I was working on a little Sunlight project regarding Read the Bill, and it required me to give the FAIL treatment to a photo I took this afternoon (more on that later). I sent the image to our creative director, Kerry. Or so I thought:

Yes, I’m an e-mail attachment idiot. The embarrassment doesn’t stop there, however. Kerry sent the above around to my coworkers, and in an attempt to explain myself I replied to everybody saying I was using Gmail’s “Forgotten Attachment Detector,” (yes, I forget attachments often).

Except I didn’t hit “Reply All,” I just hit “Reply.” So, Kerry made a wisecrack, and I had to admit to him that I was trying to send the message to everybody:

I’m going to step away from the computer now, before I hurt myself.

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The Progressive Change Campaign Committee released a new ad today that calls out New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D) and other Senate Democrats on campaign contributions they’ve received from the health and insurance industries. The Campaign is trying to put some pressure on the lawmakers to support a public-option in health-care reform legislation currently in Congress:

Well, popping over to Sen. Bingaman’s official site this afternoon, the first thing you see is a policy statement on, wait for it, health-care reform. Specifically, a public option:

Much attention has been given to whether the bill we send to the president should have a “public option.” I strongly support a public option.  The most critical elements of such a plan are that it would be established and overseen by the federal government, and made available to all Americans. The primary purpose of the public plan is to ensure that there is at least one option for Americans that is affordable and would provide meaningful care. By leveraging competition, a public plan would also safeguard against unscrupulous insurances practices.

Of course, the devil’s in the details, but if you like the idea of a public option you should head over to WeWantThePublicOption.com to register your support. And if you can find Sen. Tom Udall talking about a public option, let me know in comments.

Best paragraph of my day, from a NY Times review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:

There’s a serious disconnect in the movie between the image of power that those GM brands are meant to convey and the bankrupt car industry they now signify. That disconnect only deepens with the introduction of two new Autobot characters, the illiterate, bickering twins Skids (Tom Kenny) and Mudflap (Reno Wilson), both of which take the shape of Chevrolet concept cars. The characters have been given conspicuously cartoonish, so-called black voices that indicate that minstrelsy remains as much in fashion in Hollywood as when, well, Jar Jar Binks was set loose by George Lucas. For what it’s worth, the script, by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, also includes a crack about Simmons, who’s coded as Jewish, and his “pubic-fro head.”

When you movie characters are being compared to Jar Jar, you’re doing it wrong.

10:45 p.m. UPDATE: It appears I spoke too soon:

Megatron is pulled from the sea to assist the original Decepticon, Fallen (a metaphor for Lucifer? No: For [Director Michael] Bay’s limp junk).

Pajiba FTW!

I’ve wanted one for almost 3 years. Now I’m blogging from one. And including photos I took with it.

Life is good.

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As you likely know, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) admitted yesterday to an extramarital affair, and has since resigned from his leadership position with the Senate Republican Conference. On its face, the scandal is bad enough for the Ensign: he admitted to an affair with the wife of one of his staffers. As Donny wrote earlier, Ensign’s chances of advancing within the Republican Party appear to be slim.

But there’s more to the story than the affair. Several reports surfaced today regarding the salary Ensign paid Douglas Hampton (the staffer whose wife was involved in the affair). Our colleague Paul Blumenthal delved deeper into the money angle at the Sunlight Foundation blog, highlighting some of the problems with Senate salary disclosures. He also spent some time updating the OpenCongress Wiki profile of Ensign about the scandal.

We’ll continue to keep an eye on the situation, but if you see something that we’ve missed you can always add the information yourself through the OpenCongress Wiki.

Regular OpenCongress users know that we lag a bit (about 24 hours) behind THOMAS, the official site of the Library of Congress, when we put bill information and roll call votes on OpenCongress. This is a result of several factors, but put simply, we have to wait for the information to be online before our servers can collect it for publication. For the vast majority of users, this system works: Congress usually moves so slowly that waiting 24 hours to read the bill text or review a roll-call vote is not much of a problem.

We do run into trouble, however, when legislation being debated in Congress is not made available online.

