Congresspedia has become the Open Congress Wiki, where we can build transparency and knowledge together.

[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous e-gov egov democracy congress politics ]

Be the first to comment »

Announcement from the Sunlight Foundation or St. Sunlight, as I think of it:

Washington, DC -Today, the Sunlight Foundation announced ReadTheBill.org, a grassroots campaign to create a more transparent government by calling for all non-emergency legislation to be publicly available online for at least 72 hours before Congress begins debate. Joining Sunlight in supporting its ReadTheBill.org effort is a bipartisan group of individuals and groups, including Newt Gingrich, Joe Trippi, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen and the Federation of American Scientists.

[Tags: sunlight_foundation egov e-gov transparency congress ]

3 Comments »

Apture, a free app I’ve been using on this site for many months, enriches links. You select a phrase in your blog and click the magic button, and Apture suggests links to you from multiple sources and in multiple formats. You select the ones you want, and Apture then puts a link in your post that, when clicked, pops up the selected info, and will play even play the selected video or whatever that. For example, here’s an Apture link that will display info that I’ve selected about Madonna.

Now Apture has done a special data collection for Congresspeople. Great idea. Click on the little Congressional dome next to the Nancy Pelosi’s name to see an example. (The Washington Post has started using Apture for this.)

[Tags: apture everything_is_miscellaneous congress transparency hyperlinks ]

6 Comments »

Thanks to prompting from the ever-more-amazing Sunlight Foundation, the US Congress’ site will provide legislative documents with permanent URLs. That means you can link to them and have some confidence that the links will work tomorrow, which means discussion can more easily more forward. Unique IDs accrete meaning.

[Tags: democracy congress everything_is_miscellaneous sunlight_foundation ]

Be the first to comment »

“… can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may think it’s a movement.
— Arlo Guthrie

Now’s your chance to jump into the Draft Larry Lessig movement at the very beginning. The group is trying to persuade Prof. Lessig to run for Congress in the 12th district, for the seat left sadly empty by the late Tom Lantos. (If Lessig doesn’t run, your contribution goes to Creative Commons.)

If there were a way to draft Lessig as chair of the FCC or as Supreme Court justice, I’d join that, too. [Tags: lessig lawrence_lessig congress politics ]

4 Comments »