While Wall Street minted a few billionaires and many millionaires with yesterday's Twitter IPO, Sunlight's non-profit Politwoops got to celebrate the occasion with some recent deletions on the Washington Post's In Play show:
The Little Things We Take For Granted
So, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer announced that they were going to place the final health care bill online for... View Article
Continue readingCongress can Tweet, Follow Them with Capitol Tweets Widget
On Friday, we told you about the happy ending to months of negotiations to modernize the Franking rules that govern... View Article
Continue readingSenate Changes Franking Rules for Web Sites
Last year, the Open House Project proposed the loosening of rules governing what lawmakers can post to their official web... View Article
Continue readingTweet On Dear Friends Tweet On
Wednesday night, we launched Let Our Congress Tweet so citizens could voice their demand that Congress should be allowed to... View Article
Continue readingLet Our Congress Tweet
Shouldn’t members of Congress be able to connect with all of us freely and easily online? I’d guess most of... View Article
Continue readingCongress May Fix Web Site Rules
Earlier this year, David All and I wrote a section of the Open House Project calling for the House to review and rewrite arcane franking regulations as applied to member Web sites. According to Roll Call, it looks like this is actually going to happen. If you've ever been to a congressional Web site you've probably noticed the lack of interactivity, multimedia, and linking that is common in today's Internet. That's because of unwritten, nonspecific, arbitrary rules that are unevenly applied across member Web sites. Members can't post YouTube videos, link to MySpace, ask people to Digg something on their site, or have a blogroll. All of that may be changing soon:
Regulations prohibit content that can be construed as an advertisement or as purely personal information, such as links to fundraisers or support for partisan causes. Now, the new phenomenon of social networking sites — and the increasing use of them by Members — is testing the application of such rules in a multimedia world.
House and Senate officials say several Members are not in compliance, though none apparently have been disciplined. It’s time, they say, to update the rules to match the technology.
The House Administration Committee has been drafting possible changes for months, as has the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.
Continue reading