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Congress in the news: updated 8/10/2006 4:46 PM EDT
- Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) is claiming that a staffer for his Democratic opponent for reelection tried to make a cash donation to his campaign in order to infiltrate the congressman’s mailing list. (Associated Press (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-10-kline-campaign_x.htm?csp=34) story)
- Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay criticized Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for denying him a stay in his appeal to be removed from the congressional ballot this fall. (TPM Muckraker (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001312.php) story)
- An internal investigation conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence found that "major breakdowns" in legislative controls allowed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham to grant classified government contracts to his business and political associates. (Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-duke10aug10,1,3244650.story?coll=la-headlines-politics) story)
- Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.) is being criticized for accepting a loan without required House approval, and subsequently using his influence on a House committee to aid his lender, who is also a top campaign contributor. (Orange County Register (http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/news/nationworld/article_1238837.php) story)
- A three-judge federal panel has redrawn the 23rd district in Texas to increase Hispanic voting power. The redistricting is expected to make Rep. Henry Bonilla’s (R-Texas) reelection bid more difficult, (AP (http://www.statesman.com/news/content/gen/ap/TX_Redistricting_Texas.html) story) as the congressman will reportedly be challenged by former Democratic Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciro_Rodriguez). (Congressional Quarterly (http://www.cqpolitics.com/2006/08/rodriguez_to_mount_comeback_bi.html#more) story)
- Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) was defeated by Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, and has announced his intentions to run as an independent candidate in the November general election. (Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0608090183aug09,1,1916594.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed) story) Hours before voting in the primary began, Lieberman's campaign manager announced that someone had hacked into the senator’s campaign website, blocking citizens from the site. (Associated Press (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060808/ap_on_el_ge/primary_elections_36;_ylt=Ak_NXZ1DYDF4kcgCHM_0wbnJ76Mv;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl) story) The FBI quickly confirmed that it is investigating the allegations. (TPM Muckraker (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001304.php) story)
- Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), who sparked controversy by hitting a Capitol police officer earlier this year, was defeated in the Georgia Democratic primary by Henry Johnson (New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/washington/09mckinney.html) story), while another incumbent, Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-Mich), was beaten by Tim Walberg in the Michigan GOP primary. (New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Schwarz.html) story)
- Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) announced his intention to withdraw from this fall's congressional election, clearing the way for Republicans to endorse a write-in candidate. (Dallas Morning News (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8JCDMG00.html) story) The candidate is speculated to be Sugarland Mayor David Wallace. (TPM Muckraker (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001308.php) story)
- Two additional ex-staffers to Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) have been called for questioning by the FBI in their investigation into the relationship between the congresswoman and a defense contractor. (St. Petersburg Times (http://www.sptimes.com/2006/08/09/Worldandnation/Katherine_Harris_ex_a.shtml) story)
- Rep. Bob Ney’s (R-Ohio) choice to run for his House seat in the November election may be ineligible to do so under two separate Ohio laws. (Associated Press (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060809/ap_on_el_ho/congressman_withdraws) story)
- Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) announced that he is abandoning his reelection campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives (Columbus Dispatch (http://www.dispatch.com/election/election.php?story=203626) story), something House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly asked him to do last week. (Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080700078_pf.html) story) In addition, the Justice Department announced that it is reviewing documents related to an interview the congressman gave to Senate investigators in 2004 concerning his relationship with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. (Roll Call (http://www.rollcall.com/issues/52_18/news/14671-1.html) story)
- Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) has paid for political consulting services from the home of James Tobin, a Republican operative recently convicted for his role in a New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal. (Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/05/AR2006080500823.html) story)
- A staffer for Rep. Katherine Harris’s (R-Fla.) Senate campaign has been accused of having a woman publicly question her leading Republican opponent's ethnicity. (TPM Muckraker (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001293.php) story)
- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has denied a request by the Texas GOP to block the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling forcing former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to remain on the ballot for the November congressional election. (TPM Muckraker (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001289.php) story)
- A recent investigation revealed that Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) has been one of the Northern Mariana Islands’ largest proponents in Congress. The Islands were long represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who contributed heavily to Doolittle’s campaigns and PACs. (TPM Muckraker (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001269.php) story)
- The Senate revamped the private pension system in a bill which passed 93 to 5. (Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301337.html) story)
