The United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the Federal Government of the United States. It provides the framework for the organization of the United States Government. The document defines the three main branches of the government: The legislative branch with a bicameral Congress, an executive branch led by the President, and a judicial branch headed by the Supreme Court. Besides providing for the organization of these branches, the Constitution outlines obligations of each office, as well as provides what powers each branch may exercise. It also reserves numerous rights for the individual states, thereby establishing the United States' federal system of government. It is the shortest and oldest written constitution of any major sovereign state.
Read Congressional Bills Yourself!
THOMAS
THOMAS is provided by the United States Library of Congress, free to the public. It is updated several times each day, and continues to grow in coverage.
GPO Access
GPO Access is a service of the U.S. Government Printing Office that provides free full-text electronic access to a wealth of important information products produced by the Federal Government. The information provided on this site is the official, published version and the information retrieved can be used without restriction, unless specifically noted. Search or browse information from the three branches of the Federal Government. Databases are updated based on their print equivalent and generally date back to 1994.
Open Congress
OpenCongress brings together official government data with news and blog coverage, social networking, public participation tools, and more to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress. OpenCongress allows anyone to easily track a bill, a Member of Congress, or an issue area, and to conveniently follow developments in any of those areas by subscribing to a variety of customized RSS feeds. By offering bills of relevant news and blog coverage for every bill and Member, we aim to close the information lag and bring people closer to the Congressional process. Every bill on OpenCongress is also organized by common Issue areas, as assigned by the government agency the Congressional Research Service, so you can find bills of interest just by browsing an issue area that matters to you. Along the way, OpenCongress lets you know which bills are the hottest: the most viewed, the most written about in the news, the most buzzed-about on blogs.
Read Specific Congressional Bills
(and cast your vote to Support or Oppose)
HR 1 - Final Stimulus Bill
$850 Billion, 1588 pages, and counting... somebody needs to read it!
HR 25 - Fair Tax Act of 2009
HR 1207 - Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009
HR 2454 - American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Cap & Trade)
S 604 - Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009 (Audit the Federal Reserve)
Health Care Bill
HR 3962 - Affordable Health Care for America Act
Propublica.com Stimulus Tracker
In spite of the Obama administration's promise that you can use Recovery.gov to follow every stimulus dollar to your local community, the site doesn't quite get there. Propublica.com has cleaned out the cobwebs and added thousands of records the feds didn't include - for example, recipients of small awards that aren'trequired to report to Recovery.gov. The result: The most comprehensive publiclyavailable database of stimulus spending that we know of. And - unlike Recovery.gov - you can search right down to your county.
Propublica.com Stimulus Tracker
Google Scholar
The United States is a common law country. That means when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar cases and jurisdictions. Over time, these legal opinions build, refine and clarify the laws that govern our land. For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find or even read these landmark opinions. We think that's a problem: Laws that you don't know about, you can't follow — or make effective arguments to change.
Google is enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the "Legal opinions and journals" radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of "separate but equal" facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.
Google Scholar
Apportionment
Apportionment.us
A lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi on 09.17.09, challenging the constitutionality of the current size of the United States House of Representatives. Apportionment.US, Inc. is the non-profit organization coordinating the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs.
Thirty-Thousand.org
The primary purpose of Thirty-Thousand.org is to conduct research on, and increase awareness of, the degradation of representative democracy in the United States resulting from Congress' longstanding practice of limiting the number of congressional districts despite the continuing growth in the nation's population.
09-12-09 March on Washington - 912dc.org
Governments at all levels have been spending way too much money. The federal government is especially guilty of this, as they pile up the debt, deficits and unfunded liabilities. They are taxing, borrowing or printing money with no end in sight. This madness has to stop, and that is why we are demanding that they stop the wasteful spending and stop burdening taxpayers with more debt. This protest is about defending our liberty, and about restoring our Constitution by reducing the size and scope of the federal government.
Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP Foundation) are committed to educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing those citizens as advocates in the public policy process. AFP is an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state and federal levels. The grassroots members of AFP advocate for public policies that champion the principles of entrepreneurship and fiscal and regulatory restraint. Americans for Tax Reform
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle. We believe in a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today. The government's power to control one's life derives from its power to tax. We believe that power should be minimized.
Campaign for Liberty
Our mission is to promote and defend the great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy, by means of educational and political activity.
