NEWS ROUNDUP: The NRA has been flexing their lobbying muscles in statehouses across the country for decades and the recent... View Article
Continue readingSunlight Goes Local
If you caught yesterday’s announcement, you may have noticed a new major focus for the Sunlight Foundation: local government transparency.... View Article
Continue readingCorporations pony up for inauguration bashes
President Obama may have downsized the number of official inaugural balls, but everybody knows that the real party goes on at the more than 100 unofficial galas and late-night parties, often sponsored by corporations, interest groups and state societies.
Continue readingCongress Should Fix the CFAA
Like so many others, we at Sunlight are terribly saddened by Aaron Swartz’s death. Our longtime friend and adviser Micah... View Article
Continue readingFDLP Allergic to Curl
Waldo Jaquith discovered that the FDLP (Federal Depository Library Program) appears to have an allergic reaction to people downloading their data with basic command line tools.
Continue readingfdlp․gov blocks requests from cURL with a 403 and a "malware detected" error. >:-/
— Waldo Jaquith (@waldojaquith) January 2, 2013
House Begins Publishing Committee Data
The House of Representatives’ document portal, docs.house.gov, launched in January 2012 with a surprisingly rich and relevant set of data:... View Article
Continue readingPolitical war profiteers: 20 consulting firms churn 80 percent of super PAC cash
In the three years since the Supreme Court's Jan. 21, 2010 ruling in Citizens United, the super PACs that decision helped to spawn have largely been seen as advertising machines. But an anniversary-eve analysis by the Sunlight Foundation show that they have created a class of super consultants.
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 1/17/2013
NEWS ROUNDUP:
- The still nascent Slovenian Pirate Party, founded with a focus on digital issues, may have an opportunity to compete sooner than they expected. Protests against austerity measures and rampant political corruption have swept the nation, leading some to call for new elections. (Tech President)
- The Vietnamese government admitted to supporting up to 1,000 bloggers and "online tastemakers" to work as propaganda agents and push Communist policies online. The country, with a poor record of freedom of expression, has seen internet use explode over the past decade. (Tech President)
- After a month of silence from its K Street representatives, the NRA has started sending in its lobbying muscle to fight President Obama's gun control proposals. They'll be armed with a new argument; guns create jobs. (Politico)
- Did you download the app created for President Obama's second inauguration? You might want to check out the terms of service, which apparently gives the Presidential Inaugural Committee permission to share data with a variety of political organizations. (Politico)
- The gun control law passed in New York this week appears to limit access to previously public information about gun permits, giving gun owners the option to remove their names from a statewide database. (New York Times)
- State revolving door laws vary widely across the country and at least 15 have no laws that would stop a legislator from resigning on Monday and registering as a lobbyist on Tuesday. (Public Integrity)
- The White House quadrupled the threshold for a petition filed via its We The People website to get an official answer. New petitions will have to get 100,000 signatures in 30 days to be acknowledged by the White House. (The Hill)
Ad site snafu raises questions about FCC oversight
For the first time last year, the Federal Communications Commission began requiring certain TV stations to post political ad buy contracts online. Yet an apparent snafu at a Florida station that kept all buys made in the final month of the election offline until earlier this month raises questions about just how well that system is working.
Continue readingObama inaugural officials tight-lipped at press conference
Officials with President Obama's inaugural committee took questions from reporters Wednesday at the National Press Club but the answers were less than illuminating. Here's the rundown:
- Q. Why is the committee providing less information on donors than former President George W. Bush, and Obama himself did in earlier inaugurals?
- A. That was then. This is now.
"Each one of these is created anew every four years," Brent Colburn, communications director for the 2013 Presidential Inaugural Committee, said of the more parsimonious disclosure strategy. Because the PIC isn't legally required to report its donors to the Federal Election ...
Continue reading
59063
