The hedge fund industry is courting U.S. Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) to head their lobbying efforts, according to a report over the weekend from The Washington Post. Baker said he has not decided to take the position as president of the Managed Funds Association (MFA), but did admit that the nearly million-dollar-a-year job did "look very interesting." He informed the House Ethics Committee Friday of his talks with MFA as members of Congress are now required to do as a result of the lobbying law passed last year. Baker is the first member to meet this new requirement.

Where would we be without the Internet? The very thought of not having open, free and equal access to the information, entertainment, and the myriad of ways it makes our lives easier, makes me gasp. Without it, Sunlight certainly would not exist. And while it would not be impossible for diligent researchers to bring to light the of influences affecting Congress, with the Internet and the new technologies that have grown up with it, we – the people – would have to rely on experts to spend many more days, months, years digging through dusty boxes of old paper documents in basement offices of government buildings. And we’d have to rely on the mainstream journalists to tell us what they thought we should know. The Internet changes all that.

Connected by the ‘Net, so many more of us can unite to pool our intelligence to contribute to, share and sift through massive amounts of political information. Bonded by the common interest of making Congress more accountable, geographic and social boundaries cease to exist, and just as importantly, information is broadcast to the rest of the community without relying on traditional gatekeepers.

The interconnectivity the Web provides us makes possible the kind of instantaneous collaboration we have become so accustomed to via APIs, social networking and blogging. We are only bound by the limits of our creativity and willingness to get involved.

In that spirit, Sunlight’s team created an ode to how the Web makes government transparency possible in celebration of tomorrow’s second annual OneWebDay. Taking inspiration from Earth Day, Susan Crawford, professor at the Cardozo School of Law and on the Board of Directors of ICANN, organized OneWebDay to observe the significance of the Web and what it means to individuals, organizations and communities.

We couldn’t do the work we do without an open Web. How are you celebrating?

Special thanks to Kerry, Nisha and Lawrence for creating the awesome video!

With one week left till the close of our Congressional Mashup Contest we are excited to report that Steve Nelson's Second Life entry has made "Mashup of the Day" at Programmable Web. If you recall we introduced this exciting Mashup before here. Seeing Congressional information take center stage on this cutting edge website really shows how people get excited about new ways to view Congress.

Next week (March 11-17) is Sunshine Week, during which journalists, activists, and bloggers raise awareness about the importance of open government and advocate for more transparency.

To celebrate, we are hosting a contest! We will give a $2,000 prize for the best "Web 2.0 Mashup" ^(wikipedia) that displays information about Congress:

Our judges--Esther Dyson, Jimmy Wales, and Craig Newmark--will select the winning mashup based on creativity and how effectively it displays Congressional information.

Yesterday the Sunlight Foundation and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society hosted the Sunlight-Berkman Conference on Political Information. Our new intern Andrew MacRae attended the Conference in Boston and wrote up this review of the day:

On January 15th, 2007, the Sunlight Foundation in cooperation with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society held an all day workgroup entitled “Local Political Information in an Internet Era”. The session brought together bloggers and organizations, in an attempt to share data, goals and thoughts. For addition coverage see what other participants had to say, Ethan Zuckerman, Jake Shapiro, John Palfrey, Dan Gillmor, David Weinberger and more.

A CNN exit poll showed that 42 percent of voters said corruption was an extremely important issue in their choices at the polls yesterday. It led terrorism, economy and Iraq as the national issues that drove voters choices.

Can there be any doubt that more transparency is in order? When we launched the Sunlight Foundation, we found huge support among the public for greater disclosure of the inner workings of what goes on in Congress

The most popular proposals included: requiring public disclosure of all money raised for a campaign by registered lobbyists and creating an independent ethics commission to review complaints, conduct investigations, and report on unethical conduct by lawmakers and their staffs. Just behind were proposals requiring public disclosure of any attempts to secure earmarks in budget bills that directly benefit lobbyists or campaign contributors, requiring lawmakers to file reports on legislation they have introduced that would benefit their campaign contributors, requiring public disclosure of all contacts with regulatory agencies pressing for action that benefits campaign contributors, requiring lawmakers to report publicly all of their contacts with lobbyists, and prohibiting former members of Congress and senior staff from working as lobbyists in Washington for five years after they leave Congress. Every single one of these proposals got support of 59 percent or higher!

Mark Tapscott's editorial in The Examiner this morning promotes the common sense idea behind the Punch Clock Campaign, and calls for the development of a Sunshine Caucus in the next Congress that includes all advocates for more transparency for Congress. We're all for it. In fact, we like the idea so much, that I noticed that Zephyr is already referring to those involved in Sunlight's work as "The Sunlight Caucus."

Andrew Cuomo, who is running for Attorney General in NY, issues a press release today that sounds like it came from us:

ANDREW CUOMO PROPOSES "PROJECT SUNLIGHT" TO INCREASE GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY AND DISCLOSURE

....The Attorney General's Public Integrity Unit would for the first time integrate and improve existing databases so that campaign finance data, lobbying information and state contracts can be viewed and easily searched by concerned citizens. With Project Sunlight, a citizen frustrated by high drug costs would be able to use her computer at home,  type "prescription drugs" in a search box, and find out if her elected officials take money from drug companies, what drug bills they voted on, and even which companies ended up with lucrative state contracts.

We are so pleased with the results and process of our first online polling that we are now thinking about our next steps. We'd love to dig a little deeper and ask a series of questions about specific ways to make members of Congress and their business more transparent.

We might ask some of the questions that we asked in our launch poll, like requiring disclosure of all money raised for a campaign by registered lobbyists (this idea has been picked up by Public Campaign Action Fund and Common Cause in their  recentlly launched national pledge campaign), requiring specific disclosure of earmarks, or requiring lawmakers to file reports on legislation they have introduced that would benefit a campaign contributor.

We've been promising to introduce our Sunlight Labs more formally and today we're doing that, along with the announcement of a really neat widget that we're calling "Popup Politicians." Before you imagine the worst, like, Representative J. Dennis Hastert or Sen. John McCain or Representative John Boehner popping out of cake, take a look at what Greg Elin and Duncan Werner have developed -- a web page plug-in that links the reader to information about who's financing the lawmaker's campaign, the lawmaker's voting record, and their profile on Congresspedia. The widget appears as a small popup window when you mouse-over the little sun icon that appears at the end of the name.