researching Congressional bills for essay 2

[o]

Students have a one-page per class day journal assignment and essay
research requirements that these notes are designed to assist. No one
is expected to address all of these points as journal work. Pick and
choose the topics of most interest and those that seem most helpful
for essay assignments.

Essay 2 requires students to research a Congressional bill. Try some
of the following steps for researching topics, bills, and specific
speeches from the Congressional Record:

Open Thomas (http://thomas.loc.gov), the web site of the Library of
Congress. Not only is the address short and simple, but the one word
Thomas usually matches the site first in a Google search.

Under search bill text, try "corruption." As of this writing, 201
bills match the search. Searching "bribery" returns 60 bills, and 1000
bills mention "military". By contrast, three bills mention “republican
government,” and "American empire" does not appear in any bill.

Note that while searching by bill number is an option, and sometimes
this option can quickly identify one bill of many, it can also be a
bit tricky or fussy. Searching bill text may be more often more
useful.

Another option is to browse the full list of all bills introduced.
This would not at all be a good way to find one particular bill about
which some information (topic, bill number) is known; compare starting
at the As in a dictionary or phone book and browsing page by page for
the definition or number desired. It is a very good method, however,
for ascertaining a broad view of the many, many bills introduced each
year. It is also a good way to find unknown bills serendipitously.

Here is the long path to the whole list of all bills: From the Thomas
home page, under "Find more legislation," click "Search multiple,
previous Congresses." Next, click "Search bill summary, status," then
under "Browse by," click "Popular and short titles."

After getting a general overview, let's take a look at a couple bills
in more detail. Go back to the Thomas home page. Some bills are very
long, a thousand pages or more, and some are very short, only a page
long. A couple bills have been selected for comparison: S. 1 ENR, H.
R. 2316, H. R. 1063 EH, H. Res. 228 EH, H. Res. 607 IH, 1292 IH, and
H. R. 4856. Find the bills quickly by searching Thomas for the words
"honest leadership" (S. 1 ENR), "225th" (H. Res. 1063 EH), "Greece
democracy" (H. Res. 228 EH), "British India" (H. Res. 607 IH), and
"military force" (1292 IH), and “liberty bill” (H. R. 4856). One more
bill, the economic bailout bill that recently passed, is easy to find
as of the day of this writing, as Thomas has a bold red link to the
bill on the front page: The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of
2008, H. R. 1424.

Browse the bills for the topic and recommended action and decide
whether each should pass and why. Then compare your evaluation of the
bills to Congress' by checking at the top of each bill the link "Bill
summary & status," which shows the support for (or lack thereof) and
actions taken on the bill. How much support do these bills have? Check
under "Cosponsors" to find out. What's happened with the bills
recently? Check under "All Congressional actions" to find out. Most
college students will/should know how many US Senators there are, the
names of California's, and a little about them; fewer will know how
many US House Reps there are (right now) and the names of the Reps for
both their home address and LACC's or much about them. Nearly zero
support is nearly zero regardless of the total, but it's still good to
note the difference in the total numbers of each half of Congress when
gauging a bill's cosponsor support.

To find out more about particular politicians, try two different
methods in Thomas: search for the bills they've introduced, and search
for the speeches they've made in Congress. To check the bills
introduced by a politician, from Thomas' home page, under "browse
bills by sponsor," pull down and select either a House Rep or a
Senator and browse over the bills introduced. What impression do you
gather about the personality of the politician from the bills
introduced? This may work better for some than for others. To search
for speeches made, go back to Thomas' home page and under "Other
legislative activity" select "Congressional Record." Here, as with
bills, topics can be searched as well, but this time try selecting a
politician's name from the lists, searching, then browsing. This may
work better, again, for some than for others. Another good place to
look for information about politicians, bills, and elections is the
organization Vote Smart (http://www.votesmart.org/). Try checking the
Interest Group Ratings for various politicians’ support and
opposition.

[Joy.c]

It's funny because I am looking up Gay rights within the military.
This is one thing that Murphy doesn't look at when he writes in the
Chapter. I'm focusing on recruitment issues and he looks at how there
is a relaxing on tattoos, there is a lax allowance for overweight
people who wouldn't normally be fit enough to get in, yet there isn't
any mention of gay and lesbian rights / issues within the military
which I find interesting. I know there is the don't ask, don't tell
idealism but it's all still based on shame.
just a thought.
It's quite an interesting topic.