We are at CyberWar, our national politicians tell us, and in a CyberWar we must be ever CyberVigilant and on CyberGuard against our CyberEnemies. Usually, showing up is a prerequisite for vigilance. Earlier today, the full House Armed Services Committee was called together for a hearing entitled “U.S. Cyber Command: Organizing for Cyberspace Operations.” There [...]

When the Senate Homeland Security Committee held its hearing yesterday on “Making Government More Transparent And Accountable,” it managed the transparency part of the task rather well. Of all members of the committee, only Senator Thomas Carper was visible for any part of the hearing. Our government can really produce amazing feats. What do you [...]

The following are the Top 10 Absentee members of Congress in the U.S. House of Representatives during the course of 2009. These are the members of Congress who were most often missing from roll call votes: 1. RepublicanJ. Gresham Barrett of South Carolina – absent for 346 of the 991 roll-call votes in the House [...]

Is it boon or bane that Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was absent for 110 roll call votes in the House of Representatives during the year of 2009?

The next time you hear a U.S. Senator declare how vitally important offshore oil drilling is for the nation, you’ll have to ask yourself how she or he managed to come to that conclusion. On Thursday, November 19 2009, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee convened a hearing on the environmental impact of offshore [...]

A peek into what a Senate committee hearing looks like comes to us today as the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security meets to hear testimony on “cybersecurity.” Here’s what the hearing room looks like. As you can see, the room is just packed… on the side of the room not containing U.S. [...]

Republicans didn’t have the votes to make that 60 votes impossible. They only had 40 votes. With a bit of pushing, the Republicans might have had less than that. However, the Republicans weren’t pushed – and among the reasons they weren’t is that Barack Obama didn’t bother to show up to support the Senate Democrats on the vote to stop the filibuster.

Pete Visclosky, a Democrat who represents the first congressional district of Indiana, was not able to make it to Capitol Hill for the vote on H.R. 6304. He has, however, registered an official statement in the congressional record that if he had been able to be present for the vote, he would have voted against the bill.