Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., urged the new Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee Wednesday to help foster greater public access to the expert reports produced by the Congressional Research Service. In a letter to Rules Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Lieberman asked for Schumer to improve upon the current limited system through which the public can access the reports.
…
Given their value to constituents, I strongly believe that we need a system that ensures widespread public access to CRS reports. Last Congress, I introduced S. Res. 401 along with Senators McCain, Collins, Cornyn, Feingold, Harkin, Leahy, Lugar, and McCaskill, to create such as system. A few months after the introduction of our bill, the Rules Committee authorized the Director of CRS to develop a system that would allow Senators to place individual CRS reports on their official website and would have them automatically updated. I was pleased by this development, but it does not go far enough.

Source: U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs

Barack Obama’s inauguration was the formal point at which the reigning ideology in Washington changed from “conservative” to “liberal.” We use those terms without apology, as they are used in American political discourse.

Broadly, a “liberal’ subscribes to some or all of the following: progressive income taxation; universal health care of some kind; opposition to the war in Iraq, and a certain queasiness about the war on terror; an instinctive preference for international diplomacy; the right to gay marriage; a woman’s right to an abortion; environmentalism in some Kyoto Protocol-friendly form; and a rejection of the McCain-Palin ticket.

n recognition of the role played by the media in our national debate, Forbes.com nominates, here, 25 of America’s most consequential liberal journalists and media personalities.

Our list includes newspaper editors and columnists, magazine writers, television anchors and commentators, as well as one TV personality more commonly regarded as an entertainer. It also includes–how could it not?–a number of bloggers, all of whom have made an emphatic mark on the modern American Conversation.

Direct to slide show of list

Source: Forbes.com

Maybe all our refined, enlightened interests are lost in the long tail, because Britney Spears once again was the most popular search subject in 2008 on Yahoo.

For Yahoo, Spears wasn’t the only pop-culture icon in Yahoo’s top 10 searches. Also on the list were Miley Cyrus at No. 4, Jessica Alba at No. 6, Lindsay Lohan at No. 7, and Angelina Jolie at No. 9.

Apparently a lot of people are curious about World Wrestling Entertainment, because WWE was No. 2. The online game RuneScape was No. 5, anime series Naruto was No. 7, and American Idol finished in 10th place on Yahoo’s list.

Yahoo also broke down searches for various other subjects. For economic searches, the top 10 list started with IRS stimulus checks, then followed with oil prices, gold prices, gas prices, Dow Jones, Sallie Mae, stock market, AIG, foreclosures, and debt consolidation. The list reveals that people use general-purpose searches for everything ranging from how-to advice to the latest news.

In the people of politics, President-elect Barack Obama led the list. Next came Sarah Palin, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Ron Paul, John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mitt Romney.

See also: AOL Search – 2008 Year End Hot Searches
See also: Ask Top 2008 Searches

Source: CNET News

After a busy weekend, the Obama-Biden ticket maintains its strong lead in the race for daily newspaper endorsements, by 194 to 82 better than 2-1 margin and an even wider spread in the circulation of those papers –see full tally below as of today. The circulation of the Obama-backing papers stands at over 20 million, compared with McCain’s over 6 million.

Obama’s lopsided margin, including most of the major papers that have decided so far, is in stark contrast to John Kerry barely edging George W. Bush in endorsements in 2004 by 213 to 205.

Information current as of 10/27/08

Source: Editor & Publisher

With two presidential debates and the one and only vice presidential debate complete, are you satisfied with the information provided by the candidates? It has been a truly long and historic campaign season, but there is still a lot to know before November 4th. As everyone is probably quite aware of at this point, the economy is in the dumps, billions of dollars are being spent on two wars, and the health care and educational systems are not up to the high standards worthy of a leading nation. So, this election could be one of the most important decisions of this generation. One way to know where the candidates stands is by reviewing their policies and plans, which are often available on the candidates’ web pages. However, if you want to dig a little deeper, looking into the past of the candidates may provide even more insight.

