Even as the National Rifle Association (NRA) announced a new push today to put armed guards in schools across the country, state lawmakers across the country are considering similar proposals. So far, legislation related to guns on school grounds has come up in at least three dozen states. The vast majority of these bills would make it easier for school personnel, guards, and volunteers to carry guns on campus, while a handful would toughen laws prohibiting firearms at schools.
Contraceptives remain most controversial health care provision
Three years after Congress approved President Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA), contraceptive care remains its most controversial provision, drawing not only more comments than any other regulatory proposal on any subject government-wide, according to an analysis of federal regulations on Sunlight's Docket Wrench.
More than 147,000 people and organizations have made their voices heard over the debate, most of them opposing the provision that requires that federal agencies have interpreted to mean that women have access to preventive services--including contraception--at no cost. The Catholic Church has led the charge, urging parishioners to write with messages such as ...
Continue readingMary Jo White’s former clients generous to senators
Many of the senators voting on Mary Jo White's nomination to head the SEC today got campaign contributions from her high-powered legal clients.
Continue readingReporter’s notebook: stumbling upon–plastics
Plastic. We weren’t looking for it, but thanks to Sunlight’s Scout alert system for tracking legislative and regulatory actions, we... View Article
Continue readingExxonMobil lobbies consumer agency on phthalates
Under heavy lobbying by ExxonMobil and other industry heavyweights, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is nearly a year late with a mandated report on the possible dangers found in chemicals used to create plastic products from raincoats to "rubber" duck bath toys to shampoo. A Sunlight review of the public record shows how outgunned consumer advocates are by industry.
Continue readingGun groups extend influence battle to state houses
DENVER -- A group of Democratic state legislators here had barely concluded their press conference unveiling a broad package of gun control bills when an outspoken opponent threatened to make them pay in the next election.
"I think the question for the Democrat caucus is, are you really ready to stake the 2014 elections on the gun issue?" Dudley Brown, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, said to Colorado Public Radio last week. Brown and the group, whose motto is "don't give an inch," have been the source of $23,800 to Colorado politicians since 1996, according to a ...
Continue readingIn floor speeches, lawmakers talk about their guns
During debate on the Senate floor over the Compromise of 1850, Henry Foote of MIssissippi pulled out a pistol and waved it around, threatening another senator, Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Lawmakers are no longer allowed to bring guns on the floor, but plenty own them, as a survey of Congress by USA Today shows. And they are of course allowed to talk about their guns. In fact, they talk about them in speeches on the floors of the House and Senate, according to a search of Capitol Words.
Interestingly, many of the lawmakers often pull out their gun toting ...
Continue readingNRA PAC did not raise much post Sandy Hook
While the National Rifle Association (NRA) has claimed that membership surged in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in December, there did not appear to be any corresponding flood in contributions to the organization's political action committtee.
During the last weeks of December following the shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead, the NRA Political Victory Fund reported collecting just over $4,000 in itemized donations from individuals, mostly in low amounts from people who had already contributed to the group's warchest during the course of the year. Another $9,600 came in ...
Continue readingGun lobby has some chits to collect on Judiciary Committee
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When National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre faces the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning in the first congressional hearing about gun control since the last month's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, he'll be facing lawmakers who have strong feelings about his organization. Some of them have reason to feel grateful for the NRA's financial support; others have reason to resent its opposition.
Other witnesses scheduled to testify include Mark ...
Continue readingGabrielle Giffords: From gun victim to gun control lobbyist?
As the debate over President Barack Obama's proposed gun legislation heats up on Capitol Hill, gun control advocates have a potential ace in the hole: Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., the victim of a horrific incident of gun violence that interrupted a once-promising political career, is about to become eligible to lobby.
For Giffords, tomorrow marks the end of the official one-year "cooling off" period that former House members face when they leave office before they can lobby their former colleagues, according to Sunlight's post-employment lobbying tracker. Should she wish, she will be permitted to register as a ...
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