want to make the most informed decisions possible on Election Day? Do you want to see which programs and agencies get the most federal dollars? How about which contractors or congressional districts?
We're unveiling a tool that will help you do just that.

Join us for what will be an extraordinary moment for good, accountable government. Participate in a live webcast on Oct. 10, 2006, 9:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, when OMB Watch will launch its much anticipated online database allowing you to search, aggregate and analyze all federal spending, FedSpending.org.

Also during the webcast, the Center for Responsive Politics will release two new online databases that will be made available on their government transparency mainstay OpenSecrets.org. The first will allow users to see overviews of members' net worth and holdings, and learn how many members own stock in pharmaceutical firms and oil companies, for instance. The second gives updated information on the lavish trips taken by members and their staffs that are financed by third parties--in many cases special interests with business before Congress.

When: LIVE Tuesday, October 10, 2006, 9:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Where to view it: http://www.ConnectLive.com/events/sunlightfoundation

What you'll need: Windows Media Player (free download available here) or Real Player (free download available here)

Posted by Anne at 08:03 PM | Permalink

Thanks to Free Government Information for pointing out this state-by-state map of ballot initiatives coming to a ballot box near you this fall. From PBS's NOW.

Click where you live to find ballot proposals you'll be voting on this November, as well as a campaign finance disclosure report card for your state (You might be surprised at the number of states with failing grades.)

Posted by Anne at 08:43 PM | Permalink

About The Political Ads Database:

The database includes political advertisements funded by campaigns, parties, committees, and independent advocacy groups. Most of the ads are tied to specific U.S. House, U.S. Senate, or gubernatorial races throughout the country. Some of the ads are more general "issue" or advocacy ads not tied to a particular race or candidate. You can search for ads based on the criteria listed below.

Posted by Anne at 08:25 PM | Permalink

New from LegiStorm:

Based on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, LegiStorm's first information product is a database of congressional staff salaries. The information is provided in a strictly factual, non-partisan fashion. We have no political purpose except to make the workings of Congress as transparent as possible. We expect this resource to be useful to journalists, researchers, and current and would-be staffers - as well as regular citizens who simply want to know how their representatives spend public money.

We obtain our data for this site from the official record books: the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House reports. The Senate publishes its data every six months; the House, every three months. It takes several weeks for these offices to publish their data and it takes another few short weeks for LegiStorm to get the data into our database. Therefore, the most recent information is not available on our site.

Posted by Anne at 08:19 PM | Permalink

OpenTheGovernment.org’s third annual report, Secrecy Report Card 2006, shows a continued expansion of government secrecy across a broad array of agencies and actions. . .

. . . The current administration has exercised an unprecedented level of restriction of access to information about, and suppression of discussion of, the federal government’s policies and decisions.

Posted by Anne at 07:35 PM | Permalink

Press Release:

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today joined a coalition of groups and websites to launch an interactive online database of the more than the 1,800 earmarks in the House version of the fiscal 2007 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 5647). The effort aims to make government more open and accountable by getting the public directly involved in tracking and researching earmarks.

Posted by Anne at 08:36 PM | Permalink

The Washington Post has launched a new political ads database.

The database includes political advertisements funded by campaigns, parties, committees, and indepdendent advocacy groups. Most of the ads are tied to specific U.S. House, U.S. Senate, or gubernatorial races throughout the country. Some of the ads are more general "issue" or advocacy ads not tied to a particular race or candidate. You can search for ads based on the criteria listed below.

Posted by Anne at 08:26 PM | Permalink

From the letter:

The Project On Government Oversight ( POGO ) is an independent nonprofit that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more accountable federal government. POGO has been made aware that there is an unreleased 20-page unclassified report documenting the findings of an independent investigation led by Michael Stern into the activities of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham. We are writing to urge you to make public this unclassified report.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

A new legislative initiative (S. 2590) would require the government to disclose and to publish online all federal contracts, grants, and other forms of spending.