John McCain, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have all been under a pretty tight microscope, but sometimes knowing about someone’s past and present lives can provide a glimpse into the type of person they are. I’ve found the public records are a great way to find out additional information about the candidates for president and vice president. One of the great things about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is that certain records are required to be made accessible by the general public. Through public records, you can find information as basic as contact information and as politically engaging as campaign finance reports. Below is a list of some great resources available through public records…

Source: Public Records Free Directory Blog

A free, searchable database of the presidential debate transcript has been released by askSam Systems. The askSam database contains a full-text searchable archive of the full debate between Republican candidate John McCain and Democratic candidate Barak Obama. You can search, browse, and analyze the 2008 presidential debate online at www.asksam.com/ebooks/2008-presidential-debates. askSam will make available at this same site free searchable versions of upcoming presidential and vice presidential debates.

+ Other askSam searchable eBooks, including the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

Source: Information Today NewsBreaks

Hat tip: PW

Believe it or not, Google turns 10 this month. Though other search engines predated it — remember AltaVista and Infoseek? — Google has become synonymous with Web searching. Over the course of the past decade, we’ve become accustomed to typing a couple of words, clicking the search button, and browsing the results page with the 10 blue links Google spits back at us.

This worked well as long as Google’s index of the Web was relatively small. But now it contains at least 15 billion pages, plus images, audio clips, videos, books and all sorts of other information. That’s a lot of stuff to sift through.

Google is aware of this. Last year they introduced Universal Search, which blends content from their other indexes into the results page. Thus, a search for John McCain will return the usual 10 blue links (at least one of which is a YouTube video), plus 3 links under each of the following additional headings: News, Video, Blog and Books results. There’s even a related searches heading containing suggestions such as “John McCain quotes,” “Ron Paul” and “2008 presidential candidates.”

This is helpful, but is it the future of Web search? Some people think not, and they’ve launched search engines that organize information differently than Google does. These next-generation search tools utilize concepts such as clustering, visualization and human editors.

Source: The Legal Intelligencer (by Dan Giancaterino, ResourceShelf contributing editor)

Librarians have a reputation for being flaming liberals. Left of Left. I’ve met more than one who wears the label “pinko” with pride.

So that makes one of the latest discussions to pop up on library listservs an interesting one. Yesterday, a subscriber to the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table listserv posted links for YouTube archives of the speeches given at the Democratic National Convention. Immediately another subscriber reminded people that the listserv was not to be used for “partisan purposes” and warned against “pushing the envelope” — which, the subscriber said, could lead to the ALA’s losing its nonprofit status. Other subscribers responded by saying that they were merely passing around information, and they posted links to other candidates’ YouTube speeches, including John McCain’s.

The debate might seem odd, especially for librarians and the GLBT Round Table, a group that advocates improving the “quality, quantity, and accessibility of library materials and service of particular interest or usefulness to lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgendered people of all ages” and works for “eliminating job discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered employees of libraries, archives, and information centers,” according to the round table’s mission statement. Those goals seem to be part of the current political debate. How do you avoid politics in passing around information about such topics?

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (Wired Campus)

No, presidential candidate Barack Obama was not found dead in a “shock accident.” John McCain was not “found unconscious in a toilet.” Will Smith wasn’t “found dead in bathtub” either. And Britney Spears has not broken her arm in a “freak poolside accident.”

The truth is quite a bit more subtle. A Microsoft security upgrade in April largely dismantled a network of hijacked computers used by criminals to send spam, and the hackers are desperately trying to rebuild it. To entice users to click on the links that will infect their computers with the notorious Storm worm, they have dispatched an avalanche of e-mail with fantastic news headlines in recent weeks. The average Net user is getting about 60 of the phony news bulletins per day, says the security firm MessageLabs.

Source: Red Tape Chronicles

+ John McCain (First Speech Listed from 6/12/2006)

+ Barack Obama (First Speech Listed from 10/2/2002)

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., is calling for greater public access to the expert reports produced by the highly acclaimed Congressional Research Service. In a letter to Rules Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, Lieberman thanked her for asking CRS to devise a system for the Senate similar to one now operating in the House. Lieberman, however, said the House standard was still inadequate and asked for her help in implementing S. Res. 401, which he introduced last fall with Senators McCain, Collins and others, to provide the public with greater access to CRS reports.

“Unfortunately, Congress and CRS’ policies have severely limited the public’s ability to read these unclassified reports,” Lieberman wrote. “As a result, there is uneven access among the public, with many companies now profiting from selling CRS reports to those who can afford to pay…. I believe the new system should provide constituents with tools similar to what Congressional staff has, with material presented by topic as well as the capability to search across all reports and issue briefs.”

Lieberman said the House system still makes it burdensome for members to provide a substantial number of reports to constituents.

