U.S. Congress

Senate Facing Another Busy Week of Hearings

After a two-week recess, the House is back in session this week and ready to tackle a full legislative schedule, including a measure which would grant the District of Columbia a voting member in the House. The Senate plans to be active as well, and among other things will consider a bill (passed by the House in January) to allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceuticals for Medicare recipients. In addition to legislation, the Senate is again planning to hold a number of important committee hearings, including the highly anticipated testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before the Judiciary Committee concerning his role in the U.S. attorney firings scandal. Here, courtesy of GovTrack, is a quick rundown of all of this week’s Senate hearings (the House doesn't have easily accessible committee schedules, something the folks at the OpenHouseProject are trying to fix):

TheWeekInCongress (April 7-13, 2007)

With the House out of session this week, there was less news than usual to report from Capitol Hill. The Senate, however, did consider a number of important issues such as stem cell research and funding for federal intelligence agencies. For a thorough analysis of this action, we again turn to Robert McElroy’s TheWeekInCongress. His site is a great resource for citizens wishing to keep track of what their members are up to in Washington, and we urge you to check it out. Follow the headlines below to the Congresspedia articles covering the respective issues, which in turn link to and heavily rely on McElroy's analyses.

New Participatory Project: Getting the Colbert Report into Congresspedia

Submitted by Conor Kenny on

A few weeks ago we asked you, dear readers and citizen editors, to pitch in and help with our first "wikiproject" - a short, participatory effort to update and expand a part of the SourceWatch/Congresspedia wiki. Lots of people chipped in and we accomplished our goal: getting contact information for all the freshman members of Congress, including the addresses and phone numbers for each of their district offices.

Yes
Main Source: 
The Colbert Report on Congresspedia
Topics: 
Citizen Journalism
Pundits
U.S. Congress

House Reps. Brady and Fattah in Tight Race for Philly Mayor

While Congress has been out of session this past week, Democratic House Reps. Bob Brady (Pa.) and Chaka Fattah (Pa.) have been busy campaigning in the hopes of becoming Philadelphia’s next mayor. The primary will take place on May 15 and — given the city’s heavily Democratic lean (no Republican has been elected mayor since 1948) — is expected to effectively determine the outcome of the general election.

Congress Inches Towards Joining the Information Age

Guest Blogger: Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation

For the past seven years Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced a bill requiring Senators to file their reports of campaign contributions in an electronic format. Currently Senators file these reports on paper with the Secretary of the Senate who then transmits the reports to the Federal Election Commission where the reports are retyped back into computers. The process costs about $250,000 a year and means that a lot of campaign contributions to Senators are not available for public review prior to a November election. This year, Sen. Feingold’s bill, S. 223, finally made it out of committee.

The latest in the U.S. attorney scandal: Some testify, some plead the fifth and others cut a deal "just to talk."

--by Joshua Lanzet, Congresspedia Intern

Along with the Iraq War, the broadening investigation into the Bush administration U.S. attorney firings controversy continues to dominate the headlines coming out of Congress. Congresspedia's citizen and staff editors are following the scandal closely, documenting the congressional investigations as well as the details of the actual firings as they emerge. Here are the latest developments, but make sure to see the full article for complete details:

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