"I like to think of this bill as 'Google for Government Spending'," said Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).

"The concept behind the bill is really quite simple: Put information on government spending out there for all to see and greater accountability will follow. It will also change the expectations of those receiving funds that they will know in advance that the information will be public," he said.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

Thanks to Free Government Information for calling my attention to these 2 stories:

Invisible Men: Did Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl mislead the Supreme Court?

It's not within the Supreme Court's power to decide the constitutional challenges brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Guantanamo detainee whose case will be argued before the court tomorrow, say Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. In a brief they filed with the Supreme Court, they argue that Congress kicked Hamdan's current case out of court when it passed the Detainee Treatment Act last December.

The senators base their argument on the "legislative history" of the DTA—the official statements that members of Congress make about a bill leading up to its passage, as captured in the Congressional Record. In other words, Graham and Kyl cite themselves: in particular, an "extensive colloquy" between the two that appears in the Record on Dec. 21, 2005, the day of the DTA's passage. Justice Department lawyers for the Bush administration rely on the same colloquy as evidence that "Congress was aware" that the DTA would strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear "pending cases, including this case" brought by the Guantanamo detainees.

The problem is that Kyl and Graham's colloquy didn't actually happen on Dec. 21. It was inserted into the Congressional Record just before the law passed, which means that the colloquy did not alert other members of Congress to the views it contains. Inserting comments into the Record is standard practice in Congress. What's utterly nonstandard is implying to the Supreme Court that testimony was live when it wasn't. The colloquy is evidence of what Kyl and Graham thought about the meaning of the DTA. But it doesn't show that any other member of Congress shared their understanding. Everything else in the record that directly addresses whether the DTA forces the Supreme Court to toss Hamdan comes from Levin or another Democrat—and explicitly states that the DTA leaves Hamdan alone.

Senators Kyl and Graham's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Scam: The Deceptive Amicus Brief They Filed in the Guantanamo Detainee Case

The Bush/Cheney Administration has been doing everything possible to keep its treatment of purported terrorist detainees out of the federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court. To assist the Administration, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jon Kyl of Arizona engaged in a blatant scam that was revealed during the briefing of Hamdan.

Senators Graham and Kyl not only misled their Senate colleagues, but also shamed their high offices by trying to deliberately mislead the U.S. Supreme Court. Their effort failed. I have not seen so blatant a ploy, or abuse of power, since Nixon's reign.

Posted by Anne at 08:36 PM | Permalink

Info on Sponsors, Destinations, Costs of 5 1/2 years of Congressional Travel Made Public

More than 25,000 public documents detailing the privately funded travel taken by members of Congress and their aides from January 2000 to June 2005, was made public today by the Center for Public Integrity.

The database, which can be accessed at http://www.publicintegrity.org , is the product of nearly a year's worth of investigative research done by Center staff, American Public Media reporters and Northwestern University Medill School students.

• The House of Representatives' forms are kept in a sub- basement of the Cannon House Office Building, where the public copies are often hard to read, torn and misfiled. It is against House rules to digitally scan the documents.
• The Senate travel disclosure documents are stored in a computer system in the Hart Senate Office Building, but the records are not available online.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday on presidential signing statements. Testimony and submitted statements are now online.

Posted by Anne at 08:25 PM | Permalink

I sat next to a very interesting person on my way home from Baltimore last Thursday. We started with the usual small talk about books and where we were going/leaving. I started telling him about the SLA conference and some of the sessions I had gone to. He told me that he works for the Federal government in some kind of Web implementation capacity. I’m not entirely certain what he does; he is not responsible for the Web content for his agency, just for getting it online, but he’s not the Webmaster.

At any rate, the point is that one of the topical areas that his agency works in is very politically-charged under the current administration. I will not say exactly where he works, as I do not wish to get him in trouble. However, some examples of similar issues would be climate change, abortion, abstinence, stem cell research, and a myriad of other topics that don’t sit easy in Washington these days. The gentleman next to me was talking about how difficult it is to manage the Web site on his topic. Even though he is not responsible for the content, he is in a position to see and hear about Congressional staffers calling the agency to complain within minutes of new information being posted.

