Fortunately, Krakauer described one of his resources on Afghanistan, Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Beginning in 1979, Coll’s study spans two decades, detailing the worldwide rise of Islamic fanaticism and, more importantly, the complicity of the world’s intelligence apparatus in fostering that fanaticism (especially during the Soviet invasion and its aftermath). Coll is extremely detailed in his account: I’m more than 1/3 of the way through and the Soviet invasion is just barely ending. The details are grounded, however, in a fluid narrative that passes from Islamabad to Kabul to Moscow to Washington to Riyadh and back. I wish the most shocking element was how much money passes between those locations in the 80s. Unfortunately, what’s most surprising is how many opportunities there were for intelligence agents, lawmakers, diplomats and administration officials to recognize the threats posed by their handpicked allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan (and I’m only 1/3 of the way through!).

Coll’s book was published in 2004, a few years prior to the release of The Looming Tower, which is considered by many to be the preeminent history of the 9/11 attacks. I’m going to pick it up next, but thus far I’m incredibly impressed with Ghost Wars. It’s an elaborate, if chilling, history of the events leading up to some of the most important events in our lifetimes.

P.S. If you haven’t read Where Men Win Glory, I also recommend it. Krakauer is one of those writers that people seem to love or hate, but if nothing else the Tillman story serves as a stunning reminder of the depravity of the Bush Administration. But more than that, Krakauer shows the power of the Freedom of Information Act while casting a new light on recent events (I feel no sympathy whatsoever for Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s downfall following Rolling Stone‘s controversial interview). Above all, Tillman is revealed as loyal friend, brother, son and husband, and a ultimately a true patriot.

And, to see my favorite photo of the year, see this picture of mother and daughter.

This is the fourth entry in the Canon Digital Rebel line I’ve used since I got started with this whole photography thing back in 2004. I began with the Digital Rebel, moved on up to the XTi, then to the XSi, and now the T2i. Each offering has brought improvements in image quality and usability, but thus far, this iteration has been the most profound.

I also used the excellent Adobe TV series on learning Premiere Pro. A bunch of quick episodes covering the basics, and I was up and running: moving clips around, doing a little contrast correction, inserting some transitions, etc.

Only two that I could spy, and it was a small nest, so I guess this is it. But they’re cute!

It’s been a rough couple of weeks in many ways, but above all, there’s this: My grandma Marie passed away just after her 77th birthday. I’ll be heading home to Silver City this weekend to attend funeral services. Since she was diagnosed with leukemia in December, my thoughts have often turned to her. Her passing has only amplified that effect.

I’ve remarked before that the only hard part of leaving Silver City to move to Washington/Baltimore was leaving my grandmothers behind. Both of these women had an inexplicable impact on my life: My grandma Flora helped raise my sister and I when we were young. In what I could call my more formative years, I forged a relationship with my grandma Marie, a friendship I’d never known I could have.

I don’t know if her passing is just pressing on my mind or what, but I’m noticing things, remembering things that make me think of her. In the supermarket on Monday, Meredith and I saw a family who were checking out using a government check. They were marking off the items that their fixed income check would provide, and I couldn’t help but think of the many times in her life that my grandmother struggled to feed her family. She was never what one could consider wealthy, but she stretched every bit of income the family generated. She told me stories of her youth, of washing the laundry of richer families and lugging it around her neighborhood and the city of Bernalillo. She told me the precious value that a penny could hold for a child in those times, and why a dime could mean so much to her family.

It’s easy in our modern society to lose site of the truly important matters in our lives. You needn’t look further than the Story of Stuff or the nightly news to understand how that happens. But watching that family check out with their $15 worth of groceries really jolted me. I recalled my grandma Marie and her mantra of always having something to eat in the kitchen: Often a pot of frijoles and a pile of tortillas (though, if you ever ate either, you wouldn’t say ‘only’). But it was there. She fed my father, sister and I after church every Sunday, and she also welcomed my high-school buddies for lunch every few weeks with open arms and a friendly smile. And, as if she didn’t have enough grandchildren already, many of my friends were often in her thoughts and prayers. My grandma last year rejoiced when Harmony was married and at the news that she was expecting a baby.

