On the morning of February 2, 2012 the Committee on House Administration of the 112th Congress held what it calls a Legislative Data and Transparency Conference. This is an all-day, in-person conference on Capitol Hill at which beltway lobbyists and nonprofits were undoubtedly in attendance, but one of the challenges of making congressional data truly [...]

The U.S. House of Representatives schedules one hearing on how to help corporations profit from big government spending on the military, and then two hours later, schedules another hearing on how awful it is that the President has to increase the debt ceiling because of out of control spending.

Thanks for American Electric Power and and FirstEnergy, the State of Ohio has more coal-fired generating capacity than any other state in the nation. Ohio’s electric sector also has the ignominious honor of ranking FIRST in the amount of toxic air pollution it emitted in 2009, emitting more than 44.5 million pounds of harmful chemicals, which accounted for 65% of the state’s pollution and 12% of toxic pollution from all U.S. power plants.

Rall Hall excluded the opening remarks made by ranking minority member Eddie Bernice Johnson from appearance on the web page for the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s hearing on fracking today.

House of Representatives: Homeland Security Committee, Thursday March 31, 10 AM: A hearing on US involvement in the drug war in Mexico, with updates on drug-related violence in Mexico. Judiciary Committee, Wednesday March 30, 10 AM: The Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee will be holding a hearing on the permanent surveillance provisions of the [...]

Tomorrow, in front of the U.S. Capitol Building, a group of patriotic Americans will gather in protest against the Patriot Act. They are demanding full repeal of the Patriot Act because, as long as the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is not allowed to do its work, no one in America can be confident that their constitutional rights are safe from Patriot Act powers.

The failure of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security to deal with the contents of the EFF report, showing widespread abuses of the Patriot Act, indicates that yesterday’s hearing was not intended as a serious consideration of the surveillance law.

Lamar Smith is not beginning the Patriot Act investigations that were promised. That makes the March 12 protest against the Patriot Act in Washington D.C. especially important.

“This lack of transparency speaks to a larger problem where the Speaker’s office has the capacity to unilaterally draft a bill and send it straight through to the Rules Committee. Woodrow Wilson once said that ‘Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, while Congress in its committee rooms is Congress at work.’ If Wilson [...]

Bob Inglis had this to say to his Republican colleagues who resist taking action to confront climate change and encourage conspiracies suggesting that global warming does not exist: You’re enabling China to outmaneuver the United States.