Liberal Watchdog Questions White House Gmail Use 283
MexiCali59 writes "Liberal watchdog CREW has joined Republican Congressman Darrell Issa in calling for an investigation into whether White House staffers regularly use private email accounts to communicate with lobbyists. The allegations, first reported last week by the New York Times, would likely constitute a violation of federal law as well as an ethics pledge created by Obama upon taking office last year."
No Surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No Surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
Government transparency? Ummm, no
If you like your health insurance, you can keep it? Umm, no
No lobbyists in the Obama Administration? Umm, no
Close Guantanomo within a year? Umm, no
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If you like your health insurance, you can keep it? Umm, no
This one is amusing, by the way. It is technically true. However if you change any single feature, ZING, you're under the new law. Good luck outlasting that medical price inflation for more than a few years...
Re:No Surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting that both you and the gp apparently read that campaign promise as an employer. I always assumed he meant it for the employees, for which it is, generally, quite true.
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How would an employee keep the same health care if his employer did not?
You can answer generally if you must.
Re:No Surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
I think the implication is that the situation doesn't change for you. If your employer switches health plans under the previous system, you were screwed too. Nothing got worse.
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So? with the new law you can STILL KEEP YOUR CURRENT HEALTH CARE PLAN.
I suggest you read the damn thing.
Re:No Surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
So?? So???
There's no triviality here. You could keep your old plan, yes, but the changes that the bill causes would make that a colossally stupid move. The implicit promise was that you could keep your FREEDOM to choose a plan you liked. This is decidedly not the case, because your current rate and benefits aren't going to keep you happy for very long. Again, due to the inflation we're inevitably about to see.
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The implicit promise was that you could keep your FREEDOM to choose a plan you liked.
Most people never had the freedom to choose a plan they liked. Either take whatever crappy insurance your employer chooses or nothing at all.
Point being, now they will no longer have even the crappy coverage they used to have. At least until single payer comes along to save the day.
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How do you extend coverage to 30 million extra people, not change any existing plans, and end up with the aggregate costing less than it used to?
Cost (N + 30,000,000) < Cost (N) seems like the old "sell it at a loss but make it up in volume!" strategy.
Re:No Surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
It goes deeper than this as well. Imagine the immediate implications of 'guaranteed issue for children'. While it is certainly compassionate to provide insurance automatically to even the most gravely ill child, the charity will stop at the hospital's bills to the insurer. There is an assumption of profit on the part of the insurer, but once that runs out rates will either have to go up or the insurer will have to go out of business.
Gravely ill, yet previously uninsured children are generally declined today because caring for them costs an inordinate amount of money. Passing a law that bars denying them isn't going to make the bills disappear. All it will do is drive for-profit businesses into reconsidering their goals. Many will either fold, or more likely, will simply stop offering coverage for children, and individuals of any age, whatsoever.
"Keep your plan" indeed.
Re:No Surprise... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, yeah, he has. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No Surprise... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. PolitiFact has what they call an Obamameter [politifact.com], which tracks promises Obama made while campaigning. I realize it's fun to point to specific things you don't like and say that Obama has kept no promises, but that's dishonest.
You can argue that on some large issues, Obama has backtracked (such as his apparent desire to continue the ridiculous power grab of the executive during the Bush administration), but don't lie and say Obama has kept no promises. You look better (at least to those who don't already agree with you) if you're willing to be reasonable.
Disclaimers should not be necessary for posts like this, but since irrationality always pops up on political threads:
I voted for Obama in 2008, but only because I wanted McCain to be crushed after his ridiculous choice of VP candidate.
I will vote for Obama in 2012 only if the Republicans put a Palin-like character on the ticket. I've been unhappy with some of Obama's decisions.
I am not a Democratic/Obama apologist. To the people who believe that if you approve of anything a politician does, you approve of everything he does, you need to do a better job of understanding how the world works.
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"Close Guantanomo within a year? Umm, no"
He tried, the Republicans shut him down.
Anybody who claims that the President/Senate/House “tried” to do something but the Republicans “shut them down” is being downright dishonest.
With their huge majorities in both houses of Congress, the Democrats can do anything they damn well please if only they could get all their fellow Democrats onto the party bus. The moderate Democrats are the ones who shot it down.
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While I agree that there are many things the Democrats could do if they all agreed (but don't all agree), you seem to be either ignorant of the concept of a filibuster or purposefully ignoring its implications.