- Sen. Pat Roberts (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pat_Roberts#Roberts_.22Fixed.22_Iraq_Intelligence) (R-Kan.) criticized the White House for classifying parts of a report on Iraqi exiles' role in Iraq. (New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/world/middleeast/04intel.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) story)
- Sen. Rick Santorum's (R-Pa.) six staff members, including an intern who followed Democratic candidate Bob Casey Jr. in a costume, collected voter signatures to get the Green Party on the fall ballot. (Philadelphia Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/15203194.htm) story)
- Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) stated that the U.S. should start pulling troops out of Iraq within the next 6 months. (Lincoln Journal-Star (http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/08/03/local/doc44d26d58d31c5993111065.txt) story)
- Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) faces a tough primary battle in a year where she faced fierce criticism for hitting a Capitol Hill police officer. (AP (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060804/ap_on_el_ho/georgia_politics;_ylt=Am.ytEUVqnfNT7E8oVn5O1tp24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--) story)
- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) called on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign after a heated exchange during a public hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee. (AP (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060804/ap_on_go_co/clinton_iraq) story)
- Former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) must remain on the ballot in Texas-22 according to a federal appeals panel. (AP (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2270679) story)
- Sen. Norm Coleman (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Norm_Coleman#Opposing_Bush) (R-Minn.) said that he will vote against President Bush's ambassador nominee to Armenia because the nominee does not refer to the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. (AP (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-coleman-armenian-ambassador,1,2280191.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines) story)
- Justin Rood from TPM Muckraker met with the spokeswoman for Rep. Katherine Harris (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Katherine_Harris#Problems_with_staff) (R-Fla.), who stated that Harris kept her subpoena secret from the Speaker of the House. (TPM Muckraker (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001259.php) story)
- Congress reduced the number of privately funded trips they accept in the wake of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-03-congress-trips_x.htm) story)
- The Senate approved a bill that would allow 8.3 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to be drilled for oil and gas. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the only Republican to vote against it. (Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080100999.html) story)
- Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Rep. John Conyers (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_Conyers%2C_Jr.#The_Constitution_In_Crisis) (D-N.Y.) updated his report which questions the legality of the Bush administration's actions.(TPM Muckraker (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/conyers-report/?resultpage=1&) story)
- Rep. Katherine Harris (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Katherine_Harris#Problems_with_staff) (R-Fla.) failed to tell her top campaign advisors about a grand jury subpoena from federal investigators. (Tampa Tribune (http://www.tbo.com/news/nationworld/MGB0J4K6DQE.html) story)
- Rep. Bob Ney (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Ney#Use_of_campaign_funds_for_legal_fees) (R-Ohio.) filed that he raised zero dollars from individuals and corporations for his legal defense fund at the end of June 2006.(Canton Rep. (http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=299782&Category=13,) story)
- A D.C. federal appeals court ordered a lower court judge to allow Rep. William Jefferson (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=William_Jefferson#Status_of_seized_documents) (D-La.) to review copies of the documents seized from his office during an FBI raid. Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-jefferson29jul29,1,19941.story?coll=la-news-politics-national&track=crosspromo,) story)
- Florida State Republican Party told Rep. Katherine Harris (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Katherine_Harris#2006_Senate_Race) (R-Fla.) that they would not support her 2006 congressional campaign, in a letter obtained by the AP. (AP (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060731/ap_on_el_se/florida_senate_harris) story)
- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bill_Frist#Financial_disclosures) (R-Tenn.) did not reveal his role in two family foundations on his financial disclosure forms. (AP (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/31/AR2006073100530.html?nav=rss_politics,) story)
- Sen.Chuck Hagel (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Chuck_Hagel#Controversy) (R-Neb.) expressed opposing views from the Bush administrations’, calling Iraq "an absolute replay of Vietnam" and stating that "The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now, President Bush must call for an immediate cease-fire. This madness must stop." Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/31/AR2006073101292_2.html) story)
- House and Senate Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Nancy_Pelosi#Progressive_image) (D-Calif) and Harry Reid (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Harry_Reid#Iraqi_War) (D-Nev.) lead 12 top congressional Democrats in signing a letter urging President Bush to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2006. (AP (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/31/AR2006073100743.html) story)
Front page July 2006 archive (http://www.prwatch.org/node/5025)
Front page June 2006 archive (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4945)
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From the Editors:
Congresspedia/SourceWatch get wiki-mania. (http://www.prwatch.org/node/5058)
August 7, 2006
I’m currently at the Citizen Journalism "unconference" (http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Journalism) at the Wikimania 2006 (http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) conference in Boston with a joint team from the Sunlight Foundation (http://www.sunlightfoundation.com) and the Center for Media and Democracy (http://www.prwatch.org). Wikimania is the gathering of the international horde of volunteers, citizen researchers and programmers behind Wikipedia and the many wikis it has inspired, including SourceWatch/Congresspedia. The "unconference" is being put on by our friend Dan Gillmor and his new Center for Citizen Media (http://citmedia.org/blog/).
