Earmarks

Bill Moyer's Journal spotlights some great reporting by David Heath and Hal Burton (ha!) of the Seattle Times. Here's the earmark database from the report. A recent article by Heath includes a link to a US government database mandated by a law sponsored (to some degree; Heath's article wasn't clear) by both McCain and Obama.

Banning earmarks is part of the Change Congress pledge:

1. No money from lobbyists/PACS.
2. Ban "earmarks"
3. Support public financing of campaigns.

Scraping THOMAS

I thought my legislative opinion idea was pretty clever. Dani did not. She said it would be a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. I could use clarification on that waste of taxpayer dollars part. (I should add that I think this should all be electronic.) Unfortunately, I cannot disagree with her about the fact that the opinion would probably be relegated to an intern; all I can ask is for congressional peer pressure (hah!) to hold legislators to the expectation that they write their own opinions.

Dani suggested two alternatives: seek out legislators' newsletters (which I haven't yet done), and "dig around" to find transcripts of the floors' debates. For the latter option, I have found this gem. It updates once-a-day-ish to serve out the Daily Digest (=summary) of the Congressional Record. Who knew?

I used Page2RSS to setup this RSS feed for the page, since I couldn't find one. (It's the aughts people! What the hell?!) The results can be pretty cryptic, but at least I get notification whenever the site changes – that is, whenever Congress does something. If anyone can manage to scrape a better feed – or knows where to find one – please do let me know!

(I hope this is legal.)

I haven't discerned if the precise transcript of the floors' activities are available through THOMAS. That sure would be nice. Dani – maybe you can elaborate on your "digging" suggestion? Perhaps C-SPAN? Thanks for the suggestion to seek this out.