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If the Republicans could successfully mount a concerted filibuster, you might have a point. The moderate Republicans might as well be Democrats for the purposes of trying to filibuster something.
Again: If the Democrats could get their moderates onto the party bus, the Republicans wouldn’t stand a chance at stopping anything the Democrats wanted to roll through. Yeah, if the Republicans could get their own moderates to toe the line, they might stand a chance at opposing it... but we all know that hasn
Re:No Surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
You mean like their filibuster of the health care reform bill? Or the jobs bill? Or the appointment of Patricia Smith?
Re:No Surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
To take almost any substantive action in the Senate requires sufficient votes to invoke cloture against a filibuster, i.e., 60 votes.
There are 58 members of the Democratic Caucus in the Senate (56 of whom are actually Democrats, 2 of whom are independents who caucus with the Democrats.) Depending on the sense in which the word "Democrats" (specifically, whether you refer to the party proper or the caucus) is used, that puts them either 2 or 4 votes shy of being able to take substantive action in the Senate without Republican support, even if every single Democrat is in favor.
Re:No Surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Their huge majorities? What majorities? In the senate, there's 58 Democrats, 40 Republicans and two independents that are mostly Republican. Yes, if it comes to a vote the Democrats can outvote the Republicans - at least, they could if they had some sort of party discipline, which they don't (as you mention). However, the Republicans still have the power to keep any issue they don't want voted on from actually coming to a vote. They've been using every trick in the book to delay any vote they think will go against them until the Democrats just give up. Consider the filibuster, for instance - the Democrats are helpless against it, because it takes sixty votes to stop one and they don't have sixty votes. It's turned legislation into a war of attrition, and that's why almost nothing has actually been done.
Further, this new Democratic majority means that almost all of the new Democrat representatives are junior members of Congress, which means that they have less actual power - they don't know who's who, they don't have powerful positions in the committees where the real work gets done. On the other hand, the Republicans that are still in Congress are mostly well-entrenched; they've been there for years, they head important committees, they know who to talk to to get things done, they know which curry places will give you the shits. They've got the home-field advantage.
So no, it's not just a simple matter of "whoever has a majority wins".
Re:No Surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Republican party does not vote in lock-step. They have moderate members who will vote against their party [washingtonpost.com]. In fact, of Senators in the current term who vote against their party more than 20% of the time [washingtonpost.com], 5 are Republicans (out of 43) and 4 are Democrats (out of 62). In the 2007-2008 Senate when Republicans held a 51:49 majority, the 9 Senators who voted against their party more than 20% of the time [washingtonpost.com] were all Republicans.
The problems the Democrats are having passing anything is because when they effectively got 60 Senate seats, their leadership went into the throes of a collective orgasm and dreamt up every far-left bill they could think of and tried to pass them. Not only did Republicans vote against them, they had to beg and bribe [washingtonpost.com] moderate Democrats to support those bills. If a bill you propose is opposed by all Republicans and a significant number of moderate Democrats, most intelligent people would logically conclude that the bill is far too liberal and needs to come back to center to have a chance at passing. Not that there's some right-wing conspiracy to thwart you.
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The only moderate democrat is Dennis Kucinich. Every one else is right wing [politicalcompass.org].
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Yes, that is the traditional left-right axis. What else do you think "leftist" means?
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"Close Guantanomo within a year? Umm, no"
He tried, the Republicans shut him down.
Umm, thats a complete Executive Branch decision there so unless the Republicans somehow took control of the Presidency and then gave it back to Obama, that doesn't work.
'"There is a lot of inertia” against closing the prison, “and the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services C
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"Close Guantanomo within a year? Umm, no"
He tried, the Republicans shut him down.
I'll give you a pass on that one, even though it's completely wrong, but here's one he can't wriggle out of by blaming Bush: ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
All he has to do is sign an executive order. That's it. Nothing else. Doesn't need Congress's approval, doesn't need the help of anyone else in the Executive branch. He just needs to write the order and sign it.
Still hasn't done it.
There's no way you can blame that one on Bush.
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No matter what Dubya did or said, the President *cannot* waive it away with an Prez Order. Legally speaking anyway.
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uh, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a *law*.
There's another law on the books that says that in times of war (like, say, when we have troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan) the President can suspend limits on who can serve in the military.
You're right that to permanently removed Don't Ask, Don't Tell, a new law is needed. If Obama was serious about ending it, though, all he has to do is sign an executive order [palmcenter.org], as long as we're at war.
