It’s a short work week this week, so I have no excuse not tp post at least an article or two. In that spirit, here’s something I picked up by accident.
THOMAS, one of the more amazing government legislation research tools available to internet users, has gotten a significant face-lift. You can still search for legislation by bill number or textual content, but now there are pull-down menus that allow one to search for material that’s been sponsored by a particular lawmaker as well. If you’re interested in the legislative history of a given senator or representative this makes life considerably easier if all you have is the name of the congressperson in question.
Update: Something major that I overlooked in my brief once-over of the site is that those drop-down menus that make it so simple to browse through legislation by representatives or senator have a substantial shortcoming: they do not include the names of past elected individuals. So even if a bill proposed by Dan Rostenkowski (remember him?) over a decade ago lies in the database, you can’t access it from those particular menus. Granted, you can still locate the bill in question with some patient searching by text or name or bill number, but it’s a bit of a let-down just the same.
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