Sunlight Foundation

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post. Happy Friday!  Celebrate the end of another week by checking out today's transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Super Committee

• The Super Committee will hold its next public meeting on September 22. The hearing is slated to focus on tax policy. (Roll Call)

• The Office of Government Ethics has proposed a new regulation that would ban all government employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists. The rule as currently written only applies to political appointees. (The Hill)
• Former Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) has added two members to his team at the Motion Picture Association of America. Laura Nichols, previously a senior vice president of communications and strategies at the Center for American Progress, will serve as executive vice president of global communications. Lori McGrogan, formerly Dodd's Senate deputy chief of staff, will take a role as his senior adviser. (Roll Call)
• Facebook held a reception for members of Congress on Wednesday to promote their efforts to protect children online. The event was part of Facebook's effort to respond to congressional criticism that it is too easy for children under the age of 13 to log on. (National Journal)
• Following up on yesterday's story about LightSquared's efforts to lobby the White House, Republican lawmakers have called for an investigation into ties between the Obama Administration and the company. (National Journal)

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post. Here's Thursday's look at transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Super Committee

• Super Committee members met for breakfast this morning. The event marked the first closed door meeting held by the committee. (National Journal)
• House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp (R-MI) has joined John Kerry as the second member of the Super Committee to claim to mostly give up fundraising until the committee concludes its business. He has announced that he will not schedule any more fundraisers, but will not cancel those already on his calendar. (National Journal)

• Rick Perry's state office destroys all of its emails every 7 days. Transparency advocate John Washburn has put a temporary stop to this practice by devising a program that requests all emails produced by the Governor's office twice a week. Emails that have been requested have to be preserved. (National Journal)

• Foreign countries are spending less money to lobby the United States government. According to figures released by the Justice Department such spending was down nearly 6% in 2010. (Roll Call)
• Recently released emails reveal some of the efforts that wireless company LightSquared put in to lobby the White House for approval of a new national broadband network. The outreach sometimes conveniently coincided with large donations from company leaders. (iwatch news)
• There is a new lobbying reform proposal floating around. But, without a newsworthy scandal, it doesn't appear likely to garner much enthusiastic support in congress. (Politico)