U.S. Congress

Gas Guzzlers Group Burns Cash

The Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America (SUVOA) industry front group paid the PR firm Stratacomm $440,000 in the first half of 2007 to lobby the U.S. government. Stratacomm boasts a range of auto industry clients. Later this year, the U.S.

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More U.S. Lobbyists Talking Turkey

ArmeniaAs the U.S. House of Representatives considers a controversial resolution "recognizing as 'genocide' the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in the former Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago," the Turkish government is increasing its Washington DC lobbying.

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New Participatory Project: Post Photos of the 2008 Candidates

We launched a new project, "Wiki the Vote," on Congresspedia this week to build profiles of each of the 2008 congressional candidates. We're looking to build the same kind of citizen-driven profiles of challengers that we have done for sitting members of Congress and have started with a first set of 300 confirmed candidates.

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"Wiki the Vote" Project on Congresspedia Profiles Congressional Candidates in the 2008 Election

On Tuesday, the Center for Media and Democracy and the Sunlight Foundation launched a new collaborative, citizen-driven project on Congresspedia to build profiles on the hundreds of challengers for congressional seats, which will compliment the existing profiles on every member of Congress. The project is non-partisan and, in true open-source fashion, is free for anyone to participate -- even the candidates themselves.

Even for official party nominees, information on challengers is usually woefully inadequate and information on primary challengers is often nearly non-existent. The explosion of citizen blogging in the last few years has created a wealth of individual opinions and perspectives, but what has been lacking is a central repository of collaboratively produced, in-depth and accurate information. The Wiki the Vote project, due to its easily editable wiki format, will be just that.

Preview: Congress This Week (October 1-5, 2007)

The big issues this week include whether President Bush will carry through on his threat to veto the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion, which had broad support from Republicans in addition to all Democrats. Congressional Democrats are also likely this week to respond to Bush's request last week for an additional $42 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which brings 2008's total to $190 billion.

For information on what's happening in the committees, see below for a full listing of committee hearings, courtesy of GovTrack.us.

Hearings Schedules:

Pill Pushers Avoid Advertising Restrictions

Congress has jettisoned proposed amendments to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) legislation that would have expanded the agency's powers over drug industry direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns promoting prescription drugs.

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Congresspedia Review: Last Week in Congress (Sept. 17-21, 2007)

It was heady week in Congress, with developments in two investigations of members Congress and a series of votes on Iraq deployments, habeas corpus for War on Terror detainees, health insurance for low-income children, trade with Peru, a seat in the House of Representatives for Washington, D.C., the housing credit crisis and MoveOn's controversial ad. The headlines are below, but you can find more details, including how your members of Congress voted, by clicking through the links to the full Congresspedia articles.

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