Privately paid travel may have fallen over the past year, and more precisely since 2005, but some lawmakers are still taking lavish trips to exotic locales. And some of them might be breaking the new ethics rules that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stated there would be a “zero tolerance” policy. The New York Post has [...]

Our own Party Time site is the proud winner of the “best English weblog” BOB award from Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international public broadcaster. The BOB, or “Best of the blogs” awards, now in their fifth year, the contest considers blogs from all over the world. A jury of international journalists and [...]

Thanks to those guys, Jack Abramoff and pals, lawmakers are taking far fewer privately paid trips overseas. Newly enacted ethics rules ban lawmakers from accepting travel gifts from registered lobbyists or organizations that employ one or more registered lobbyist. Congressional Quarterly reports that privately paid travel is off 43 percent from last year. Legistorm - which [...]

As I noted yesterday, happily, the Transition team announced over the weekend they have now adopted the most open Creative Commons license. As that was unfolding, a group of open government colleagues and allies put our heads together to encourage the Transition team to take even more steps to open up the transition. Along with a [...]

ComputerWorld interviewed James Allen, the IT manager at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a month ago and reposted it yesterday. One line in the interview really stood out to me: We have a T1 line to the Senate so they can file their reports securely and quickly. After the data has been cleared by our analysts [...]

This is great news. Over the weekend, the Obama–Biden Transition team switched the copyright policy for their Web site, Change.gov, from the old fashioned “copyright protected model” to the most  open Creative Commons license. Lots of folks had noticed this oddity and there had been a low buzz of conversation about it. It’s really terrific [...]

Seth Hettena spills the beans on the names of the five lawmakers that Mitchell Wade provided information on to federal investigators. They are: Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hi. Rep. Alan B. Mollohan,  D-W. Va Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va. Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Fla. As Hettena explains, Inouye and Lewis are more directly related to deals that Wade’s former partner [...]

New contribution disclosure rules provide some transparency in the world of “soft” influence seeking. In this case, these disclosure rules require the disclosure of contributions made “in honor of” a covered official, a lawmaker, executive branch or military official. A Seattle Times article looking into these contributions in honor of Washington state lawmakers shows Rep. [...]

According to TPM Muckraker, a Senate Republican placed a secret hold on the nomination of Neil Barofsky to lead the office of special inspector for the bailout. Earlier this month, the Bush administration nominated Neil Barofsky, a federal prosecutor, to be the Treasury Department’s special inspector general on the bailout program. That’s a crucial post, given [...]

If you happen to live in the Washington, DC area, here are a few events relating to government transparency to check out during the month of December: Tues, Dec 2 “Parochial Politics: Ethnic Preferences and Politician Corruption” Presented by the Johns Hopkins University Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Featuring Robin Pande, Professor of Public Policy at [...]

The chief witness in the investigation into former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham may have spilled the goods on more lawmakers than the now imprisoned San Diego Republican. According to Seth Hettena, the author of a book about Cunningham’s crimes, Mitchell Wade’s sentencing memo contains new revelations about his cooperation with federal authorities: A 42-page sentencing memo [...]

Our friends at Change Congress have asked their members and supporters to take a survey to help them decide what they should be focused on for the coming year. And a number of questions they asked dealt with government transparency: Are earmarks fundamentally wrong or just need to be more open and transparent to the [...]

Scott Amey at the Project for Government Oversight’s POGO blog writes about being positively surprised by one thing he found at USAspending.gov, the government site modeled after OMB Watch’s FedSpending.org. 2007 data has been replaced by updated FY 2008 and 2009 totals. (This is shocking on two fronts. The government is usually years behind in [...]

Don’t forget to vote for Party Time! Party Time, our site that helps you keep track of congressional fundraising parties (and that crashed the convention parties this summer), has been nominated for a BOB award for “Best English Weblog.” Cast your vote now for Party Time. Also Vote for Transparency on Change.org. Let lawmakers know that [...]

Doc Searls, author and Senior Editor of the blog Linux Journal, interviews Sunlight’s Greg Elin in an article about open source in politics and government. Here are the choice parts from Greg describing Sunlight’s work, the data that backs it up, and the future of it all: Almost all of our projects and funded projects are [...]

Back in July, the New York Times and the New York Post appeared in competition for which publication could roll out the most damaging story about House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel. Four months later and they’re back at it. Yesterday, the Post reported the Rangel receives a tax benefit on his home in [...]

ProPublica features a terrific graphic showing the relative size of the government bailouts as compared to previous bailouts. Take a look (click through for the key to graphic): (image credit: ProPublica)

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Home Builders lobby is ramping up their campaign for a section of the bailout pie. Struggling U.S. auto makers left Washington empty-handed after weeks of pleading for a handout, but that hasn’t deterred home builders from stepping up to lobby Congress for help. But any federal assistance would require policy [...]

Today, President-Elect Barack Obama named the key members of economic team including Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary and Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council. Notably, many in Obama’s economic circle are acolytes of former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the subject of much talk in the wake of the bailout of Citigroup. [...]

With the Bush Administration winding down, ProPublica asks a good question, “What documents can the White House put in the shredder?” The administration’s fetish for secrecy is well known. It’s a logical assumption that the Bush/Cheney team would like to make some documents disappear. ProPublica looked at the laws governing what documents they are required to [...]