Texas Watchdog is covering the InterWebs today -- through video and audio -- to bring you information about government transparency.

Earlier today we aired our latest episode of TrentTV, our free monthly webinar on using open government laws. Our topic today was getting information from the military.

We've embedded the video on this page, and it's also available on both Livestream.com and Vimeo.com. (Special thanks to Mark Greenblatt of KHOU-Channel 11 for passing along his advice on the topic.)

Among the points we made in our hour-long broadcast, we talked about how to use the federal Freedom of Information Act to seek records from the federal Defense Department and the challenges that can present. We talked about how to confirm someone's military service or record as a war hero. We discussed military procurement and contracting; military courts and the access challenges they pose; trying to find out about wrecks, crashes and accidents; and records involving the National Guard, among other topics.

Tune in to TrentTV the fourth Tuesday of every month. We discuss open government in a format aimed at journalists, bloggers, citizen-journalists, non-journalists and just about everyone who wants to keep up with what government is doing.

And this afternoon, we aired our latest episode of Transparency Talk Radio, our weekly podcast/live Internet radio show on government transparency.

We had a great interview today with Edwin Bender, executive director of the National Institute on Money in State Politics, the people who put on the FollowTheMoney.org site that we reference quite a bit here at Texas Watchdog. He talked about campaign finance, transparency, data and all the cool features on their site.

Listen to internet radio with JenniferLPeebles on Blog Talk Radio

Check out our show blog at BlogTalkRadio.com for hyperlinks to all the sites referenced on today's podcast episode.

You can listen to the podcast on your PC, either directly through your browser at BlogTalkRadio.com or via iTunes, or you can use iTunes to download the audio to your iPod.

While you're at BlogTalkRadio.com, you can also listen to some of our previous episodes. We've done interviews with Laura Frank of Colorado's INewsNetwork.org about open government and e-waste, Keith Elkins of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, and Kristin McMurray, senior editor of the FOIA-focused wiki Sunshine Review.

And if you haven't already, please "like" our pages on Facebook for both TrentTV and Transparency Talk Radio to keep up with all the latest news about show times and topics -- and feel free to use those links to send us your feedback, comments, questions and topic ideas.

Contact Jennifer Peebles at jennifer@texaswatchdog.org or 281-656-1681. Follow her on Twitter at @texaswatchdog or @jpeebles.

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