On Friday, my colleague John Wonderlich and I made a field trip to Capitol Hill. Our destination: the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch. Our goal: pick up a copy of the FY 2010 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill (and an accompanying committee report), which had been marked up that morning.
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One of the most frustrating things I encountered as a small-town reporter was a lack of access to information: whether I was trying to find out about laws in the Roundhouse or enrollment rates at WNMU, sometimes I ran into brick walls and red tape.

I now work for the Sunlight Foundation and OpenCongress, two organizations that are dedicated to open government, transparency, and citizen engagement. We’re using the power of the Internet to empower citizens in the political process and help them hold lawmakers and other officials accountable.

I’ll be in Silver City next week (June 1 – 5) and while there I would like to try to share some of the techniques I’ve learned for keeping tabs on government. Now, I’m not doing this as an “official” Sunlight event, but it will be geared around what Sunlight calls “Insanely Useful Web Sites,” some discussion of good-government principles, and time for questions.

I know this is short notice, but if anybody is interested in learning about some of the new ways of digging up useful information (from voting records of senators to campaign finance records to information on copper smelters around the world) I’m willing to get together. Thursday evening (June 4) looks pretty empty on the ole community calender, so let me know if you’re interested?

If so, please email me at andurin@gmail.com. If enough people are interested we will set a time and place.

Click through to find out more about the image.

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If you’re interested in government information, and you have a knack for programming or visualizing information and like money (and who doesn’t like money) should check out Sunlight Labs new contest: Apps for America 2. Sunlight is giving away $25,000 in prize money (in conjunction with a few partners like Google) to the best applications that rely on the newly-launched Data.gov. I’ll let Clay explain:

These are exciting times for us– the walls between Government and Developers are starting to shrink, and we here in Sunlight Labs are terribly excited to get to work on doing great things with the data that’s coming out. Government has made a move in the right direction– now it is time for us to show them what we can do.

We’re happy launch Apps for America 2, this time with support from our friends. Google’s put in some prize money as has Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig’s list. O’Reilly and Techweb have provided another wonderful incentive: tickets and table space to Gov2.0 summit for the winners.

So, if you want a shot at $10,000 for first prize (or $2,500 for best visualization), you better get coding!

“Journalists who also blog shouldn’t criticize me because I’m right and they’re wrong. So go look at all the crazy stuff they’re trying to pull.” Or something like that (scroll down to the bottom).

Oh, and to his assertion that his is “the most respected, most quoted and most read political web site in New Mexico,” here’s this:

Sure, right now his site is on top (likely because all the other blogs in the state are linking to his whining about those scary “progressive bloggers” and “quasi-secret, out-of-state nonprofit ventures.” But back during the election, you can see it was Matt at NMFBIHOP who was pulling in the big numbers. Heck, if you toss in the SF Reporter and and the NM Independent (two more of his recent targets) you get this:

If you really want to get a sense of the man, check out his Twitter stream:

I’ve got two bloggers stalking me. One makes pancakes–NMFBIHOP–The other–Beltway Baca–makes crazy!

Leave it to Joe to respond to legitimate criticism with actual name-calling. It just doesn’t get any more juvenile than this.¹ Monahan is the worst of bloggers: he doesn’t link to anybody else in the state, even when responding to direct criticism, robbing his readers of even more context. He also doesn’t allow direct comments, preventing readers from responding in the light of day. Instead, he filters criticism and praise alike, publishing only the bits and pieces that advance his own agenda.

His attacks on Heath Haussamen are even more ludicrous: Heath is a guy who has established not only a comments policy, but has an entire section on his own ethics responsibilities. Long before criticizing Monahan for his use of anonymous sources, Heath had a clear policy in place for when he would use un-named sources. Monahan, on the other hand, relies on them almost entirely, and there’s no rhyme or reason.

Oh, and one last thing Joe: it’s pretty easy to nail an “exclusive” if you’re willing to publish anything and everything that pops into your inbox.

For more on the whole affair, start where everybody else did at m-pyre, then check out Matt and Julia.

1. Not to mention the hypocrisy: this is somebody who calls sources — in New Mexico of all places — alligators. (Return to post)

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