Grandma Marie was a pious woman, selfless and humble. If anybody could demonstrate how to live without regard to their material lives, it was her. She enjoyed the simplest of pleasures: a long phone call from a friend; her novellas (and certain American soaps as well); a Cowboys victory on Sunday afternoon. She was the one who taught me the value of shopping with coupons, of finding the bargains. Grandma Marie was also the woman who taught me that family comes first.

Many of these lessons occurred between 2003-2005, when I had left California and returned to Silver City, pretty much with my tail between my legs. But I had my family: my father was gracious in letting me have my old room, and my aunts and uncles helped me look for a job. Perhaps most welcoming of all, however, were my grandmothers. Flora and Marie, so similar and yet so different. While much of my father’s family had remained in the Grant County area, my mother and her siblings had all moved away. Grandma Flora’s closest family is my Aunt Margie, in Alamogordo. There now comes her grandson, living in town once again. We watched Wheel of Fortune together, and went hiking at Little Walnut. We met for lunch once I had a steady job and played dominoes every few weeks.

I wasn’t yet so close to my Grandma Marie, and really, I don’t know how our friendship started. Somehow, however, two things were happening on a regular basis: I was driving her to the grocery store, or to her doctors appointments, and I was stopping by her house every morning after class. These were the years that set me on my path to Washington: the chance encounters at WNMU, and the job at the student newspaper. Next, the internship with Sen. Bingaman, followed by a stint at KNFT as news director. Quitting school, to work full time, and then quitting the radio business to write for the Daily Press.

It started with the 4 a.m. mornings, driving to Arenas Valley to record the morning news. Sometimes I left in time to catch the sunrise, though I mostly hung out at the station waiting for my morning class to begin. But every day, after class, I’d head to my grandma’s house. I’d arrive in time to see The Price is Right. I’d have some lunch (usually the aforementioned beans and tortillas), and catch the news. We’d watch the Young and the Restless, and then, exhausted, I’d pass out on her couch.

More times than I’d care to admit, I wouldn’t wake up in time for my afternoon class.

The pattern continued after I stopped school, and when I was working full time at the Daily Press. Her house was a 5-minute walk, and that left more than enough time to eat lunch and grab a quick nap. What did stop were the trips to Wal-Mart and the Food Basket and the Dollar Store. We weren’t going to the doctor’s office any longer. I had a full-time job, and couldn’t take off the time.

Those trips are what I remember most fondly, partly because I think she was in her element, but also because it was time we spent alone with one another. She cracked jokes constantly: about Silver City’s bad drivers, and the guy who couldn’t steer his cart at the Wal-Mart. I remember the staples: blocks of cheese, bags of potatoes, generic, store-brand Kool Aid. We’d lookout for good frozen chile, and search for a deal on ground beef.

I also remember those stories of life in northern New Mexico, of the boy who drowned in the arroyo, and the rush to get to the hospital when my father was being born (it almost happened in the elevator). She told me the story about my dad’s nickname (Shorty) and the day he insisted she call him thus. I remember the day he told me that she was once known as the Whistling Waitress—a connection I cherished, as I whistled all the time.

Reflecting on those days has brought back so many memories, also and reinforced some thoughts I’ve had since moving to the big city. Namely: I’ve got it pretty damn good. Like anyone, I have problems. But wow if my problems pale in comparison to my friend Leah, who is doing an incredible job as a single mom raising her son, this bright young kid with a physical disability. My problems are nothing like those of the blind woman who rides the MARC train with me every day. My problems are nothing like that family a the grocery store on Monday night.

And more than anything else, I think that is what my grandma Marie embodied: She didn’t complain about the little stuff, or the big stuff for that matter. She felt so blessed to have a large and loving family. I can’t imagine going through life visually impaired, but she was blind in one eye. It hardly slowed her down. Every morning that I woke up at 4 a.m., she was already going, rolling tortillas and getting the house ready.

I don’t know: I guess I just needed a little perspective, something to pull me back from the daily buzz and grind of life. I need to remember my job is not my life. I need a comfy couch to rest on, a good story about a simpler, harder life. I need that incredible smile, and that “God bless you” as I walk away.