Trying to be magnanimous, I said something to the effect that I’m sure similar things happen with other administrations, too. My new friend said that may be true, but he had never seen the environment as scary as it is now. In particular, he noted that there is one researcher in a controversial topic area who is currently the subject of a Congressional investigation. A Republican Congressman is accusing this researcher of being too partisan in his work. The man next to me noted that, as far as he could tell, the only reason for and effect of the investigation was to create so much paperwork for this researcher that he doesn’t have time anymore to conduct his research.

So, there’s that. Yet more confirmation of how very screwed up things are in Washington right now. As if you needed anything more to convince you.

Posted by Anne at 08:37 PM | Permalink

From the American Bar Association:

The American Bar Association today (June 5, 2006) announced creation of a Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine to examine constitutional and legal issues raised by presidents of the United States attaching legal interpretations to federal legislation they sign.

Posted by Anne at 08:47 PM | Permalink

"The has launched a new "In Your State" tool. Accessible by link from the Center's home page, the In Your State feature provides easy access to all Center research and analysis on a particular state... users can view the actual disclosure filings of the given state's legislators, including nearly 7,000 reports filed by legislators in 2005 that the Center posted on its Web site today."

Posted by Anne at 08:09 PM | Permalink

Welcome to the debut of Congresspedia, the “citizen’s encyclopedia on Congress.” Congresspedia is a bold new experiment by the Center for Media and Democracy and the Sunlight Foundation in distributed citizen journalism. It is based on the wiki model (think Wikipedia) and is a subset of the Center’s SourceWatch wiki.

We are starting with 539 articles – one for every current member of Congress, the non-voting delegates, and former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham. However, we hope that this is only the foundation upon which Congresspedia contributors (like you!) will build upon by not just adding to those profiles but also by creating new articles on any subject related to Congress that falls within the bounds of our policies and article guidelines.

Posted by Anne at 08:39 PM | Permalink

"Last week the Sunlight Foundation officially opened its doors. Our goal is to use revolutionary power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing, and thus help reduce corruption, ensure greater transparency and accountability by government, and foster public trust in the vital institutions of democracy."

Posted by Anne at 08:24 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

There is no excuse for unauthorized disclosures of classified information, it is argued, because whistleblowers who have legitimate complaints about classified government misconduct can use official channels to convey those concerns on a classified basis.

But as a practical matter, those channels are often blocked or ineffectual.

Posted by Anne at 08:22 PM | Permalink

From ALA, this guide to 2005-2006 Congressional PATRIOT Act Votes and Library Funding Support, which includes "a record of how your Members of Congress voted for the PATRIOT Act reauthorization and for funding for libraries."

Posted by Anne at 08:52 PM | Permalink

From InfoToday: "Congressional Quarterly’s CQ Press Professional Division is enhancing its Congressional Staff Directory. The print/Web directory lists nearly 20,000 contacts along with in-depth biographies and committee assignments. However, now added to the free searchable Web access that all subscribers receive will be complete votes and bill information and complete Congressional Record information for each member of Congress. The product is designed to provide a thorough understanding of each member’s political record and behavior—not just their contact information.

Users can now search and analyze each member’s voting history or the results of any particular bill. Information can be searched by member, vote, date, and keyword. Links within the directory take you straight to each member’s specific history, or users can click on to the main votes site and do in-depth analysis of any vote, analyzing voting trends by party lines, state, and vote type. Congressional Record information for each member of Congress lets users find who said what and when on the House and Senate floors. Links in the directory take you to each member’s history. Users can search by keyword and date to quickly get specific comments on any topic addressed by Congress on the floor.

The new content is available in March with the latest release of the Congressional Staff Directory. Subscriptions last an entire year and include all results of the 2006 elections."

Posted by Anne at 12:27 PM | Permalink