Whenever a Democratic member of Congress is running for election, the most common line of attack by Republicans is to label that Representative or Senator as a “hardcore liberal,” or “one of the most liberal members of Congress.” In 2004, Senator John Kerry was unsurprisingly labeled as the “most liberal Senator” by the RNC, and [...]

The activist website Get FISA Right, after working with the ACLU and EFF this month on an unsuccessful campaign to pressure the Senate Judiciary Committee into making significant surveillance reforms, has begun asking whether Congress is the appropriate target of pressure on legislative reforms. Although it may seem like a no-brainer to call Congress when [...]

Dorgan is from North Dakota. Bingaman is from New Mexico. They don’t have anything to fear from an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s easy for them, in their landlocked states, to say that coastal states shouldn’t worry about oil slicks resulting from drilling accidents or hurricanes surging up from the Caribbean Sea.

Even after a reduction in spending to one seventh of its current level, the U.S. military budget would be about 100 billion dollars. We would still be spending nearly twice the amount as the next biggest military budget on Earth – China’s.

I’d like to post a request for your feedback, citizen: How long is too long for a member of Congress to respond to a written request for information by a constituent? Does it matter if the request is for a stated position on a bill versus a request for other information? Does it matter if [...]

On January 7, 2009, Republican Representative Jo Ann Emerson introduced what she must have thought was a killer bill. House Joint Resolution 8 is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would “prohibit the act of desecration of the flag of the United States.” If passed, H.J. Res 8 would be the first [...]

With all the problems facing the United States of America in 2009, what has Rep. Vic Snyder of Arkansas been up to? He has introduced just one piece of legislation to the 111th Congress: a bill to commemorate the sinking of a boat on the Mississippi River back in 1865. That’s it in terms of [...]

If you were elected to Congress and you were told you had the opportunity to introduce one bill — just one bill — what bill would you introduce? What change would you try to bring about to improve America? Would you promote legislation to reform the health care system? Would you change the system of [...]

If volume were an indicator of success, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-2) would be a knockout. Jackson has introduced no fewer than nine amendments to the Constitution of the United States this year. Let’s take a peek at these, the Jackson Nine: Jackson Amendment 1: H.J. Res. 28, providing a universal right to vote for [...]

Way back in the early 1970s, Ron Breiger came up with a formal articulation of Georg Simmel’s ideas regarding the intersection of “social circles” (a good discussion of which you may read here). Breiger recognized that if one has membership lists for a variety of organizations, then one can infer patterns of social connection in [...]