Re:No Surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
Though I'll fall back on my caveat 'no matter what Dubya did/said'. We aren't at war, never have been. The military may be 'at war' and fighting but no declaration of 'war' has ever been made.
Just because Dubya used gymnastics of logic and law to justify his actions doesn't make it right to use them now. Even if done towards doing the right thing.
Re:No Surprise... (Score:5, Informative)
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Everybody does it... (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought this was how every politician operated? Palin, The previous white house, etc, all used non-government assigned email addresses to avoid archiving and disclosure laws.
--jeffk++
Re:Everybody does it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And?
Here in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper campaigned back in 2006 on a platform of "transparency and accountability." Since taking office, he has proceeded to dismantle numerous democratic checks and balances, closed down programs that facilitate public scrutiny, shut down media access to important information, and is now running the most secretive government in Canadian history.
Politicians lie. They say things to get elected and then do the exact opposite. It's what they do.
Re:Everybody does it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which leaves me facing the next election to choose between the candidate who says he'll do things I care about, but won't, and the candidate who says he'll do things I hate, and will.
Sigh.
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Then vote third party. Pick your ideology:
Pirate Party [pirate-party.us]
Libertarian Party [lp.org]
Green Party [gp.org]
Don't think of it as a wasted vote, think of it as a vote against the current system.
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So vote for a third party! I'm so sick of everybody saying "The republicans and democrats both are terrible!" and then going out and voting for one of them!
And no I'm not just doing this to hype the Pirate Party, because, honestly, I don't think we'll have a candidate in time for the next election. Even if the PP totally goes down the tubes I still think the best thing we as citizens can try to do to save our country's future is break out of the two party duopoly.
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Push for major election reforms then we'll talk. In the system we're stuck with voting 3rd party is not in your best interest. While you make your statement and maybe feel good about your vote, of the two candidates who actually stand a chance the one you dislike the most gets one more vote closer to winning.
Of course this only applies to the few voters in swing states. Everyone else can vote for whatever, it doesn't make a difference either way.
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I know what you mean. I went into the last election expecting just that, and unfortunately I was not surprised. I have been unable to vote in either of the last two major elections, the first because they said after the fact that my registration information was invalid, the second because I couldn't make it to the right county before the polls closed. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, at the time I lived in a red state. It wouldn't have mattered who I voted for.
Now I am registered in the county I both live
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I think the point is that Obama pledged to stop this from happening and it hasn't.
If he was so dead set against it, why didn't he introduce a bill to outlaw it when he was a Senator? At least an Executive Order.
This is why we're so jaded about politics in America, we elect candidates who make campaign promises. Many of those promises are implementable with formal actions that will make them stick beyond their term in office, and they don't get it done.
Re:Everybody does it... (Score:5, Informative)
I thought this was how every politician operated? Palin, The previous white house, etc, all used non-government assigned email addresses to avoid archiving and disclosure laws.
--jeffk++
Wasn't Palin's email full of personal stuff and not full of emails from lobbyists and the like offering bribes?
There's nothing forbidding politicians and their staffers from having personal email accounts. However, it is illegal to use them for official, government business as is being alleged here.
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But Palin and Co. were using their emails for business purposes (even if it was more day-to-day stuff, so far as the snoop caught).
I'm not saying your wrong here, but I just checked the images of the emails from way back when and the only thing I could see that even comes close to government business was a letter entitled something along the lines of "Draft Letter to Gov. Schwarzenegger / Container Tax", which may or may not have dealt with the business of running Alaska. It could have contained something along the lines of "Dear Arnold, as a citizen of Alaska, I find your container tax to be pure BS!" Who knows. Either way, that's
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Alaska was and is a bit more liberal with email rules in the Government.
I work for the Alaska government in a quasi-state agency and we've never even been issued an acceptable use policy document for the Internet.
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Wasn't Palin's email full of personal stuff and not full of emails from lobbyists and the like offering bribes?
It's illegal in all 50 states to conduct state business on a Yahoo account: [adn.com]
In response to similar but separate public records requests, McLeod and Henning this summer received four banker boxes of e-mail and telephone records for two Palin aides: Frank Bailey and Ivy Frye. Henning was operating on behalf of the Valley group Last Frontier Foundation, which lists property rights and public records as among its core issues on its Web site.
"I think that it's total hypocrisy from what she stood for at the beginning of her campaign," Henning said. "Because she campaigned on open government, and she knew that using a private e-mail account would take it and basically hide stuff that people couldn't see."
