.

The inspiration for the move, Pierson says, came in large part from the Sunlight Foundation, which has been urging Congress, through its Open House Project, to make records more accessible to the public. The group issued a report in May 2007 calling for bulk distribution of legislative data.

"We've been working really hard with Congress to get this, so we're happy to see this here," says John Wonderlich, policy director for the Sunlight Foundation.

wow. back-to-back drop days for sunlight! first tim o'reilly then congressman Mike Honda (D-CA)

yup, sure feels good to sit in the sun.

--timball

An API for Federal Legislation? Congress Wants Your Opinion | Threat Level from Wired.com

[Updated] Former Sen. Norm Coleman’s Web site is down, and the campaign says a flood of info-seeking disenfranchised voters overwhelmed it. A press release posted at the GOP blog Minnesota Democrats Exposed reports that the site was “inundated by tens of thousands of hits today – temporarily crashing the website.” MDE’s Ryan Flynn then quotes Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan (Fox 9 also published the release).

“Minnesotans and folks across the country are fed up with Al Franken’s efforts to disenfranchise thousands of Minnesota voters, and the overwhelming response we received to making this information public is proof positive of that fact,” he says.

But not so fast, says Aaron Landry, an MN Publius blogger (and Franken fan) who works as IT Manager at a St. Paul design firm by day. He commented at MDE that there’s “no way that the amount of traffic they got was the cause of the website being down.”

Then he did some digging. His conclusion: “This stunt is a completely fabricated lie.“

Two of the four points Landry makes in his post:

THE SITE IS NOT DOWN! The snip-snip session below shows how i brought (fmr) senator coleman's website back to the tubes. after you add those entries to your own /etc/hosts (more info on hosts file) you too can read about how senator coleman needs 5 more yrs to balance a budget. or how the power of FUD will get you re-elected!

--snip--snip--snip--
timball@thompson {1}$ host colemanforsenate.com
colemanforsenate.com has address 1.1.1.1
colemanforsenate.com mail is handled by 10 mail.colemanforsenate.com.
timball@thompson {2}$ date
Thu Jan 29 07:56:04 EST 2009
timball@thompson {3}$ tail -n 1 /etc/hosts
208.42.168.197 colemanforsenate.com www.colemanforsenate.com
--snip--snip--snip--

Share and enjoy!

--timball

Minnesota Independent » Did Coleman campaign fake Web site crash?

While privacy controls in browsers are improving, industry could be much more innovative than it has been to date in developing state management mechanisms that make privacy controls easier to use. Meanwhile, the government should be creating policies to encourage this innovation, rather than railroading the issue with an inflexible mandate (i.e., the current policy) or eliminating the government-wide policy altogether (a possible alternative).

There are a couple of other areas where more study may be needed:

1) There are a growing number of cases where information about an individual may not be directly personally identifiable, but where the individual has a privacy interest based on the use of the information. IDs of all kinds (including those used in state management mechanisms) and location information are two prominent examples. Today, there are few privacy rules in government to cover these kinds of information.

2) There are clearly some instances where federal Web sites could be greatly improved through the use of monitoring aggregate and individual usage for diagnostic and analytical use. The feasibility of conducting such analysis in a privacy-protective manner deserves further exploration.

A study panel should consider what the appropriate policy guidelines should be for these situations. This panel should assess how policies specific to federal Web sites can allow beneficial uses of cookies and other state management mechanisms while protecting privacy, taking the differences between the types of data commonly collected online into account.

We’d like to thank the Sunlight Labs Team for allowing us to bounce these ideas off of them. Let us know what you think.

w00t! the team grouped thought and *I* helped!

--timball

PolicyBeta - Blog Archive - A New Cookie Policy for E-Gov 2.0: Part 2

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is the official political committee established by Republican Members of the United States Senate to help Republican candidates develop the campaign resources they need for 2008 so we can capture the majority in the United States Senate.

The Chairman of the NRSC is Senator John Ensign of Nevada.
City: Washington, DC
Country: United States
Website: http://www.nrsc.org

If you'd like to watch the worst attack ads of the season, tune-into the NRSC's youtube feed.

