It’s not about harm. It’s about hype. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, every year heart disease kills two hundred times more Americans than terrorist attacks killed in the peak year of 2001. In other years, heart disease deaths are hundreds of thousands of times more numerous than terrorism deaths. Yet year [...]

Republican Congressional candidate Marc Carey of Kentucky’s 4th District maintains a political blog called BluegrassBulletin, subtitled “a blog dedicated to honest and respectful comment on the political and cultural issues of our time.” On the morning of April 20, 2012, Marc Carey shared the following thoughts: “Of course you will hear very little about Obama’s [...]

We’ve got two wars still going on. We’ve got a drumbeat to start another war. We’ve got increasing income inequality. There are people who are losing their homes. Our government is cooperating with governments that obtain child soldiers. Oil companies are getting gigantic tax cuts while they pollute our environment and stick taxpayers with the [...]

The 1st Amendment to the Constitution declares that the people of the United States have a right to assemble, speak and petition the government for redress of grievance that cannot be abridged. But with the passage of H.R. 347, the Congress has gone ahead and abridged that right anyway. H.R. 347 (bizarrely named the “Federal [...]

Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick of the 8th Congressional District of Pennsylvania introduced a new bill at the beginning of 2012. If passed, H.R. 3738 would take the current 1-year waiting period before former House members can join lobbying firms and extend it to 2 years. In the House of Representatives, fellow legislators indicate their support for [...]

2012: Republican Representative Spencer Bachus declines to support H.R. 336, a bill to cap credit card interest rates. 2011: Rep. Spencer Bachus votes to knock away the requirement that federal contracts pay Americans workers at least the prevailing wage for their work, supporting pay cuts for federal contract workers instead. 2011: Rep. Spencer Bachus votes [...]

On the morning of February 2, 2012 the Committee on House Administration of the 112th Congress held what it calls a Legislative Data and Transparency Conference. This is an all-day, in-person conference on Capitol Hill at which beltway lobbyists and nonprofits were undoubtedly in attendance, but one of the challenges of making congressional data truly [...]

In some quarters of Washington DC, people have grown fond of saying that all Americans care about is the economy. But take a look at the five congressional bills looked up most often by Americans during the week of January 22, 2012: H.R. 3261 Stop Online Piracy Act: Popularly known as SOPA, this bill would [...]

A common declaration in intellectual circles is that the American people don’t care about their freedoms as long as they get money or entertainment. But is that true? The top three bills searched for on Thomas, the online database of the U.S. Congress, each pertain to civil liberties. The National Defense Authorization Act takes up [...]

An organizer for the January 17 political action called Occupy Congress reports on a call from Rep. Susan Davis: Congresswoman Susan Davis’ office called. She wants to meet with us in DC on #J17. “I want to support OSD you while you’re here” “OSD” refers to Occupy San Diego, the California encampment in Davis’ district [...]