As far as McLeod can tell, all but one of the e-mails to the governor used her private e-mail address. The one time an aide e-mailed the governor's state account, he was reminded not to.
"Frank, This is not the Governor's personal e-mail account," an assistant to Palin wrote to Bailey in February.
"Whoops~!" Bailey responded in an e-mail.
The state public records law says these are public documents like any other official government business conducted via snail mail. They are subject to public review via FOI requests, but they're not being kept in any kind of public archive. Asking Palin to surrender and not delete all her relevant Yahoo correspondence on the honor system is pointless.
Todd Palin [adn.com] had an account used for some interesting state business as well.
Re:Everybody does it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you show me the email that was state business being sent from Sarah Palin's personal account? Everything I've seen is stuff that didn't belong on the official government email. The email titled "LOOK AT TRIGG!" does not belong on government servers.
Also, Todd did not work for the State of Alaska, regardless of what is in his email. Had he gotten an official Alaska.gov email address, then you'd have something. Otherwise, Michelle Obama's statement that the government can tell us what to eat could be considered an executive order.
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You can either file your own FOI request or contact the nonprofit and look through the four boxes of emails they got in theirs. I don't feel like Googling one for you.
Also, Todd did not work for the State of Alaska, regardless of what is in his email
Uhhhhhh..... THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT. We have no idea who opened Todd's account, but regardless of who was reading it, state business was always BCC-ed to i
Re:Everybody does it... (Score:5, Informative)
Since the law expressly allows federal employees at that level to remain involved with the political process, so long as they don't use public resources to do so, I don't see how they can function without having a separate e-mail account just as they have a separate cell phone. The only legal issue is whether they are using that separate e-mail account properly for political business, or whether they are improperly using it to conduct official government business, which would be a violation of the law for circumventing the archiving and disclosure laws.
And yes, I took the same position with the last President as I do with this one, even though I really don't care for the current President.
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This is a pretty astute observation. It also points out the unrealistic ideals of the law - that you could possibly entirely disentangle the political from the high level government work. These people speak with lobbyists about specific legislative or regulatory actions as a part of their government job. They speak to the same lobbyist about political organizing activity as a part of their (entirely separate) political job. Maintaining the fiction of separate phone and email accounts for the (completely
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The only legal issue is whether they are using that separate e-mail account properly for political business, or whether they are improperly using it to conduct official government business, which would be a violation of the law for circumventing the archiving and disclosure laws.
You just used more words than the summary to sum up the summary. Why?
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You just used more words than the summary to sum up the summary. Why?
Yo dawg, I heard you like summaries...
Re:Everybody does it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good for CREW. Most of these partisan advocacy groups play team red / team blue and have to check the roster to decide where they stand on an issue. It is great to see one of them finally standing on principal and holding their own team to the same standard. It would be nice if every "issue advocacy" group would stick to its guns without regard to party affiliation.
Argumentum ad populum fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Presidential Records Act (Score:2)
I thought this was how every politician operated? Palin, The previous white house, etc, all used non-government assigned email addresses to avoid archiving and disclosure laws.
Running a light because the guy in front of you did it too, doesn't make it legal.
Also, for the President and his staff (and the ex-president and his staff), the issue is more that they violated this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act [wikipedia.org]
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When Obama was in Congress, he pressed Bush for all the missing emails. When he took over the White House and the media asked if he was now going to hunt down and release all those emails he promised, he said to drop the issue.
Re:Everybody does it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I thought this was how every politician operated? Palin, The previous white house, etc, all used non-government assigned email addresses to avoid archiving and disclosure laws.
--jeffk++
The solution is simple. Vote for the one that doesn't use email [telegraph.co.uk]!
I am only kind of joking... heh...
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Re:Everybody does it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but this is "the most transparent administration in history"
Don't forget that being the best at transparency does not mean being good at something. It just means being less terrible than the other guy(s).
You know what's sad? (Score:2)
Things like this don't even surprise me anymore, because I've come to expect them from our government.
and the Bush administration was yelled at for same (Score:4, Insightful)
The allegations, first reported last week by the New York Times, would likely constitute a violation of federal law as well as an ethics pledge created by Obama upon taking office last year.
....aaaaaand the Obama administration has ZERO excuse for this, given that the Bush Administration and WH staffers were caught doing exactly the same thing [wikipedia.org] (well, not exactly- in the Bush case, they were discussing firing US DA's for political advantage, and discussing CIA leaks...the list of illegal activity goes on and on.)