The state has been plagued by corruption and ethics investigations in recent years, and while the Sunlight Foundation doesn’t have a dog in that particular fight we do recognize (and support) the role transparency can play in helping citizens hold their elected officials accountable. From Sunlight’s perspective, there are a number of interesting questions raised by New Mexico’s legislature and the “state of transparency” there—some unique to the Land of Enchantment and some that will be applicable in other locales as well. For starters, the state legislature is part time and they just completed a 30-day session (every other year it’s 60 days). That’s true for many states, but in New Mexico legislators aren’t paid for their time in Santa Fe. It also means lawmakers have precious little time to consider legislation. As you’re aware, the Sunlight Foundation has long called on Congress to post legislation online for 72 hours prior to a vote. How would such a rule be feasible in a short legislative session like the one underway in New Mexico?

On a more granular level, the state has a foundation of legislative transparency. Legislation has been posted online in the state for years, and that service includes versioning (a reader can see what language was struck and what language was added) as a bill progresses. The Legislative Council Service (similar to the Congressional Research Service) supports legislators, and the Legislative Finance Committee reports on bills in much the same way as the Congressional Budget Office. Documents from the LCS and the LFC are published online as well (and on the same page as legislation for related bills). However, none of this information is available in XML—plain text and PDF are the only options.

Again, as Noah noted, the New Mexico House will start to publish roll call votes online, but the Senate has yet to approve a similar measure. House Resolution 3, however, is vague in its wording, and there’s no legislative mandate that requires the vote data be released in a format that complies with the Principles of Open Government Data. Will developers, like my colleagues in Sunlight Labs or at OpenCongress, be able to build projects around that information?

As worried as we might be about access to information and data formats, the Sunlight Foundation’s mission is also to increase citizen participation in government. New Mexico’s geography and the part-time legislature make citizen participation difficult. Lawmakers make an effort to hold “interim” committee meetings in communities across the state while not in session, and it’s not uncommon for Senators and Representatives to host town hall meetings as well. But the sheer distances between Santa Fe and communities in the state preclude most ordinary citizens from engaging in the legislative process. The same effect was true for Congress before C-SPAN came along. In an attempt to remedy this situation, open government advocates have asked state legislators to stream committee meetings and floor sessions online. While the House has approved a resolution requiring streaming of some committee meetings, the Senate has not (both chambers stream audio and video from the floor).

There were some interesting developments during the session, and the Legislature sent several key pieces of legislation to Gov. Bill Richardson’s desk for signature. The first, HB 165, would establish whistle-blower protection for state employees who report or refuse to participate in an “unlawful or improper act.” The second, SB 44/211, sets standards of conduct for government and elected officials (for example, requiring disclosure of conflicts of interest). The third would create a “sunshine portal” where financial information for state agencies is posted online. In addition, the sunshine portal would feature information on lobbyists and open meetings. If Gov. Richardson signs SB 195, the portal would open by July 2011.

Two other pieces of legislation failed this session: one that would ban campaign contributions from lobbyists and state contractors, and another that would create an independent ethics commission.

In addition, a piece out yesterday argues that a new law requiring open conference committees is at the heart of the Legislature’s budget impasse during the 30-day session.Walt Rubel, a veteran reporter, writes on the budget process:

This year the House came up with a third choice – do nothing. The Senate sent its revised bill over, and the House sat on it until the session ended. No conference committee was called. Forced to conduct the public’s business in public, lawmakers decided not to conduct it at all. And when the closed-door sessions failed to produce a compromise, the 30-day budget session ended without a budget.

Regardless, I feel like the session was an incredible win for open-government advocates, in part due to the work of the American Independent News Network and the New Mexico Independent. They asked us to sit in on several liveblogging sessions, where we experienced first-hand the concerns of New Mexican bloggers and citizens. They helped pioneer this type of coverage in the Roundhouse, and it will serve as a model for successfully interacting with readers. During the final hours of the legislative session, several lawmakers participated in the liveblog as well. That’s another welcome sign, and the sort of engagement the Sunlight Foundation likes to see.

Full details and more photos below.
So, the big news around the Washington D.C./Baltimore area is the Blizzard of 2010. The commotion got off to a start on Thursday morning when the National Weather Service predicted 7-14 inches of snow between Friday morning ans Saturday night. As Thursday progressed, that estimate went to 10-20 inches, then 16-24, and then to 18-24 inches. By this stage, there was a general sense or purpose that had set in.

That night in D.C., the grocery stores were slammed by residents looking to ride out the storm. Meredith and I had our own troubles here in Baltimore that evening as we tried to stock up on food and essentials.

