This lecture by lawyer-professor Lawrence Lessig addresses some simple policy issues that were gotten wrong by Congress, and what role money had in the failure of Congress to see the whole picture. As with any Lessig lecture, it’s quite good. Here, he is setting the stage for the problem and who needs to do something about it (hint: not Congress).

(Hat-tip to Ellen Miller’s blog at Sunlight for the link.)

Bill Allison at Sunlight

an article in Roll Call:

Every private entity that

Rep. John Murtha

(D-Pa.) favored with an earmark in this year’s defense bill recently has given political money to the lawmaker, according to an analysis of House Appropriations and federal elections records by Roll Call and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

PACs and employees of those 26 groups together have contributed $413,250 to Murtha since the beginning of 2005. He collected nearly a quarter of the sum — $100,750 — in the two weeks leading up to March 16, the original deadline for lawmakers to file their earmark requests.

To put it in perspective (because I hate numbers reported in isolation—for Eddie Izzard fans— “squeezy squeezy… is that good??”), $413k is about 15% of Murtha’s total receipts in 2005-2006. That’s huge, for 15% of your incoming contributions to be repaid in earmarks, and for sure the earmarks sent back at least that amount to the contributors.

Of course, I always like to see the methodology before taking any results too far, but Roll Call is subscriber-only. Murtha staffers or supports that might be reading that think the conclusion is off should email me.

Yesterday the House passed the Senate’s ethics bill S. 1. I’ve covered the details of the bill

. All in all, it’s good progress.

Here are some pages on GovTrack related to things in the news:

• : The Senate’s legislative reform bill, already passed by the Senate.

• watch online the sorcerer’s apprentice

  : A legislative reform bill in the House that GovTrack supports.

Stay tuned for important news about legislative reform sponsored by the people

…

I guess House members have “senioritis”, when the last part of their final term doesn’t matter anymore. Check out the 33% absense rate in this vote on Saturday

! For a Congress meeting for such a record few days, you’d think they could at least show up.

Just a few weeks left for congressmen to pass any more legislation before this Congress finishes. Any unfinished business is cleared from the books in January, so urge your representatives to get the things done you hoped they would before it’s too late. (Meanwhile, I’m off to attend a mini-conference on Open Government, Open Data!)

Didn’t we just get back from vacation? Ah well, our lawmakers are taking some time off again. They return from campaigning on November 9.