Updated 1:44 p.m. 3/8
David Koch, one of the nation's most generous underwriters of conservative causes, is among more than 250 donors chipping in to help disgraced former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford get his political career on track. So is Foster Friess, a conservative millionaire who bet heavily last year on former Sen. Rick Santorum's failed bid for the Republican nomination and made headlines with his unorthodox views on contraception.
Both gave $2,500 each to Sanford's campaign to win back the House seat that that he held in the 1990s, according to ...
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 readingUse Scout to Track CISPA
Last week the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA, was reintroduced by Chairman Mike Rogers... View Article
Continue readingUse Scout to Track the Action on Immigration
This morning the House Judiciary Committee kicked off their first hearing on immigration reform and it's a great opportunity to remind folks invested in this topic to utilize our Scout project to track developments.
Continue readingGun Control and Gun Rights: Legislation, Policy and Influence
The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary has brought gun policy back to the forefront of our national conversation. As a nonpartisan, nonprofit Sunlight takes no stance on the issue, but we have put together a collection of resources looking at the legislation, policy and influence around gun rights and gun control, plus the groups and lawmakers involved. The Gun Lobby Sunlight Foundation Senior Fellow Lee Drutman reviews the political influence of the National Rifle Association and the leading gun control group, the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence. Read his full analysis in this blog post. Lee notes that when it comes to the debate on gun policy, Congress is pretty much only hearing from one side. The NRA spends 66 times what the Brady Campaign spends on lobbying, and 4,143 times what the Brady Campaign spends on campaign contributions. Since 2011, the NRA spent at least $24.28 million: $16.83 million through its political action committee, plus $7.45 million through its affiliated Institute for Legislative Action. According to Influence Explorer records, the Brady Campaign spent $5,800 this election cycle and reported $60,000 in lobbying costs.
Continue readingSunlight Foundation’s 2012 Annual Report in Video
What a year 2012 has been! We faced an onslaught of unprecedented amounts of political spending. In this post-Citizens United... View Article
Continue readingFederal Agencies Continuing to Weaken FOIA
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a foundational law that guarantees US citizens the right to request and receive... View Article
Continue readingA Cite for Sore Eyes
Earlier this week the annual Law Via the Internet conference was hosted by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University. The conference schedule featured talks on a range of policy and technical subjects, including the topic of extracting legal citations from text and understanding them programmatically, which arises whenever people need to determine the relevance of legal documents based on the authorities they cite. Recognizing citations in text is also a vexing but fun programming challenge, so I was excited to see this issue figure prominently in at least four separate talks.
Continue readingScout Alert! FERC and Commenters Agree — DUNS Numbers Insufficient
Yesterday I got a Scout alert, notifying me of a proposed rule change by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)... View Article
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