Looking to the Future, Public Sees an America in Decline on Many Fronts – Majorities predict a weaker economy, a growing income divide, a degraded environment and a broken political system “When Americans peer 30 years into the future, they see a country in decline economically, politically and on the world stage. While a narrow… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Category Archives: Congress
CRS addresses whether Congress will have access to Mueller’s report
Via FAS – The Special Counsel’s Report: Can Congress Get It? Michael A. Foster, Legislative Attorney; Todd Garvey, Legislative Attorney. March 8, 2019. “Recent media reports suggest that Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III is close to concluding his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. As discussed in this separate Sidebar, Department of… Continue Reading
Trump’s Proposed Budget Would Devastate National Parks
Outside: A close reading of the President’s 2020 Department of the Interior budget reveals massive funding cuts for everything public-lands related—except for oil and gas “To understand any budget, all you need to see are the numbers. And when you look at the Trump administration’s 2020 budget proposal for the Department of the Interior, those numbers… Continue Reading
A new way to track Web censorship under Trump: Gov404
Sunlight Foundation Web Integrity Project: “Today, WIP is launching Gov404: The Web Integrity Project’s Censorship Tracker, a new tool to track unjustified removals of online resources and reductions in access to content across the federal government. Why are we aggregating these unjustified removals? As the government itself states in its Office of Management and Budget’s… Continue Reading
US Government Will Be Scanning Your Face At 20 Top Airports
BuzzFeedNews: “In March 2017, President Trump issued an executive order expediting the deployment of biometric verification of the identities of all travelers crossing US borders. That mandate stipulates facial recognition identification for “100 percent of all international passengers,” including American citizens, in the top 20 US airports by 2021. Now, the United States Department of… Continue Reading
Committee Report Confirms College is Still Well Worth the Cost
“A report released this morning by the Committee on Education and Labor reveals that a college degree is still well worth the cost. The report, titled “Don’t Stop Believin’ (in the value of a college degree)” collects the mountain of evidence showing that – despite the recent skepticism regarding the value of a college –… Continue Reading
New on LLRX – US takes tentative steps toward opening up government data
Via LLRX – US takes tentative steps toward opening up government data – At the beginning of this year, President Trump signed into law the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary Government Data Act, requiring that nonsensitive government data be made available in machine-readable, open formats by default. As researchers who study data governance and cyber… Continue Reading
In the Library’s Web Archives: Sorting through a Set of US Government PDFs
The Signal Blog – LC: “Today’s guest post is from Jesse Johnston, a Senior Digital Collections Specialist at the Library of Congress. The Digital Content Management section has been working on a project to extract and make available sets of files from the Library’s significant web archives holdings. This is another step to explore the web archives and make… Continue Reading
Library of Congress wants to attract more visitors, but will that undermine its mission?
Washington Post: “…Central to Hayden’s goals is a $60 million makeover of the library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, the historic 1897 architectural wonder known for its Great Hall, which is open to the public, and the Main Reading Room, the hushed temple where scholars work. Hayden unveiled the first glimpses of the concept — with its… Continue Reading
LC Post New CRS Content Now Online
Library of Congress Blog – Carla D. Hayden: “Less than half a year ago, I announced that the Library of Congress is providing Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports to the public for the first time. Since the launch of the CRS reports website, crsreports.congress.gov, the Library has made available all new or updated reports. Created for Congress by… Continue Reading
Americans and Cybersecurity
Pew Report – Many Americans do not trust modern institutions to protect their personal data – even as they frequently neglect cybersecurity best practices in their own personal lives. “Cyberattacks and data breaches are facts of life for government agencies, businesses and individuals alike in today’s digitized and networked world. Just a few of the… Continue Reading
The President’s Authority to Withdraw US from NAFTA Without Further Congressional Action
CRS report via Library of Congress – The President’s Authority to Withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Without Further Congressional Action, March 5, 2019: “…This report examines the President’s authority to terminate the United States’ international obligations under NAFTA without further action from Congress. It also examines whether the… Continue Reading