Aside from ignorance not being defense, Obama-ites were obviously not ignorant about it after the last administration were caught doing it!
Oh, and if you think this only happens in the White House, guess again. Mayor Thomas Menino in Boston had a lackey named Michael J. Kineavy who had his fingers in everything and was deleting emails before the City Hall backup server would get to them. And the City didn't have an email archiving system. And the city tried to claim that it'd cost a bazillion dollars to try and recover from the tapes they did have! More: http://www.google.com/search?q=menino+email [google.com]
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THIS!
And, to add, Obama ran into this PRECISE issue when he wanted to use his personal Blackberry after he was elected.
He damn well knows better, and we can prove it.
I think the penalties should be double for willful disobedience, especially from the POTUS.
security (Score:2)
And, to add, Obama ran into this PRECISE issue when he wanted to use his personal Blackberry after he was elected.
To be fair, I *think* one of the issues was that the device wasn't secure enough. I believe he got a secure PDA for guvmin't stuff, and still uses his personal blackberry for personal stuff?
It's not illegal for him to use personal email to tell his daughters to do their homework. And it's not illegal for him to email the Attorney General some smack talk about a soccer team in the world cu
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I don't know, would that homework be for a public school?
Please RTFA (Score:2)
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The allegations , first reported last week by the New York Times,
Fixed that for you.
If one actually bothers to read the original NYT article, one would know it still only talking about allegations. And a limited number of incidents reported by unnamed lobbyists at that. Because there are allegations, CREW called for an official investigation to determine if there is truth to the allegations.
The bigger issue discussed was that coffee-shops being used as meeting places, which again is neither illegal nor necessarily a sign of corruption. It's not a strange and terrible
Who's taking care of ordinary folk's business? (Score:4, Insightful)
With all these lobbyists in Washington, I have always wondered who takes care of the ordinary citizen's interests in that city.
I guess the better question would be:
Who is lobbying on behalf of Joe Six Pack and family in Washington? Is there any?
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Sarah, is that you?
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I always thought that was the job of the Senators and Representatives. I suspect they sometimes forget this, though.
Re:Who's taking care of ordinary folk's business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well what is the ordinary citizen?
What is their education, what do they do for a living, what services do they need, what don't they need...
You say who is fighting for the ordinary citizen's like it is a simple statement. If you are too tough on corporations they cannot operate and move out and kill the economy, if you are too lax they will take over. Every choice has a tradeoff. Lobbyists work for a big slue of sectors including many non-corprate groups, and other groups that you may call the Good Guys...
Hey if I worked for a Oil company I just may like the Oil Lobby as it is defending work for me as the average joe... But if you don't then they may be the enemy.
Unfortunately without lobbyists I see politicians swerving to whatever the general population thinks at the time, and then money and resources are put in and by the time it gets going it is dropped as their values change overnight...
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That is why doing "campaign finance refo
Re:Who's taking care of ordinary folk's business? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem of course is not the lobbying (it is a constitutionally protected right after all), it's the politicians who care more about getting a steak dinner, a Rolex, and a blow job than doing what's best for their constituents and their country.
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Well, if Joe is over 55 he has AARP to lobby for (certain aspects of) him. If he carries a gun, he has the NRA. Heck, if he drives a car he may have AAA. So many organizations we do business with and are fundamental to our lives have someone speaking up as lobbyists. Joe Six Pack isn't unrepresented. Maybe he would like his own personal voice, as would every citizen. Can you imagine 300,000,000 lobbyists in DC? They get their individual voice every 2+ years when they vote in various representatives.
In other late-breaking news... (Score:3, Funny)
...the Sun was seen rising in the East.
I give up (Score:5, Informative)
This administration has been terrible. All this promise, and then failure. And now there is news that the voter intimidation case got dropped for political reasons? I mean, there the guy is, holding a baton.....seriously, WTF.
Using Gmail should not be allowed. Government officials need to have ALL their activities OPENED to us, the people, unless it is personal stuff. This stuff is NOT personal, it is skirting the law. I don't care if PREVIOUS administrations did it or not. I don't care. Obama promised to do things DIFFERENTLY and I see nothing but business as usual if not more of an orgy type atmosphere there since they have a hold on both houses as well right now.
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Bribes and backroom deals are personal stuff.
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You might want to pojnt the finger at the right people.