The snow started in earnest yesterday afternoon (see left), and really started to pick up overnight. The NWS also upgraded the area from a Winter Storm Warning to a Blizzard Warning, due to the high winds and the volume of slow, and said some areas could expect more than 30 inches of snow. I noticed my neighbor’s tree had lost a limb to the snow at about 2 a.m., and went outside to shake the branches on my trees just in case.

This morning, I measured 21 inches of snow in the street, but that was 6 hours ago and it’s been snowing the whole time. I shoveled the walk enough that we can make our way outside if we need to, and I filled up the bird feeders as well. The area behind the house was indicative of the the area.

The TV (wow, watching local news adopt to a 24-hour news cycle for one story is an amazing look at what’s wrong with the whole concept) is reporting the storm is beginning to pass and we should see sunlight around 5:30. At this stage, I don’t know that it will matter—nobody is going anywhere any time soon. Cars are buried, the streets are indistinguishable from the sidewalks, and you’d have to be crazy to attempt driving in these conditions.

However, I finally installed Photoshop this evening and here’s the result. We have quite the wildlife habitat going on in the backyard, with dozens of birds and a few squirrels hanging out. Yesterday, I made sure to get the food out so everybody would be able to stay warm during the snow storm. It was the first time I’ve seen this woodpecker in the backyard, and I hope he’ll continue to hang out in the future.

There are six budget bills remaining this year: (Commerce, Defense, Financial Services, Labor/HHS/Education, Military Construction/Veterans Affairs, State/Foreign Operations, Transportation/HUD). While many predicted they would all be combined into one omnibus bill, it looks like Congress will consider the Defense spending bill separately. The other five bills were combined in a “minibus” package, filed as a conference report, and posted online yesterday.

As regular readers know, we’re big advocates of transparency and openness at the Sunlight Foundation and OpenCongress. We’ve been advocating for a 72-hour rule for a long time, and I was planning to use this post to show that the bill was not going to be available online for 72 hours before a vote. Before I could do that, it was approved in the House (by a vote of 221-202, full roll call coming soon). We don’t even have a page on the bill here on OpenCongress yet.

That the bill wasn’t online for 72 hours is, in itself, not the biggest consideration: it is a 1,000+ page piece of legislation that contains more than a trillion dollars in spending for five of the largest federal agencies in the country, plus Medicare and Medicaid. Each one of the appropriations bills that was combined have constituencies: members of the public, organizations, groups, companies, foreign policy, all are impacted by these individual bills. Each individual bill should have been debated out in the open, where stakeholders could participate in the process and members could vote on the separate pieces.

Instead, the incentives for supporting (or opposing) such a large piece of legislation change, often drastically.

The situation with the Defense spending bill will be similar—and likely much more difficult. In addition to the normal Defense budget, expect funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (including money for the troop increase recently announced by President Obama), an extension of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program and COBRA subsidies (which I blogged about earlier this week), and according to some reports, legislation to raise the debt ceiling (which Donny touched on today). On top of all that, there’s literally no telling what else might get added at the last minute.

We’ll do our best to keep you apprised of the situation, but OpenCongress can only do so much: we need Congress to step up and do a better job of making information available to citizens.

Those stimulus benefits (also called Emergency Unemployment Compensation) have been the source of intense political wrangling during the past 18 months: House Democrats initially sought to include them in legislation in 2008, but President Bush threatened to veto any bill that contained a benefits provision. In November, Bush relented, and signed H.R. 6867. The program was then expanded in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the stimulus bill) that was passed in February. More recently, Congress approved an expansion of EUC of between 14-20 weeks (depending on the level of unemployment in a particular state), but only after weeks of bickering in the Senate.

The time spent legislating that expansion is now catching up on millions of unemployed Americans, because the EUC program wasn’t extended when it was expanded. Therefore, the EUC plan enacted as part of the stimulus bill will expire on December 31. According to NELP, more than 1 million Americans will see their benefits dropped in January, and more than 3 million by March, if Congress doesn’t pass a bill extending EUC.

In addition to the EUC program, the NELP/CAP study recommended renewing additional ARRA provisions: federal funding for Extended Benefits, an $25-per-week benefit for the unemployed, a subsidy for COBRA, and tax exemptions on unemployment benefits.

Two bills have been introduced to extend the ARRA provisions: H.R. 4183 in the House, and S.2831 in the Senate. OpenCongress.org should have the text online for those bills this evening, so be sure to start tracking them.