DEAR EDITOR: DEFENSE OF LOBBYISTS ON GOVERNMENT BOARDS. The Post. “I don’t drive a Porsche, and I have never contributed to a political campaign or paid for a lawmaker’s golf junket. After 30 years in Washington, I still confuse the various House and Senate buildings. Yet on the theory that my insight is somehow corrupting, the ruling bars me from a panel on which I served for 15 years: helping government officials understand complex and arcane aspects of my field, international trade.”
STOCK ACT: FORMS ONLINE. The Post. “Financial disclosures of members of Congress became more readily available Monday as required by the Stock Act. Access to such forms filed by many senior career federal employees will remain restricted for at least two more months, however.” Senate forms are here and House forms are here. Happy snooping searching.
HULU POLITICAL ADS. HuffPo. “Some people catching up with their favorite television shows on Hulu, especially people living in swing states and zip codes heavy with the right demographic groups, may have seen ads urging President Barack Obama’s reelection. They likely don’t realize they’ve also seen the latest innovation in campaign spending.”
PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE MOU. In doing some searching for presidential debate memoranda of understanding I discovered a blog dedicated to presidential debates here. From my casual search, the memorandum between the McCain and Obama camps in 2008 isn’t available online. This year’s MOU is the topic of this Politico report, which indicates there were still outstanding items as of a few days ago.
WORK WITH NONPROFITS. WFB. “The apparent admission of a top lawyer for the Obama campaign during a recent conference call that the campaign has ‘work[ed] with some’ nonprofit organizations raises questions about the campaign’s coordination with liberal nonprofit groups and could put the nonprofit status of those groups at risk.”
TOMORROW’S FEC MEETING. The agenda for tomorrow’s FEC meeting is online here.
YARD SIGN LAW. In 2008 I posted links to a huge number of stories about yard sign laws and vandalism. I’m not going to monitor the yard sign wars as closely this time around, but I found this editorial of interest: “One afternoon when I returned home from work, the signs were gone. I asked my wife if they had been stolen. No, she said. A town official had visited and instructed her to remove them. They violated a town ordinance that such signs cannot be up more than 30 days before an election. These were up well before that limit.”
MN: LOBBYIST DEFINITION NOT TRIGGERED. Story here. ”Minnesota Majority’s executive director, Dan McGrath, has engaged in lobbying at the Capitol, but was not required to register with the state, according to a ruling Tuesday by the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.”
MN: MARRIAGE GROUP COMPLAINT DISMISSED. Story here. “The state’s campaign finance watchdog has cleared Minnesota for Marriage, an organization backing a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman, of a complaint that the group did not adequately disclosed its donors.”
PA: VOTER ID LAW UPDATE. Politico. “A judge in Pennsylvania has ordered that the state’s new restrictive voter ID law cannot fully take effect until after Election Day.”
RI: TRAVEL DISCLOSURE RULE. Story here. “The Rhode Island Ethics Commission is seeking public input on a proposed rule requiring elected officials to disclose out-of-state travel costs.”
VA: DELGAUDIO VOTE. The Post. “The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors will vote Wednesday on whether to investigate recently reported allegations that Supervisor Eugene A. Delgaudio used county resources to benefit his political campaign, according to a statement Tuesday by the board’s chairman, Scott K. York.”
HAVE A GREAT DAY.