NEWS ROUNDUP: The President of Estonia brought 16 crowdsourced ideas to parliament this week, tapping into laws generated through Rahvakogu,... View Article

NEWS ROUNDUP:

• The GAO's third annual report on duplication in the federal government includes and interesting tidbit on some freely available government data. It looks like the Commerce Department has been charging other agencies millions of dollars for reports from the National Technical Information Service even though 74 % of the NSIT's studies are easily accessible online. (Washington Times)
• Whoever ends up taking on Mitch McConnell in 2014 is going to need some serious fundraising chops. The Senate Minority Leader has raised almost $2 million so far this year and has a cool$8.6 million on hand. (Washington Post)
• Hundreds of hill staffers have locked their personal twitter accounts in response to last week's news that LegiStorm was aggregating them for a new product, StormFeed. (POLITICO)
• With Congress eyeing an overhaul of the tax-code the politicians likely to have major influence over the proceedings are making it clear that they intend to do some of the negotiating in secret, despite publicly stating that they plan to lead an "open and transparent" process. (The Hill)
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie might not have any major competition for his reelection bid, but the potential candidate for the 2016 GOP nomination has attracted some negative attention from an outside spending group. One New Jersey is slated to spend $500,000 over two weeks on ads attacking Christie's record. (POLITICO)
• Yesterday a Senate Judiciary subcommittee heard testimony on campaign finance laws, specifically finding out why they have proven so hard to enforce recently. (NPR)

NEWS ROUNDUP:

• Ron Paul, who recently retired from Congress after mounting an unsuccessful bid for the GOP nomination last year, still has some Congressional campaign cash floating around. He's spending some of that money on other projects that he's started. Last month his campaign donated $150,000 to the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education. The group that he founded in 1976 is currently run by his wife. (Public Integrity)
• A new GAO report doesn't shed much light on the political intelligence industry. The report found that political intelligence is hard to define and complicated to regulate. The GAO might be hesitant to take a stand on the industry, but Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) are planning to introduce legislation that would institute disclosure requirements. (Federal Computer Week)
• According to a new report by the Housing and Urban Development department's IG, almost $700 million in federal aid for those hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is unaccounted for. Most of the discrepancies stem from failure by more than 24,000 recipients to comply with the aid terms or provide sufficient documentation. (Government Executive)
• The Federal Reserve emerged from the primordial soup of federal law the same year that Justice Louis Brandeis argued for the cleansing properties of Sunlight. A century later, the central bank is taking small, but important, steps towards transparency. (Harvard Ethics Blog)
• Outside money is starting to heat up the New York Mayor's race. A group of labor unions and Democratic activists dropped $250,000 for a three week run of ads attacking city council Speaker Christine Quinn, the races presumed front runner. (New York Times)
• Last week President Obama unveiled a $100 million initiative to map the human brain, an initiative inspired in part by the Human Genome Project. It is yet to be known if the project will provide for open access. (Open Knowledge Blog)

NEWS ROUNDUP:

• Outfits like Ushahidi spent years building and sharing tools to help track election issues in advance of recent presidential elections in Kenya, hoping that they could help stem the violence that came along with the country's last election in 2007. While they can't take all the credit for relatively peaceful polls this year, their efforts were part of broader initiatives that seem to have worked. (Tech President)
• The FBI has taken advantage of rules in the PATRIOT act that allow them to send out "national security letters" that come along with gag orders, preventing their recipients from even talking about the existence of the letters. Recently, several tech companies have successfully pushed back about this closed process. First, the Electronic Frontier Foundation successfully sued, representing an unnamed telecom company, and now Google is taking on the practice. (Ars Technica)
• The IRS mistakenly revealed the names of a number of donors to the Republican Governors Association Public Policy Committee, a "nonprofit" that is supposed to be able to hide its donor list from public view. (Public Integrity)
• The House Judiciary Committee is sending Richard Hertling, its former chief counsel and staff director, through the revolving door. Hertling, who has also worked in the Senate and at the Justice department during the Bush administration, is joining Covington & Burling government affairs team. (The Hill)
• While the National Rifle Association gets most of the press and popular attention another group, Gun Owners of America, is emerging as a major force in opposition to new gun control legislation that is winding its way through the Senate. (New York Times)
• When the U.S Chamber of Commerce and Labor Unions came to agreement on visas for low-skilled workers the lane seemed open for a slam dunk for this immigration reform legislation. But, some business groups are unhappy with the deal and, led by the construction industry, appear poised to launch a lobbying press to block the deal.(POLITICO)
• Beards are booming among groups as diverse as urban hipsters and mountain men, but facial hair has been on a long decline in America's halls of power. Now there's a PAC aiming to reverse that trend. The Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of Responsible Democracy (BEARD) PAC recently registered with the FEC. Happy Friday and enjoy the accompanying slideshow! (National Journal)

NEWS ROUNDUP:

• Los Angeles' long awaited 311 app arrived on April 1. The free mobile app allows Los Angelenos to submit service requests, locate city services, and pay bills. (Gov Tech)
• Air shows, which provide summer time entertainment around the country, were hit hard by the sequester. Now, a trade group representing the shows is fighting back with some lobbyist firepower. The International Council of Air Shows, inc. recently hired Van Scoyoc Associates to work on its behalf, the first time the organization has ever contracted lobbyists. (Public Integrity)
• Iceland's innovative crowd-sourced constitution may be in its final days. Last fall, the document was sent to Iceland's parliament for review, but that parliament was dissolved last week in preparation for new elections on April 27. The constitution is scheduled for a referendum after April's elections, but it faces a relatively high bar for passage. (Tech President)
• President Obama took a stroll down Billionaires Row last night to raise money for the DCCC. He swung by the homes of billionaires Tom Steyer and Ann and Gordon Getty for high dollar fundraisers expected to pull in several million dollars. (POLITICO)
• Mary Schapiro and Lanny Bruer, respectively the outgoing heads of the SEC and DOJ's criminal division, failed to win major civil or criminal actions against any Wall Street executives involved in the financial collapse. Both are now leaving the administration to take jobs at firms that rely on Wall Street for much of their income. (National Journal)

NEWS ROUNDUP:

• The annual White House Easter Egg Roll escaped the sequester's axe with a mix of corporate donations and souvenir sales. The National Park Service, which oversees the event, have been allow to accept private donations for almost 100 years. This year Victoria Knight McDowell, CEO of Pine Bros. Softish Throat Drops, chipped in $25,000 after her twins told her the event could get canceled. (Washington Post)
• A new lawsuit by Christopher Horner, who previously found that EPA officials were conducting official business through private email accounts, alleges that executives at the agency also used instant messages to avoid open-records laws.(Washington Times)
• The circus is in town and it's lobbyists aren't just a side show. Feld Entertainment, the company that owns Ringling Bros., spent more than $330,000 on federal lobbying last year trying to fend off attacks from animal rights groups. (Public Integrity)
• Former US Trade Representative Ron Kirk didn't take long to swing through the revolving door. He snagged a job at the Dallas office of the law firm Gibson Dunn where he will work on "international engagements" in many markets that he had experience with during his time as USTR as well as more parochial concerns in his home state of Texas. (POLITICO)
• More than 90 million Russians could be online by the end of 2013 and the Russian government is expected to step up their regulation and censorship of the internet to match. (Tech President)
• 21 chief executives from some of America's most powerful companies are pushing Congress for comprehensive tax reform. In a letter to the leadership of both the House and Senate committees in charge of the issue, CEOs from AT&T, FedEx, Disney, and more urged changes. (Roll Call)