Source: U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs

Hat tip: the openhouse project

Well, you know, there are a lot of companies that have been around longer than Google, but Google’s performing.

++ See Also: Obama spoke at Google in November. Here’s the transcript and video (via Google Blogoscoped)
++ See Also: Sen. Hillary Clinton Spoke at Google Last February, Here’s the Video
++ See Also: Sen. John McCain Spoke at Google in May. The video is available here.

+ Live Search: There For Skiiers And Snowboarders Everywhere (via SEL)
New ski and snowboard reports from Live.com on SERP’s. The SEL post also mentions a similar Smart Answer feature that Ask.com* has offered for some time.

* Gary is Director of Online Info Resources at Ask.com.

The following candidates have been interviewed so far:

+ Mike Huckabee (R)

+ Bill Richardson (D)

+ John McCain (R)

+ John Edwards (D)

Source: The Charlie Rose Show

The 2nd quarter of the year just passed and the presidential candidates are continuing to demonstrate their fundraising strength—or struggle. Based on preliminary numbers from the candidates’ campaigns, Barack Obama is poised to emerge as the 2nd quarter’s fundraising superstar with a record-breaking haul and an astounding 95 percent of his funds available for the primary. John McCain, on the other hand, is firing dozens of workers and aides this week to make up for his lackluster numbers.

The numbers below reflect unofficial, early predictions from the candidates’ campaigns and the media, not the official information the candidates must file with the Federal Election Commission by July 15.

See Also: Money Web
Campaign finance visualization.

This social networking tool—new to OpenSecrets.org for the ‘08 election—illustrates links between candidates and donors. Included in this web are the 5 top contributors and industries (including ties) to each of the candidates we profile. Click on a bubble to start making connections among candidates, their top-giving industries and top contributors.

See Also: Fundraising by Week Database

See Also: Presidential Election 2008 Candidate Expenditures

See Also: Top States Donating to Presidential Candidates

Source: OpenSecrets.org, The Center for Responsive Politics

In-depth interviews by Tim Russert of 2008 Presidential Candidates.
Programs can be streamed in their entirety and text transcripts are also available. The first three interviews are with:
+ Sen. John McCain
+ Sen. Joseph Biden
+ Sen. John Edwards
More to come!

See Also: More MTP Transcripts back to 2003.

Source: NBC/MSNBC

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) was established in 1914 as Congress’s supplier of nonpartisan research and analysis. Its reports are neither classified nor copyrighted, but they’ve long been the exclusive property of lawmakers, who distribute them as they see fit. Taxpayers supply the agency’s $100 million annual budget, inspiring open-government groups and some lawmakers, including Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) to push for public release of CRS reports.

“The Library of Congress is a national treasure. The public deserves ready access to the reports it prepares for Congress, and easy online retrieval is the obvious answer,” Leahy said. “We need to keep moving toward that goal.”

But each time the topic comes up, it runs into a wall erected by lawmakers such as Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who “like many members of Congress, views CRS as an extension of his staff,” said Aaron Saunders, Stevens’s spokesman. If the reports were made public, “every time a member requests a particular document, the public may infer that he’s staking out a particular policy position.”

CRS’s director, Daniel P. Mulhollan, has left it to Congress to decide. “Once a report is produced for the Congress, it becomes the property of the Congress,” he said in a statement. “CRS itself has no public role and is prohibited by law from publishing its work.”

It’s up to members and committees, Mulhollan said, to release the reports “directly, by inclusion in congressional publications or through their own Web sites.”

Open-government groups have a problem with that: “CRS is Congress’s brain, and it’s useful for the public to be plugged into it,” says Steven Aftergood, an open-government advocate who runs the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News blog.

Aftergood and others have fought back by posting every CRS report they can find on their Web sites. But watchdog groups have released only about 10 percent of the total, not enough to reveal the patterns that suggest what Congress might do next.

Source: Washington Post

Shirl’s note:
We keep an eye on a number of sources, and we try and post every CRS report on DocuTicker that we can find. It has long been one of my personal rants that these things are not made publicly available immediately upon release, since the taxpayers are picking up the tab. We generally group the reports together by topic in each post. The Congressional Research Service category link on DocuTicker will display all of them.

See also: You Pay for This Research. Why Can’t You See It? (Wired News)

See also: Free Press? Don’t Tell The Congressional Research Service (Austin American-Statesman)