--timball

YouTube - TheNRSC's Channel

Sen. Barack Obama
1. Ready or Not Fugees
2. What's Going On Marvin Gaye
3. I'm On Fire Bruce Springsteen
4. Gimme Shelter Rolling Stones
5. Sinnerman Nina Simone
6. Touch the Sky Kanye West
7. You'd Be So Easy to Love Frank Sinatra
8. Think Aretha Franklin
9. City of Blinding Lights U2
10. Yes We Can will.i.am

Sen. John McCain
1. Dancing Queen ABBA
2. Blue Bayou Roy Orbison
3. Take a Chance On Me ABBA
4. If We Make It Through December Merle Haggard
5. As Time Goes By Dooley Wilson
6. Good Vibrations The Beach Boys
7. What A Wonderful World Louis Armstrong
8. I've Got You Under My Skin Frank Sinatra
9. Sweet Caroline Neil Diamond
10. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes The Platters

Not one, but TWO abba songs. Oddly enough McC doesn't have any songs from his youth except one timeless classic from the chairman of the board.

I think What's Going On is a particularly great choice.

--timball

Favorite Songs of the Candidates -- Political Wire

WASHINGTON — Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens allegedly made false statements to cover up gifts given to him by an oil contractor seeking his help on Capitol Hill, according to a seven-count federal indictment unveiled Tuesday.

hahahahaha (i'm not bitter)

--timball

FOXNews.com - Sen. Ted Stevens Indicted, Charged With Making False Statements in Corruption Probe - Politics | Republican Party | Democratic Party | Political Spectrum

CT-05 Chris Murphy (incumbent)
LA-06 Don Cazayoux (incumbent)
ME-01 Tom Allen (incumbent, running for Senate)
MS-01 Travis Childers (incumbent)
TX-22 Nick Lampson (incumbent)
TX-23 Ciro Rodriguez (incumbent)
WI-08 Steve Kagen (incumbent)

AL-05 Parker Griffith
KY-02 David Boswell
IL-11 Debbie Halverson
NV-03 Dina Titus
NJ-03 John Adler
OH-01 Steve Driehaus
OH-16 John Boccieri
OR-05 Kurt Schrader
NJ-07 Linda Stender

freedom watch <3's those robocalls

the above list is the "weak" dems that they've decided to target. I'm saving this now so that come november I can laugh at them.

The Crypt: Freedom's Watch runs robocalls against Dems - Politico.com

This site hosts this video to explain the launch of two exploratory projects — first, a Change Congress movement, and second, my own decision whether to run for Congress in the California 12th.

I have decided I want to give as much energy as I can to the Change Congress movement. I will decide in the next week or so whether it makes sense to advance that movement by running for Congress.

Many friends have weighed in on that decision — both strongly in favor and strongly opposed. Many more have joined draftlessig.org and a Facebook group asking me to consider it.

Watch or listen and you will understand some of my reasoning. Feel free to send your thoughts or advice to lessig@lessig08.org (though please excuse any slowness in my response).

— Larry Lessig, February 19, 2008

Professor Lessig is running for Tom Lantos's seat (CA-12).

Oh. Hell. Yes.

--timball

Lessig '08 - Change Congress.

We have a list of superdelegates to the 2008 Democratic Convention who have officially endorsed a candidate but who is left? Who hasn't made an official endorsement?

Now that the primaries have started we will probably see a wave of endorsements. Let's take a look at which Democratic superdelegates haven't endorsed a candidate yet. Along with our superdelegate list we will be updating this list as new endorsements are made.
This will be an ongoing work in progress so check back often for updates.

Superdelegates highlighted in red are from Michigan or Florida and do not count toward the nomination at this time.

There is no *definitive* webpage that can give you the "accurate" count of delegates, but 2008 demconwatch has been watching the delegate + "superdelagate" counts as closely as they can track.

Superdelegates suck. They're ~ 800 dem big shots that get to vote for whomever they like. And since they're *actual* delegates the votes they cast count slightly more than ours.

--timball

2008 Democratic Convention Watch: Superdelegates who haven't endorsed

Top House Republicans were told in recent days that a former employee of their campaign committee may have forged an official audit during the contentious 2006 election cycle and that they should brace for the possibility that an unfolding investigation could uncover financial improprieties stretching back several years, according to GOP sources briefed on the members-only discussions.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has retained a forensic auditor to review its accounting for the last several election cycles, the sources said.

forensic auditor := Ninja accountants (?)

--timball

NRCC probe scares GOP - Patrick O'Connor and John Bresnahan - Politico.com