I am in the process of adding a new section to GovTrack called "Learn" that will be some expository writing on: The U.S. Congress: Structure and Composition ...
637
Harvey S. Frey
hsfrey
Oct 3, 2008 12:47 am
... Like how each of the apparently unrelated pork items in the Senate Bailout bill was directed at a specific member of the House who had voted against the...
638
Aaron Swartz
aaronswartz
Oct 3, 2008 9:24 am
I can't really commit to writing them myself, but I'd be happy to read them over and contribute portions....
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Aaron Swartz
aaronswartz
Oct 3, 2008 9:24 am
... I think this is one of the things that's "common knowledge" in DC. Ezra Klein has a post about it today: ...
640
Ilan Rabinovitch
irabinovitch...
Oct 3, 2008 9:25 am
Hello, Is anyone else finding the idea of "voice votes" and other off the recorded votes a bit frustrating? Many of the bills I've been tracking on our site,...
641
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 3, 2008 9:40 am
... Besides in noncontroversial cases, these votes are often used when a real debate and recorded vote on the issue has taken place on another bill --- e.g. a...
642
Harvey S. Frey
hsfrey
Oct 3, 2008 4:11 pm
Some schools are now using plagiarism detection software. That might be useful for finding related, renumbered, or merged bills. Harvey ... From: Josh Tauberer...
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Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 3, 2008 5:29 pm
... Yup. But I'll say, ideas are in more abundance than people willing and able to implement them..... Josh...
644
Jeremy Dunck
ralinon
Oct 6, 2008 11:04 pm
I recently saw a video from 2004 CSPAN coverage showing a subcommittee (Sponsored Enterprises). Does govtrack have votes from things in committee? Is this ...
645
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 7, 2008 1:42 am
... Committee votes are generally public information, which is to say that the public has some Congress-given right to it. However, I suspect that this is...
646
Aaron Swartz
aaronswartz
Oct 7, 2008 1:43 am
... Not really. Committees sometimes put it up but not in any standard format; writing parsers for all of these is an open project that MAPLight is looking for...
647
John Wonderlich
johnwonderlich
Oct 7, 2008 1:43 am
Josh can talk about what govtrack offers, but I can let you know that committee (and subcommittee) votes are rarely available online. I'm looking into various...
648
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 13, 2008 4:25 pm
This weekend I was in the Bay Area at the Free Culture 2008 conference (really great!) and a combination of things happened- At a somewhat random meeting...
649
Aaron Swartz
aaronswartz
Oct 13, 2008 4:33 pm
Hi Josh, Let me know if we at watchdog.net can do anything to be more open/helpful/compliant with this. With each passing week I'm more interested in...
650
Michael Dale
cdalemx
Oct 13, 2008 8:40 pm
Hi All, I also enjoyed the FC conference, and had some productive talks Josh around metavid data integrations :) In terms of data re-sharing ...you could...
651
Fred Benenson
mecredis
Oct 14, 2008 5:46 am
Just to jump in -- CC-BY-SA requires the modified work to be released under the same CC license. This means, effectively, that you can change the format so...
652
Aaron Swartz
aaronswartz
Oct 14, 2008 4:13 pm
Josh, who are the malefactors here? We can help you put a little pressure on them. I suspect just raising the issue with them publicly will help a great deal....
653
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 14, 2008 5:33 pm
... Use XML instead of/in addition to JSON/SQL. Normalize names to IDs in the XML. Document what's in the files (http://watchdog.net/about/api is broken atm so...
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Aaron Swartz
aaronswartz
Oct 14, 2008 10:37 pm
... The dumps are really meant to be TSV rather than SQL. And our webpages all speak RDF/XML. But I'm probably not going to do XML dumps because I hate the...
655
Ilan Rabinovitch
irabinovitch...
Oct 14, 2008 10:41 pm
... Josh, At the moment GeekPAC is using your data by parsing the feeds via rsync and putting them into a SQL database. I'm still doing a little clean up,...
656
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 14, 2008 11:18 pm
... Besides what Fred posted (thanks Fred), I'm not sure I can even assert copyright over the data --- it's a database, there's basically no creative...
657
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 14, 2008 11:24 pm
... In that case you have nothing to worry about. :) -- - Josh Tauberer - GovTrack.us http://razor.occams.info "Yields falsehood when preceded by its...
658
David Moore
davidrussell...
Oct 15, 2008 12:08 am
Hi everyone, David with OpenCongress here. Definitely count us in on whatever community standards are agreed upon, we're happy to contribute. More details...
659
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 15, 2008 1:43 am
Bah! APIs! The next time someone says API I'm gonna jump out a window. I've got a window right here. It's open. I'm ready. The one case an API makes sense as a...
660
aronpilhofer
Oct 15, 2008 12:52 pm
... Let's hope it's a low floor, because I wanted to let folks know we've just released our campaign finance API. Not necessarily of great use to this group,...
661
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 15, 2008 1:50 pm
... Well, look, I wasn't making a statement about APIs in general. I was responding to a response to my statement about contributing to the commons, and I was...
662
aronpilhofer
Oct 15, 2008 2:47 pm
... Fair enough. I move to strike my statement from the record. ... I guess that depends on what restrictions you do decide to slap on it, if any. I'm not...
663
Harvey S. Frey
hsfrey
Oct 17, 2008 12:17 am
*************************************************** WORKSHOP ON LEGISLATIVE XML 2008 the Law in the Semantic Web and beyond December 10th, 2008 Law Faculty,...
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Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 21, 2008 8:26 pm
The Open Senate Project was launched today. This is a follow-up to the Open House Project, still a Sunlight Foundation project; this time I'm co-coordinating...
665
Josh Tauberer
tauberer
Oct 23, 2008 4:28 pm
... Subject: [openhouseproject] DC's Apps for Democracy Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:58:10 -0400 From: Matthew Burton <matthewburton@...> Reply-To:...