The Republicans have move to stop ANYTHING coming from the whitehouse.
over 200 Appoints held up. Sure, a few in key policialt places get a close look, thats norrmal, Over 200? Bullshit.
When the president has agreed on bills sponsored by republicans, the republicans stop backing it
When there isn't something they like they filibuster.
Even when they are dealing with confirming a person they like, they twist all the questions into a political knife that is
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This administration has been terrible. All this promise, and then failure.
That may be a small amount of hyperbole. The Obameter [politifact.com] rates Obama still as having fulfilled more of his campaign promise than those he's broken or stalled on. Which isn't to say that "coming through on half the things you promise" is good enough (nor are all promises created equal), but I wouldn't call it failure.
Re:I give up (Score:5, Insightful)
Not surprised, and not in a cynical way (Score:3, Informative)
To me this is just another example of how much people will try to cling to old ways of doing things and subvert rules that prevent it.
According to the NYTimes article referenced in TFA that kicked off this whole discussion, indicates that the administration has a policy of posting all White House visits and pressures staff to minimize contact with lobbyists. In response, rather than obey the spirit of those directives, the staff instead meets with lobbyists off the record.
This is a story older than government, going back to whenever a parent first told their kids not to do something or earlier: someone makes a rule, people impacted by that rule try to find a loophole, the rule is revised, repeat. Government is an inherently iterative process.
That being said, if doing an investigation speeds up this iteration of the feedback loop, I'm all for it.
Hello to the new boss, same as the old boss... (Score:2)
Wait, a liberals working with republicans? (Score:3, Funny)
rabid progressive here: (Score:3, Interesting)
If they did this, they should go to jail.
Bush did it too. Also should have gone to jail.
(also: White House email backup system has been non-functional since the Clinton era. Bullshit they can't afford to get that working. So fucking illegal. Their communications in doing business on MY behalf, while I'm paying them - is MY lawful property. Do the job right, or go the fuck home.)
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Yes. When in doubt, err on the side of caution. An email from a government account will reach the recipient just as well as a gmail account emai.
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It's not that contacting a lobbyist, or the child/relative/friend of a lobbyist is bad. It's that contacting a lobbyist and discussing action/inaction items with out the interaction being recorded, transparent, and reviewable is bad.
Heck, not all lobbyist are bad. I work full time, I barely have the chance to keep on top of local politics, let alone national and international issues. I don't have time to organize meetings with my representatives and administrators in the federal government. So I find other
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Frankly, I would consider it an acceptable hurdle to say that entry into public service means severing all personal ties to lobbyists.
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Re:define lobbyist... (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, you have to register as a federal lobbyist, the Lobbying Disclosure Act and Honest Leadership and Open Government Act cover this. There isn't any vague area here.
Once you get into a public trust position you are expected to keep your contact with certain people, like lobbyists and contractors, strictly professional. If you have a personal relationship with someone you have to work with in this capacity it will be a problem and you will be expected to break it off or quit your position. There are rules outlining everything from gifts to phone calls. There isn't any room to maneuver here with the "yeah but what about the grandmom that gave us $100" defense. This isn't about her. This is about your "friend" over at Big Oil telling you to keep cameras off the beach in Pensacola because it might look bad, etc. A legit need for oversight.
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That is a good question and now I see your point. I'm not sure about the rules there. I think these type of questions should be asked though and I think that's what these groups are saying. They want to be sure no one is skirting the rules and a little inquisitive inspection is probably warranted. In such a position your expectation for privacy is limited, just because the power you wield could easily be abused. It's not asking too much IMHO. They know this going in.
Re:Pledge? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the funniest and saddest thing is that Video FOX news likes to air of Nancy Pelosi saying to her people that she'd love to share what is in the bill but they need to pass it first.
That is exactly the problem in Government right now. These HUGE bills that no one knows what they contain.
I say we vote them ALL out and start over.
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I say we vote them ALL out and start over.
No, what should be done first is set term limits on congress seats. Its ridiculous that we have elected officials in the same seat for so many years.
Re:Pledge? (Score:5, Informative)
That is exactly the problem in Government right now. These HUGE bills that no one knows what they contain.
Only because they don't appear to know how to use THOMAS [loc.gov], where activity up to floor actions from the day before are available. It's the web version of the Congressional Record and has been around since the Clinton Administration. If you want things before they even leave the committees, you may have to look somewhere else, but everything else is available there.
One of the main problems in our federal government right now is that we have millions of armchair quarterbacks who don't properly understand the rules of the game.