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1.  

   

   Bettawrekonize, May 5th, 2009 @ 5:17pm

   
   

   Good, we need a lot more governmental transparency.

    

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2.  

   

   Sanketsu, May 5th, 2009 @ 5:29pm

   
   

   What? The Government giving us information? Accurate, usable information?
   
   Wow. Awesome.

    

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3.  

   

   Sal, May 5th, 2009 @ 5:29pm

   
   

   Why not...

   ...link to the actual primary source material? It is very annoying clicking through links to your other posts and news articles. Other than that, good stuff you have here.

    

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4.  

   

   Anonymous Coward, May 5th, 2009 @ 6:14pm

   
   

   After clicking through a few links, I was able to find two examples of the information in XML format.
   
   It's nice, but there doesn't seem to be a list of all available roll call votes. I would certainly like to go to www.senate.gov and find a list of the XML files. A quick search on the site did not reveal a list of files.
   
   Also, it would be nice to see the DTD, Schema, or Relax NG information for the files. That way it would be easy to process the information, write XSLT transformations, and otherwise make use of this resource.
   
   Still, this is an excellent first start.

    

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5.  

   

   Paul, May 5th, 2009 @ 6:18pm

   
   

   Pointless

   Whoop'd f'ing doo. Absolutely useless.
   
   If Congress truly, sincerely cared about transparency, they'd use source control for drafting legislation. I'd love to see them use Subversion to track exactly which congressman inserted that particularly heinous clause into an otherwise normal bill.
   
   That's the kind of transparency we need. Once it's up for a vote, it's way too late to affect change.

    

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6.  

   

   Dorai Thodla, May 5th, 2009 @ 6:21pm

   
   

   Re: Why not...

   http://xml.gov/ is a good source of most of govt xml (data) initiatives.
   
   Dorai Thodla

    

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7.  

   

   Mr Big Content, May 5th, 2009 @ 6:22pm

   
   

   What is this "Ecch-Smell" format?

   Sounds like it might raise a stink...

    

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8.  

   

   Sal, May 5th, 2009 @ 7:25pm

   
   

   Re: Re: Why not...

   I usually find this stuff after a short search, but it would be nice if the guy writing the blog linked to more than a news article that also has no link to the source.

    

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9.  

   

   joe, May 5th, 2009 @ 7:57pm

   
   

   This is not really news

   Every vote, by every congress representative, Senate and House, since 1991, has been online on the Washington post web site since past year when one of my sons programmed it for them.
   
   http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/
   
   Further, as you will see there, the votes are analyzed, disected, cross-referenced and summarized by just about any data point you might wish.
   
   You can also see the other amazing data projects he did for them on his blog entry (http://push.cx/2009/washington-post-update) that summarizes his work for them.
   
   Sign me, Proud Father of a fantastic young man.

    

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10.  

    

    Joe, May 5th, 2009 @ 8:08pm

    
    

    a correction

    After re-reading what I posted, I realize it sounds as if I am saying Peter did the whole WP stuff by himself. If you read his blog entry, you will see that he credits those whose works he added to and those whose prior work and current contributions were essential o his own part. And, the comments on his entry continue a dialog with some of those people.

     

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11.  

    

    Bettawrekonize, May 5th, 2009 @ 10:20pm

    
    

    "If Congress truly, sincerely cared about transparency, they'd use source control for drafting legislation. I'd love to see them use Subversion to track exactly which congressman inserted that particularly heinous clause into an otherwise normal bill.
    
    That's the kind of transparency we need. Once it's up for a vote, it's way too late to affect change."
    
    I COMPLETELY agree!!! We should know EXACTLY how every single person voted. When federal agencies, like the FDA, pass laws there should be COMPLETE transparency over who was responsible for the passage of such laws.

     

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12.  

    

    Anonymous Coward, May 5th, 2009 @ 10:57pm

    
    

    Re:

    Haha, good one! I actually laughed out loud!

     

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13.  

    

    Anonymous Coward, May 5th, 2009 @ 11:00pm

    
    

    Re:

    They only just discovered what Emails are .. give them a few centuries and you might get SVN.

     

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14.  

    

    MattP, May 6th, 2009 @ 8:34am

    
    

    Re: Pointless

    They'd use SourceSafe and you know it!
    
    All kidding aside, it would be great to have change tracking implemented.

     

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