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Permanent Links For US Legislation Documents
dizzymslizzy writes "With prompting from the Sunlight Foundation's Open House Project, the US Library of Congress announced today that its online database THOMAS will now generate persistent URLs, known as legislative handles, for legislation documents.
As Free Government Info says, 'it is certainly nice to be able to link to legislation with a persistent link! But it would be much better if one could click to create a link rather than following a 600-word description of how to link on another page.' Still, this is a definite step forward for the Library of Congress and for government transparency. From THOMAS: 'Legislative Handles are a new persistent URL service for creating links to legislative documents from the THOMAS web site (http://thomas.loc.gov). With a simple syntax, Legislative Handles make it easy to type in legislative links to bibliographies, reference guides, emails, blogs, or web pages. Legislative Handles, for instance, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hconres196, are a convenient way to cite legislation.'
That website is one of the hardest to use. One of the biggest faults is that there is no differentiation in the search results between major and minor efforts. Try these three searches and you'll see how difficult it is to use:
http://thomas.loc.gov/
1. Find the No Child Left Behind Act
2. Find the roll call of the recent Wall Street bail-out
3. Find HR 700 from the 103rd Congress (this should presumably be the easiest since you have the "key")
It's almost as if they do not want you to read it.
But they seem less convoluted and actually make an effort for you to find them easily.
They are used extensively for academic publishing content.
http://www.crossref.org/guestquery/
Like the rest of the world does.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
something like this should have been established a long time ago. instead of listening to political demagogues engaging in mudslinging and espousing empty rhetoric, it would be much more productive to actually research current issues with direct access to new bills and legislative proposals. and once you have an educated and informed public, you can conduct mass referendums and let the public make policy decisions themselves (at least on the issues that effect our everyday lives, like drug policy, government surveillance, universal health care, tax policy, gay marriage, etc.).
ideally, the media would do its job keeping the public informed and hold politicians accountable for their actions. but sadly the mainstream media seems to have lost every shred of journalistic integrity and would rather cover celebrity gossip than political corruption, and the consolidation of the media by a handful of media conglomerates means that a handful of people control how the masses perceive the world, and news reporting is often skewed to reflect the world view of our cultural hegemons.
luckily, the internet is starting to change this by decentralizing media distribution and giving individuals access to a wide variety of independent news sources. no longer are corporate media conglomerates the gatekeepers of information. before i'd heard about THOMAS, i used to visit OnTheIssues.org, which provides detailed voting records and public statements (as well as summaries of legislation) of current political leaders and presidential candidates. but a democratic government needs to directly provide this info to the public, and the web is the best way to do this.
i'm glad that this is finally achieved with the THOMAS database. however, i think they need to keep permanent online records for all government officials past and present--right now it only displays congressional records, but that gives the public no oversight of the rest of the government. even if many positions are appointed by the president, we can still hold the president accountable for the actions of his appointees. representative democracy only works if the electorate provides negative feedback when politicians fail to act in the interest of the people. that means the public needs to be ever vigilante of government corruption and incompetence. perhaps an online system can even be established so the public can give direct feedback to government officials on their present performance, and not just limit democratic feedback to public elections. for instance, if a particular cabinet member's public approval drops below 50%, then the president would be forced to appoint a new leader. and if the president's public approval drops below 30%, then that would be cause for a congressional hearing, potentially leading to impeachment.
the next step is to move beyond representative democracy and actually allow the public to participate directly in the democratic process. i know many people think that the average person isn't capable of making public policy decisions, but they can speak for themselves, not for others. i don't need some clueless politician making policy decisions for me. right now the government is run by a very particular social group most aptly described as the political aristocracy. how can a government be trusted to act in the best interest of its citizens when it is run entirely by individuals who come from a completely different socioeconomic background than most of the population. the ruling class of America are all rich old men who are completely disconnected from the reality of the average person. at the very minimum, politicians should be paid a salary equivalent to the mean annual salary of the average American. otherwise, if all legislators reside in the uppermost tax bracket, how can we expect them to make progress tax reforms that are in the interest of the average person?
in the past, logistical problems prevented regular broad-based referendums from being conducted to give the public
Wikipedia for the US congress? Now that could be funny.
Rejected by Supreme court. [Citation needed for proof of constitutionality.]
Repassed congress and house. [It's for the children, damn the constitution.]
Veto by president. [Screw you.]
Veto ruled unconstitutional by judicial review. [Screw you too.]
---- Liquid was a patriot ----