Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

Tariff Action Coalition formed

Washington Post: Lobbyist business booming

Put another way, Main Street's gloom has been K Street's boon," write Ellen Nakashima and Brady Dennis. The first quarter ends tomorrow; lobbyists don't have to disclose how much of a boom it's been until April 20.

AIG bundled for Dodd

Jennifer Haberkorn reports in the Washington Times:

The Next Abramoff: PMA Group?

The New York Times reports:

Must everything be earmarked?

Columnist George Will argues that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 -- the bailout bill that set up TARP, is unconstitutional because it delegates legislative power to the executive branch:

Following Dirty Money

I like the concept behind what appears to be a new Washington Examiner feature called "Dirty Money" (you can see the latest installment here; I can't seem to find a page where previous installments are archived). I'm not a hundred percent certain though of their methodology of determining why certain contributions are dirty--if it's merely a company or organization that had employees or members who've committed crimes (embezzlement is one listed), that doesn't necessarily seem to taint the organization's donations. I think a little more context is needed to determine whether the employees were embezzling from the organization (which would seem to make the organization a victim) or if the embezzlement was part of a management scheme to victimize others.

Feds: Freddie Mac should hide info from SEC

Yesterday, we learned from the Chicago Tribune that Freddie Mac documents are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act because they contain or might compromise commercial information--that is, the proprietary insider information of a private company. Today, in the Washington Post, we learn that that private company was pressured to withhold negative information it was obligated to disclose under SEC rules. It seems that following government policy will adversely affect its bottom line, and the firm wanted to tell its remaining shareholders that.

Ban on Mexican trucks leads to Mexican tariffs

Congressional ethics committees: What's past is prolog

Glenn Reynolds notes that the two congressional ethics committees are off to a less than rapid start and observes, "It's like it's not meant to actually do anything."

Freddie Mac records exempt from FOIA

Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac of the Chicago Tribune report that, while researching what went at Freddie Mac during the period White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel served on the board of directors of Freddie Mac, they were unable to get minutes of board meetings and other information:

Disabled adult children

This morning, while reading a release linked from Recovery.gov, I ran across one of those government terms that make no sense. As part of the stimulus efforts, the Railroad Retirement Board, an independent agency that manages federal benefits for railroad retirees and their dependents (more details on why this board exists here) will send additional checks of $250 to most of its beneficiaries, "including disabled adult children."

Show me THIS data

Derek Willis, with whom I was lucky enough to work with at the Center for Public Integrity, critiques the recent Show Us The Data effort (full disclosure: Sunlight was involved in building the site, and I helped a good deal with the conceptualization). He offers eight solid suggestions for data sets that should be publicly available -- and didn't make the cut for the Show Us The Data site. No arguments here with his wish list, and there's some really good suggestions there.

Specter ramps up the fundraising

In the whirlwind of fundraising parties this month"as of today we've collected 428 invitations for this month and counting"Sen. Arlen Specter stands above his peers, with a dozen parties scheduled in March and more beyond.

AIG subsidiary sues Countrywide Financial

How did I miss this?