There’s a distinct feeling in the air here that wikis have come into their own as an indispensable piece of the human body of knowledge. The English language Wikipedia passed the one million article mark (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_reaches_one_million_articles) in March, more than 200 Wikipedias in other languages (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias) have been started and a December review (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/%27%27Nature%27%27_reports:_%22Wikipedia_comes_close_to_Britannica_in_terms_of_the_accuracy_of_its_science_entries%22) by Nature of the accuracy of Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britannica found that they were roughly comparable in accuracy.
There are a number of other exciting wiki projects in the works, including Wikiversity (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity) (an online learning community), Wiktionary (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page) (an open content dictionary) and WiktionaryZ (http://wiktionaryz.org/Main_Page) (a mult-lingual online dictionary). But one of the most exciting wiki developments for us at Congresspedia is Wikiwyg (http://www.wikiwyg.net/), a wiki implementation of WYSISYG, or What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get. Essentially this means that instead of having to learn how to write in wiki code (which really is simple for basic writing—here's where to get started (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch:How_does_one_edit_a_page) if you haven't already), you'll be able to simply click on the screen and edit the text of an article in real time and without having to look at the underlying code. We believe this will remove one of the last significant barriers preventing citizens from becoming citizen journalists on wikis.
We're also meeting a lot of really fascinating people doing some really innovative projects in citizen journalism, online communities, collaborative research and digitizing ("freeing") information. In the coming months keep an eye out for new developments on our wiki, SourceWatch/Congresspedia, that harness these ideas and technologies to make it both easier to use and richer in content and features.
Read the rest of this article (http://www.prwatch.org/node/5058/)
The Colbert Report: Sense of Humor Required (http://www.prwatch.org/node/5013)
July 27, 2006
The morning shows and cable news outlets have been all over Stephen Colbert's July 20 interview with Rep. Bob Wexler (D-Fla.) on the Colbert Report. We at Congresspedia think that Colbert's interviews are frequently hilarious and have created indexes of links to videos of the interviews that he and Jon Stewart have done with members of Congress. However, as we state at the top of the index pages, "It should be noted that the interviews often veer into pure comedy and should not be taken as on-the-record comments." So, when Colbert gets Rep. Wexler to discuss subjects like prostitutes and cocaine, we suggest you take Colbert's advice and recognize that, hey, "he's got a sense of humor."
Read the rest of this article (http://www.prwatch.org/node/5013/)
Congresspedia takes on constitutional amendments (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4944)
Updated July 21, 2006
Update: House fails to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment.
As part of the expansion of Congresspedia beyond articles on individual members of Congress, we've recently created pages on the Federal Marriage Amendment and flag burning amendment. We've also created pages on the process to amend the Constitution and integrated existing pages on the Constitution itself.
Read the rest of this article (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4944/)
Older posts:
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is a real estate genius (especially when there's congressional pork to pump up the land value) (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4915)
Congresspedia at YearlyKos (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4870)
Scandals, Scandals, Scandals—Part II: The Investigations (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4862)
Scandals, scandals, scandals. (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4828)
New additions to Congresspedia. (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4802)
Network neutrality update: more bills, more conflicts of interest. (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4798)
Sunlight Foundation Blogs
- Under the Influence: (http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/blog/13) A real-time investigation of money in Washington politics.
- Dollarocracy: (http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/blog/4) A citizen's guide to the money-in-politics complex.
- In Broad Daylight: (http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/broaddaylight) Daily updates of corruption in the news.
- Sunspots: (http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/blog/3) Transparency begins at home—Notes on what we're up to.
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