- Concord Monitor - House Democrats: Get me rewrite!
Sen. Judd Gregg found himself suspected of placing an anonymous hold on campaign finance legislation last week, until his spokeswoman denied the allegation. It all began earlier this month, when the Senate was set to pass a bill that would require senators to file campaign finance forms electronically. Sen. Lamar Alexander rose on the Senate floor to object to the bill's passage "on behalf of a Republican senator." Senate protocol allows any single, anonymous senator to halt a bill.
- Marketwatch - Undisclosed senator blocks disclosure
An unnamed senator is holding up a bill that would put Senate campaign finance reports on the Internet. Who's standing in the way?
- Wired - Web Mashups Turn Citizens Into Washington's Newest Watchdogs
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.
- The Washington Post - Mystery of Hold Wrapped in Enigma
The wrath of the blogosphere bore down yesterday on two senators who remained suspects in a modern-day Washington whodunit.
The mystery: Who placed an anonymous hold on legislation that would require senators to file their campaign finance forms electronically?
- ABC News - Congressional Democrats Spell Reform: CA$H
Democrats in Congress appear to be taking full advantage of the "pay to play" system they said led to a "climate of corruption" under Republicans, an ABC News investigation has found.
"Washington looks pretty much the same as it always did," said Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, despite Democratic promises of reform.
- The Hill - DoJ: foreign-lobbyist database to go online
Rep. Jean Schmidt's (R-Ohio) comment came on the heels of a recent report in the Sunlight Foundation's blog, Real Time Investigations, which quoted unnamed FARA officials saying the database would be on the Internet in "three or four months.
- The Washington Post - Sen. Ima Luddite (R)
THE U.S. SENATE hit a pothole on the road to modernity on Tuesday. A request for unanimous consent by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for a bill that would require candidates for the Senate to file campaign finance reports electronically was blocked by an anonymous Republican senator hiding behind Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who announced the move. Would that this Luddite had the courage of his or her convictions to explain publicly said opposition to 21st-century custom.
- National Journal - Confessions Of A Beltway Journalism Insider
While bloggers may be wrong on parliamentary procedure, they appear to be right on the money in assuming that some Republican lawmaker -- and perhaps the Senate Republican leadership -- doesn't like yet another transparency bill and may even be working to keep it from seeing action. "In our mind," the Sunlight Foundation's Blumenthal wrote, "a hold is a hold is a hold, unless you want to debate what the definition of 'is' is." He urged people to keep pressuring their senators for answers.
- Time - The TIME 100
Craig Newmark...I also nominate Ellen Miller, of the Sunlight Foundation, for providing the tools to professional and citizen journalists to see who is paying for what in Congres
- USA Today - Democrats eclipse GOP fundraising
It is hardly surprising that Democratic chairmen would raise more money after their party took power, since chairmen wield enormous influence over the content and passage of bills. But the Democratic chairmen raised double the amount from PACs that their Republican counterparts did in the first quarter of 2005, federal campaign records show.
"It's a breathtaking demonstration of the power of money in this town," said Ellen Miller, director of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan anti-corruption group.
- Roll Call - Aides Escape Conflict Rules
While House and Senate lawmakers agreed in February to new rules requiring them to notify the public of any conflicts of interest they may have in pushing for earmarks to legislation, there remain no such guidelines for disclosure by another category of public servants - Congressional aides.
... "When people look at Congress, they think that the [Members] are the important ones ... [but] in the past relatives of aides have lobbied and gotten earmarks and the same sort of rules should apply to the staff," said Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group that has spearheaded the push for ethics reforms in Congress.
- The Louisville Courier-Journal - Lawmakers' sites faulted over lack of data
Congressional Web sites, including those maintained by Kentucky and Indiana lawmakers, do not provide enough information to constituents. That's the conclusion of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit group set up last year to improve the relationship between lawmakers and constituents.
- PBS MediaShift - Digging Deeper
One shining example of independent citizen action has been the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organization launched a mere 15 months ago with the mission of bringing more transparency to the U.S. Congress through techno-activism. The group has had far-reaching success not only in making Congress more accountable to the people they are supposed to serve, but also in creating bi-partisan fervor in the blogosphere for reform on Capitol Hill. Though the Foundation’s grants and projects, average citizens have been given the tools and resources to make a difference.
- San Francisco Examiner - Pelosi right to encourage openness
The group is the Sunlight Foundation’s OpenHouse Project, which is studying House procedures and preparing a comprehensive report with recommendations on how to use the Internet to make Congress more transparent and thus more accountable to voters. Soon after its formation, Pelosi said “the Internet is an incredible vehicle for transparency, honest leadership and open government. I am encouraged by this working group and look forward to recommendations on how the House can be as open and accessible to citizens as possible.”