
The Republican Party has an API - yef
http://www.gop.gov/api
======
mileszs
Instead of joking about it, you might find it interesting to actually go
browse the available methods, as well as some of the examples. (Link to the
examples page: <http://www.gop.gov/aboutapi/documentation>) Take an honest
look at, say, the Perl example. Then browse a few of the methods (on the right
hand side) to see what they return.

Although I don't find myself agreeing with the GOP on many issues, I am able
to see that this offers real value beyond fodder for programmers who wish to
be comedians. If nothing else, I hope to see it driving the momentum to 'open'
government.

~~~
andreyf
I don't see how this is useful as long as it's politicized to GOP-members
only...

~~~
jacoblyles
You can keep tabs on what half the government is doing.

And there are honest-to-god Republican activists out there (check the comments
with negative ratings on the bottom of social news sites) who want to know
what their party is up to and keep it on task. Much like how others might want
to know what the Obama administration or the Democratic caucus is up to.

All in all, I think it's pretty awesome. I hope the Democrats will follow
suit, or that Congress will put up a general API. That would be even better.

~~~
cabalamat
> _I hope the Democrats will follow suit, or that Congress will put up a
> general API._

The worst thing would be if the Dems followed suit, but using a different API.
Yuck.

~~~
lallysingh
It'd be hilarious for the two to use the same API, then patent it so that the
Libertarians _couldn't_ use it.

Just to piss them off :-)

------
sethg
Props to the Republicans for doing this; I'm a confirmed liberal Democrat but
I don't mind seeing both parties pandering for the geek vote. :-)

~~~
jacoblyles
Out of curiosity, how do you become a "confirmed" liberal Democrat? Is that
like becoming a confirmed Catholic? Is there a process?

And you are right that the most successful interest groups are ones that can
get their policies pushed by both parties. I would love to see intelligent
technology policies pushed by 2 parties, instead of about 10% of a party like
we see now.

~~~
newt0311
regardless of the process, the implication seems to be the same.

------
iigs
_committee.members

This method provides all Republican members of standing or subcommittees._

I recognize that this is a party site, but I wonder how much additional work
it would have been to capture the non-GOP members and votes. I can't think of
a situation where I'd want to know just a fraction of the members of a
subcommittee; I'd think if you care you'd care about everyone in it.

~~~
wheels
This might actually be more useful in the long run. To me this says that
Republicans are trying to show their tech saavy and trying to capture some of
the good karma that the Democrats have doned of late in their gestures towards
technology and open information.

Having the parties competing on this would be wonderful. It'd be like market
effects on the web-ization of government information. Were this just a single
political initiative coming from whatever agency it'd be a surefire bitrot
target, but if the Republicans and Democrats start trying to one-up each other
for political ends, we might see things evolve in a more interesting
direction.

Politics seems to be most effective when it's trying to win something. ;-)

------
halo
Seems like a direct response to the Obama election team and administration's
use of the Internet and technology over recent months. In the short-term it's
not going to win them any votes, but it's good for the GOP brand and setting
up infrastructure and increasing awareness for later higher-profile campaigns
in an area where the Democrats are seen to dominate them.

It's amazing how much competition stimulates progress.

------
cabalamat
I notice all the methods use POST. Shouldn't they use GET instead, on the
ground that each access doesn't change the state of the server?
<http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/whenToUseGet.html>

~~~
eli
I like RESTful APIs too, but it's silly to imply that anything else is wrong

~~~
compay
I'm not sure the implication was necessarily that it was wrong, the poster (no
pun intended) could have meant that it could simply have been better to use
GET.

~~~
cabalamat
That's right: I wasn't implying it's wrong to use POST, merely that GET is
clearer, since using it would make it more obvious that the query isn't
changing the state of the server.

------
eli
Has anyone really looked into it? Does it provide anything that, say,
opencongress.org/govtrack.us doesn't already have?

~~~
wizard_2
govtrack is amazing, rsync mirrors of their full database for your own use. A
wonderfully useful website, I've even got rss feeds for what my congresspeople
are up to.

------
cosmo7
Interesting to see them using ASP.NET MVC.

~~~
mattdennewitz
why?

------
newt0311
Nice move.

------
sabat
rich->funnel_money_from_middle_class( _hide=[true]_ )

environment->screw( _distort_facts=[true]_ )

populus->dictate_christian_lifestyle()

populus->promote_fascism( _not_called_fascism_when_we_do_it=[true]_ )

~~~
jonursenbach
I'm sure I speak for most of the progressives on HN when I say that we support
what you're saying as being the overall GOP agenda, but man... that was just
lame.

~~~
sabat
Yeah, telling it like it is -- that's just lame.

------
joubert
Is there a DELETE function?

------
gislebertus
Who cares.

Wish GOP sock-puppets would stop posting this stuff on HN.

------
mattdennewitz
one _can_ simply POST into mordor. huh!

~~~
mattdennewitz
jeez. i thought it was funny. im sorry for offending so many sensibilities :/

~~~
davidw
It wasn't funny, but once upon a time this site had a tradition of not voting
down silly/stupid stuff quite so much:-/

------
yummyfajitas
Did someone say republicans? I hate republicans so much, and this post looks
like a perfect place to complain about them.

~~~
tjr
It's not.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Thanks for the tip. I was completely unaware of that when I wrote my original
post.

That's why I posted a long political diatribe, rather than a short snarky
emulation of people who use a post like this as an excuse to launch into long
irrelevant political diatribes.

~~~
astine
I think we all detected your sarcasm, but who in particular are you responding
too? I haven't seen any diatribes yet, and I think that it would be best that
any reactions or responses to them should be actual replies.

Just my two cents.

~~~
endtime
_I think we all detected your sarcasm, but who in particular are you
responding too?_

Scroll down? There are several people who made politically motivated comments.
That said, perhaps the fact that they were all downvoted into oblivion is
response enough.

------
mrinterweb

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
      <SOAP-ENV:Envelope
       SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
       xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
       xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema">
    	<SOAP-ENV:Body>
    		<ns1:doubleAnInteger
    		 xmlns:ns1="urn:GOPAPI">
    			<param1 xsi:type="xsd:int">666</param1>
    		</ns1:doubleAnInteger>
                    <getTalkingPoints:string xmlns:getTalkingPoints="urn:RequestTalkingPointsTrue">Give 
                     me my talking points</getTalkingPoints>
    	</SOAP-ENV:Body>
      </SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

~~~
peregrine
Man people cannot take a joke.

