UPDATE: Prior to submitting this note, I tested Senator Murkowski’s appropriations links in both Internet Explorere and Firefox. However, other visitors to Murkowski’s find the links live, and I am able to access them on a different computer than I usually use.

Accordingly, Senator Murkowski should not be treated as an earmarks scofflaw! She, like many members of Congress and Senators, could certainly disclose her earmark requests in a better format – or require the appropriations committee to disclose them all.

But it would be inappropriate to single her out, other than perhaps for using html coding on her Web site that doesn’t respond well on some computer/browser setups.

UPDATE II: And voila – Senator Murkowski’s earmarks are now in the database!

This morning, I submitted the following note to Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) through her Senate Web site. Senator Murkowski is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which requires senators to disclose earmarks on their Web sites. (The link to Senator Murkowski’s site from the Senate Appropriations Committee site is dead.)

On your appropriations page (http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Appropriations), none of the links to FY2010 appropriations requests are live links.

WashingtonWatch.com users are entering earmark requests from all members of Congress and senators into a publicly available database (http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/earmarks/), and we would like to have access to your requests for this purpose.

Please advise me when these links are live. If you would like to produce your earmarks to us in a more useful format than PDF documetns [sic], we would appreciate that.

I’ll be reporting to our community on your response. Thank you!

Jim Harper
Webmaster
WashingtonWatch.com

(Yes, I noticed after the fact that I fat-fingered “documents” . . . .)

As stated in the submission to Senator Murkowski, I’ll report the results to you. Keep watching this blog!