Summary
The President’s health care proposal as released on February 22 purports to put “…American families and small business owners in control of their health care. To help those who are following this issue we are providing in this post, links to a 10+ page Summary prepared by the White House. This document provides a good overview and discussion regarding provisions in the proposed legislation.
The quest for health care reform continues. According to Roll Call the White House has developed its own version of a merged House-Senate health care reform package and plans to have it online for public review by Monday in advance of a bipartisan health care summit scheduled for Feb. 25. As reported, the White House has taken what it considers the best of the House and Senate bills and come up with their own proposal.
BY: Michael Chernicoff
President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has promsed to make its statistical body free from political manipulation. In making an independent statistical body, James Lynch may hope to reverse that likelihood that the BJS and its official are, “inappropriately treated in the future.”
In 2009, James Lynch was a member of the Panel to Review the Programs of the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT), which provided recommendations to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) on ways to improve the quality, creditability, and relevance of U.S. justice statistics. In that report, the Panel recommended that “BJS be moved out of OJP (Office of Justice Programs),” and further suggested, “that the position of BJS director be made a fixed-term presidential appointment with Senate confirmation.” (A full-text copy of this report behttp://www.nap.edu/catalog/12671.html).
As almost everyone knows, the 2011 U.S. Budget was submitted on February 1. Since this is such a huge budget, in terms of both bulk and scope, we have decided to limit this posting largely to links to some ” Budget Fact Sheets” prepared by the Office of Management and Budget. Each separately linked fact sheet focuses on a particular priority or group of priorities related to this budget request, thus enabling you to quickly “pick and choose” those areas that interest and concern you without devoting considerable time to other parts of the budget. If you wish to examine this budget request in greater detail, go to the GPO Access link at the end of this posting.
Here are links to the Budget Fact Sheets::
THOMAS was launched on January 5, 1995, at the inception of the 104th Congress. The leadership of the 104th Congress directed the Library of Congress to make federal legislative information freely available to the public. Since that time THOMAS has expanded the scope of its offerings to include many features and content including those listed below.:
Bills, Resolutions Activity in Congress Congressional Record Schedules, Calendars Committee Information Presidential Nominations
Now, fifteen years later in response to user feedback and in celebration of its fifteenth anniversary, THOMAS has been updated for the second session of the 111th Congress.
In the e-mail below Camilla Tubbs, Chair of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Government Relations Committee provides useful information regarding efforts by the Obama admiinistration to create greater transparency and openness in and among federal departments and agencies. She is also asking what types of information people want to see on federal agency web sites? These are important questions that merit serious consideration. Although this e-mail was originally directed to a group of law librarians everyone should be concerned about these issues. Comments from both librarians and non librarians are welcome. We will be glad to forward comments on to Camilla upon request.
E-mail from Camilla Tubbs:
In his Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transparency_and_Open_Government/
The following is the announced U.S. Senate floor schedule for 2010:
Jan. 5 – Second session convenes in a pro forma session
Jan. 19 – Senate reconvenes for legislative business
A Report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) prepared by R. Eric Petersen, Analyst in American National Government November 5, 2009.*
Summary
Periodically, concerns have been raised about the number and variety of products created to document congressional activity. Other concerns focus on the process for authorizing and distributing printed government documents to Members of Congress, committees, and other officials in the House and Senate. These concerns reflect broader issues related to the manner in which government and private information is created, assembled, distributed, and preserved in light of the emergence of electronic publishing and distribution.
This posting is prompted out of concern for the need to provide open, online access to public documents including CRS reports, two e-mails received during the past two weeks, and two recent requests for recent CRS report referenced in a previous post to this blog.
First the e-mails. About a week ago I received a widely distributed e-mail from Emily Feldman, Advocacy Communications Assistant for the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) framing the issues related free online access to CRS Reports and emphasizing the urgency of taking action now to help get this accomplished. Emily can be contacted at either 202-942-4233 or efeldman@aall.org This was followed up today by an e-mail from a law librarian Susan Nevelow Mart responding to Emily’s e-mail and reinforcing Emily’s call for action. Here are the two e-mails
From Emily Feldman:
BY: Alison M. Smith, Legislative Attorney, Congressional Research Service (CRS)
September 14, 2009.
SUMMARY OF REPORT:
Criminal Law Library Blog