Over the last few days, there’s been a good deal of talk about the ethics requirements going into effect for Senate Committees.  Later today, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to reconcile the rules of their committee with the requirements of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, often referred informally as “the ethics reform […]

In order to clarify this post, I wanted to organize some of the governmental support agencies and bodies with responsibility or jurisdiction over congressional information access.  This list is still probably partial, as any such list would be, since jurisdiction and responsibility are ultimately a matter of habit and practice as much as they are […]

From the Open House Project Google Group discussion, here’s a partial list of recent transparency reform legislation, passed or pending.
Transparency bills that passed in 110th Congress, 1st session:
1. S.1 Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007:

Requires online posting of committee hearing transcripts/audio/video (Senate only)
Expands lobbyist disclosure to require quarterly filing, disclosure of bundled contributions, […]

I always find it interesting how although our government is run by fairly strict procedural rules that have been written out in various places, starting with the constitution and ending somewhere past the horizon, sometimes it’s just impossible to locate exactly at what point in the procedural game “reality” is. For instance, the constitution outlines […]

The following is an update of what I’ve been up to recently, in several different areas…
Transcript Pledge and Letter:
Even if the leadership in both parties make a priority of publicizing committee proceedings, the committee chairs in their variable discretion (as we called it in the report) still need to make it a sufficient priority for […]

Josh’s recent post, and general attentiveness to newly introduced legislation, has me thinking about the different kinds of reform that might result in increased transparency.
It seems to me that it’s worth looking into how a lot of transparency reform and process reform tend to be favored perenially by the political minority. Any transparency reform […]

Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, has introduced a new bill that has a clause specifically about Internet-based transparency. (We know King from his bill H.R. 170: Sunlight Act of 2007, parts of which I think were integrated into the passed ethics reform bill. One part that wasn’t integrated was a provision to have bills […]

We came across Rep. Tom Reynolds’ (NY-26) google map of his earmarks a little while ago, and it appears that someone really went above and beyond in showing info about the district. Frankly, I’m completely unfamiliar with the issues or politics of this district, and I don’t even know if this is a comprehensive […]

In light of the current debate over SCHIP (and President Bush’s veto threat), here are two recently released CRS reports on the State Childrens’ Health Insurance Program legislation.
This report, released August 14th, is specifically about H.R. 3162.
The other document is a CRS report from August 7th on Medicaid, SCHIP, and FY2008 issues.
Documents from OpenCRS.com, as […]

A few days ago, I wrote a post about the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution.
My basic point was that members of Congress have certain privileges granted by the Constitution, giving them freedom from legal action relating to their legislative duties. Congress members aren’t above the law, so only legislative acts qualify as […]