by Justin Lin, policy intern NEWS:
- Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, expressed interest in running for the open senate seat following the retirement of Sen. Carl Levin. Camp is the House's strongest fundraiser and many believe that he would turn the Democratic-leaning Michigan into a possible win. However, Camp has to consider a variety of factors, such as the fact former Michigan Secretary of State Teri Lynn Land is also running for the Republican nomination. (Roll Call)
- Two documents detailing the activities on the NSA were released Wednesday: one by the Obama administration acknowledging that the United States tracks all domestic phone calls and another leaked document that shows how the NSA monitors web browsing. The monitoring program, called XKeyscore, is generally used for information mining abroad and has reportedly led to the capture of more than 300 terrorists. (New York Times)
- West Virginia state senator Evan Jenkins has announced that he will change his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican and will challenge Rep. Nick Rahall, who has served in the House for 40 years. The district voted 65% for Romney in 2012 but currently the district is reported as "Likely Democratic," according to the Cook Political Report. (Washington Post)
- Over 100 pro-immigration groups are now targeting House GOP to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Many of these groups are formed at the grassroots level, with the intention to show that ordinary citizens and the general public want immigration reform to pass. However, these groups will be facing some opposition from groups such as NumbersUSA and Federation for American Immigration Reform that do not support the Senate immigration bill. (Politico)
- Alison Lundergan Grimes, the secretary of state for Kentucky, has begun her campaign for the Senate seat with a bang at her campaign rally. Grimes attacked McConnell but tried to distance herself from President Obama, pointing out differences on coal, balancing budgets, and the Affordable Care Act. Grimes is set to deliver another speech Saturday in Graves County. (Politico)
Politically connected nonprofits have long bested the IRS
The Republican Governors Public Policy Committee is a nonprofit organization with a multimillion dollar budget devoted to "promoting social welfare and efficient and responsible government practices" according to the most recent tax return it filed with the Internal Revenue Service. On its website, the group tells a different story: It's "the official policy organization of the nation’s Republican governors."
As House Government Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Darrell Issa, R-Calif., prepares to broaden his investigation of the Internal Revenue Service's admitted targeting of conservative groups ...
Continue readingTale of the tape: Political giving by the Fed frontrunners
The Federal Reserve's Open Markets Committee opens two days of meetings Wednesday amid growing speculation about whom President Barack Obama will nominate to steer the nation's financial policy after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's term ends early next year.
The two presumed frontrunners, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Fed Vice-Chair Janet Yellen, both have active rooting sections. And there's plenty of handicapping about which one is in a better position to win favor of the president -- and the senators who must confirm the appointment. From our perch at Sunlight covering the political influence game, however, there ...
Continue readingThe U.S. Code Arrives In XML
Good news: for the first time, the U.S. Code is being published in a usable, open format, directly from the government! Alex Howard tells the story here. This has been a long time coming; House leadership deserves enormous credit for making it a reality.
Panel considers big-time Obama funders for cushy overseas posts
Of seven potential new additions to U.S. diplomatic missions that the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will consider at a hearing Tuesday afternoon, three are among President Barack Obama's most successful fundraisers from his 2012 campaign.
The president's most recent flight of would-be ambassadors follows a familiar pattern: a mix of career members of the Foreign Service and mega-campaign bundlers.
Presidents have long reserved around 30 percent of available ambassadorships for political allies -- using plum diplomatic posts in U.S.-friendly nations to function as rewards for campaign loyalty. The widely-accepted practice has persisted for more than ...
Continue readingSunlight APIs have a new home
As building blocks for our tools, our APIs are core not only to our work but also to the hundreds of outside applications and services that they power. (Hold up, what are APIs again?) In the past half year, we have taken your feedback and build a prominent API site that’s accessible from the main Sunlight Foundation navigation. The new API section features completely re-written and re-organized documentation, a summary of the status of each API and an interactive query builder to help developers build their requests. We’ve also added real time statistics for our APIs, so anyone can see their aggregate use over time.
Need inspiration? Want to help?
Aside from accessing our APIs, we have also collected real-life examples of our APIs at work-- just check out the gallery of projects using our APIs to see just some of the projects that can be built with our data. Then head over to the Community tab to see current data projects that we and other OpenGov-ers are working on. You can filter these projects by ones that need technical help, non-technical help and also projects to inspire.
Learn how to join the efforts on standardizing election data, to detailing key relationships between influencers and politicians, to scraping state level spending data and a whole host of other projects. Have a project you want to add? Submit it here.
2Day in #OpenGov 7/30/2013
by Justin Lin, policy intern NEWS:
- Might California Republicans make a resurgence in the state legislatures? Democrats in California currently have the governor's seat and supermajorities in both the state Assembly and Senate, but a recent win by Republican Andy Vidak may begin charting the progress for a resurgence in the state. Vidak, who speaks fluent Spanish, beat Leticia Perez for a state Senate seat in a county that was heavily Democratic and had a large Hispanic population. (Washington Times)
- Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is considering running for the Alaska Senate seat, but a recent poll showed her trailing by a 12 point margin. The same poll found that voters in Alaska have a 58% unfavorable rating towards the governor, and nearly the same percentage of people considered her not an Alaskan as those who did consider her an Alaskan. (Politico)
- The FBI addressed a letter to Senator Rand Paul explaining that it does not believe it requires a warrant to use drones for surveillance, citing Supreme Court cases that permitted the use of manned drones. This letter follows a July 19 letter from the FBI's congressional liaison office that stated it had used drones in ten different instances in the past, including eight time for criminal surveillance. (Washington Times)
- It has been long speculated that Hillary Clinton is eyeing another presidential run, but it looks as though she will have a head start. A pro-Hillary super PAC called Ready for Hillary is focused on running a strong ground game early on in the race and has already raised $1 million. For the time being, however, the Clintons remain silent on a presidential bid. (Washington Times)
- Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MA) has begun hosting fundraisers for vulnerable Democrats in the House along with other top House Democrats. Rep. Debbie Wasseman-Schultz (D-FL), the Democratic National Chairwoman, and Rep. Joseph Crowley recently hosted another fundraiser for other vulnerable House Democrats. (Roll Call)
Change.gov is Back Up
Change.gov, the website of the Obama transition that went missing sometime last month, is now back online. The agenda, including... View Article
Continue readingTimeline: Five years of Party Time, Sunlight’s political fundraiser tracker
During the five years that we've been compiling nearly 18,000 invitations for political fundraisers in our Party Time database, reporters both within and outside Sunlight, activists, and policy makers have found ample ways to use it to extend our understanding of how government works, to make headlines and to give the lowdown on political high rollers. This timeline shows some of the highlights, from reporter Harry Hanbury, who tried to attend every fundraiser held in the nation's capital in one day to the Twitter firestorm that followed Party Time's reporting of a Google-sponsored fundraiser for conservative Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. Jump in and take a look.
Obama visits Chattanooga: Land of GOP votes and Democratic bucks
President Barack Obama, who lately has been doing a lot of worrying aloud about the decline of the middle class, on Tuesday takes his rolling conversation about the economy to Tennessee, where local Republicans have prepared a not-so-welcome wagon.
The 30-second ad seen above, produced by the Tennessee Republican Party, showed up over the weekend in Ad Hawk, Sunlight's database of political advertisements. It credits the Volunteer State's economic successes to conservative policies, including one that makes it harder for unions to organize. In fact, however, Tennessee is not a bright spot when it comes to jobs: The ...
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