Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:

Various media outlets and bloggers, including the likes of CNET.com, the Associated Press, the National Journal, Lawrence Lessig and Craig Newmark, have covered and congratulated the Center for Responsive Politics' (CRP) for making its data records from OpenSecrets.org free for anyone to download. The Journal's "Tech Daily Dose" column reported that more than 120 people had downloaded bulk data within the first 24 hours of CRP opening up its archives.

The Washington Post's "The Reliable Source" column highlighted Capitol Words, which "slices and dices the entirety of the Congressional Record for your searching pleasure," they write. McClatchy's David Lightman reported that, in light of the financial crisis, words you would expect to be used by congressional lawmakers often, such as recession, bailout, stimulus and deficit do not crack the top 30 most frequently uttered terms so far this year. And Daphne Ritter with the New York Post looks at the top words used by several lawmakers from the Empire State's congressional delegation.

Alice Lipowicz with Federal Computer Week used OpenCongress data in writing about how only 10 congressional lawmakers (four senators and six reps) post their daily schedules on their official Web sites. New York Newsday editorialized about how Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) is blazing a trail in her congressional career by posting her schedule and personal financial disclosure reports online. "While (congressional lawmakers are) at it, they should make sure that information is easy to locate, archived and searchable, so that watchful voters can track, over time, the lobbyists and interest groups bending an official's ear," the editors wrote.

Last week, Ryan Singel at Wired's "Epicenter" blog wrote about Sunlight Labs' contest Apps for America, and asked his readers to vote for their favorites. This week, he reported back on the response he received, and issued what he terms the "Epicenter Reader's Choice award."

Speaking of Sunlight Labs, both Craig Newmark on his blog and Andrew Pratt at Science Progress praised the Labs' pre-design for the yet-to-be-launched Data.gov, the site that new White House CIO Vivek Kundra has promised will be an easy-to-use central repository of federal bulk data. "This is precisely the kind of work I've argued that the nonprofit and advocacy sphere needs to be engaged in right now," Pratt wrote.

The San Francisco Examiner editorialized about how Congress should exercise its oversight authority and find out where every last federal bailout dollar has been spent. The Examiner gives props to Anu Narayanswamy's Real Time Investigations expose' of the identity of senior U.S. Treasury officials who are also members of the Troubled Assets Relief Program's Investment Committee -- a small group that makes big decisions about which banks receive how much of our money.

The Washington Independent's Elana Schor reports on an analysis they conducted of House and Senate fundraising during the current election cycle compared to the previous cycles. Despite the economic downturn, their analysis showed significant upticks in campaign giving. Schor quotes Bill Allison, Sunlight's senior fellow, "For the average citizen, the election is over and they're not even going to think about it for the next four years." But the donors "who are paying close attention," have a vested interest in what Congress does -- or does not -- pass into law this year.

Thanks, and see you next week!

Each weekday, Sunlight's communications team collects all the press mentions of Sunlight and of our grantees.  Instead of just keeping that to ourselves, we thought we'd try something new by highlighting some of the more interesting mentions  and sharing that with you each week. (You can also check out our Delicious page and our Press Center to see who's writing about us.)

Elizabeth Brotherton at Roll Call (subscription required), Associated Press Managing Editors, Paul Krawzak with CQ Politics and Deb Price with The Detroit News wrote stories about about U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers posting their earmark requests for the 2010 budget on their Web sites as new transparency guidelines required. Bill Allison, Sunlight’s senior fellow, researched the disclosures. Journalists used Bill's research as the base for their articles, including many regional papers reporting on earmarks requested by their respective congressional delegations.

National Journal’s "Tech Daily Dose" blog reported that the Center for Responsive Politics’ site OpenSecrets.org is going "open data" this week. For the first time in their 26-year history, CRP "is making its most popular data archives fully available to the public for download for free,” The Journal writes.  Sunlight helped fund CRP's OpenData initiative to make millions of records available under a Creative Commons license, The Journal adds.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg with The New York Times wrote about President Obama's promise to bring transparency to the federal government. She notes the administration is finding that fulfilling the pledge is easier said than done. Technological hurdles, privacy concerns and the Washington's entrenched culture of secrecy have so far proven hard to overcome. Stolberg lists several steps the Obama team have successfully taken, the streamlining of a health care summit over the White House Web site and the setting up of Recovery.gov to help track the stimulus package. She quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, as saying the site is “an amazing potential model of how information is made available to the public."

The Huffington Post published an op-ed by Mike Klein, Sunlight’s co-founder and chair, where he commends President Obama for establishing a transparency policy applicable to lobbying and the stimulus program. Mike encouraged the administration to not limit transparency just to lobbying the stimulus program. "The president should now mandate real time online transparency of lobbying throughout the executive branch." He also called on Congress to amend the Lobbying Disclosure Act so that lobbyists would be required to disclose all lobbying, whether of the Congress, the executive branch or the independent agencies, and in real time and online. Ryan Singel at Wired's "Epicenter" blog profiles Sunlight Labs’ contest Apps for America, and asked his readers to vote for their favorites.  Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of the Washington Examiner, also wrote about Apps for America. Winter Casey and Bara Vaida at National Journal's "Under the Influence" blog and Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones wrote about mockups of Web-based lobbying disclosure forms John Wonderlich, Sunlight’s policy director, and Ali Felski, Sunlight Lab’s senior designer, created.