Citizens Against Government Waste
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is a private, non-partisan, non-profit organization representing more than one million members and supporters nationwide. CAGW's mission is to eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the federal government. Founded in 1984 by the late industrialist J. Peter Grace and syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, CAGW is the legacy of the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, also known as the Grace Commission.
Click the CAGW Pig Book for a PDF Copy! >> |
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Contractor Misconduct Database
The government awards contracts to companies with histories of misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations. In the absence of a centralized federal database listing instances of misconduct, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is providing such data about the top 50 contractors.
DownsizeDC.org
We believe the federal government has grown too centralized, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, smaller government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes. We want to end laws and programs that don't work, cause harm, and violate the Constitution. We want to restore the full force of the 9th and 10th amendments, which reserve most social functions to the people and the states.
EarmarkWatch.org
A
project of the Sunlight Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense - is a user-friendly, online investigative tool that lets citizens determine if earmarks - the measures inserted by members of Congress into the various appropriations bills that direct funds to a specific project or recipient - address pressing needs, favor political contributors or are simply pure pork. The site guides users through a series of steps that an investigative reporter would follow, associating different kinds of political information with each earmark, and also guides them on how to use online resources on campaign finance, lobbying and federal spending for their research, including OpenSecrets.org and FedSpending.org. Users can also comment on and fact-check one another's work, or send messages - including tips and suggestions - to others.
Fedspending.org
A
project of OMB Watch - combines data from the Federal Procurement Data System and the Federal Assistance Award Data System to create a free, searchable database of federal government contracting and spending. The database allows users to search contracts and grants by state, congressional district, contracting agency or type of award, and shows where the money is being spent and whether it was competitively bid.
Follow the Money
The National Institute on Money in State Politics operates a searchable database of all campaign contributions to political campaigns at the state level. The database allows users to search for contributions to candidates for office at all levels of state government and for contributions spent on supporting and opposing ballot initiatives across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Institute has made available several APIs so programmers can access and display the Institute's data in their own applications. (The National Institute on Money in State Politics is a Sunlight grantee.)
FreedomWorks
Founded in 1984, FreedomWorks is headquartered in Washington, DC, and has hundreds of thousands of grassroots volunteers nationwide. The organization is chaired by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and the President is Matt Kibbe. FreedomWorks members know that government goes to those who show up, and are leading the fight for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom. Join us!
GOOOH
GOOOH stands for 'Get Out of Our House' and is pronounced like the word 'go'. It is a NON-PARTISAN plan to evict the 435 career politicians in the U.S. House of Representatives and replace them with everyday Americans just like you.
National Taxpayers Union
Since it was founded over 35 years ago, the National Taxpayers Union's Number One job has been helping to protect every single American's right to keep what they've earned. Our guiding principle has always been: "This is your money and the government should return it to you." We are a nonprofit, non-partisan citizen group whose members work every day for lower taxes and smaller government at all levels. MAPLight.org
MAPLight.org, a groundbreaking public database, illuminates the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways. Elected officials collect large sums of money to run their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors with special access and favorable laws. This common practice is contrary to the public interest, yet legal. MAPLight.org makes money/vote connections transparent, to help citizens hold their legislators accountable.
OMB Watch
OMB Watch exists to increase government transparency and accountability; to ensure sound, equitable regulatory and budgetary processes and policies; and to protect and promote active citizen participation in our democracy. OMB Watch envisions a more just and democratic society, one in which an open, responsive government protects people's health, safety, and well-being, safeguards the environment, honors the public's right to information, values an engaged and effective citizenry, and adequately invests in the common good.
OpenSecrets
Campaign contribution information on OpenCongress is provided by OpenSecrets, the website of the Center for Responsive Politics. The CRP is a non-partisan, non-profit research group based in Washington, D.C. that tracks money in politics, and its effect on elections and public policy.
Media Research Center
The mission of the Media Research Center, "America's Media Watchdog," is to bring balance to the news media. Leaders of America's conservative movement have long believed that within the national news media a strident liberal bias existed that influenced the public's understanding of critical issues. On October 1, 1987, a group of young determined conservatives set out to not only prove - through sound scientific research - that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values, but also to neutralize its impact on the American political scene. What they launched that fall is the now acclaimed - Media Research Center (MRC).
Propublic.org
Propublica.org Bailout Guide
Propublica Stimulus News
Propublica Recovery Tracker
ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with "moral force." We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.
Sunlight Foundation
The Sunlight Foundation is committed to helping citizens, bloggers and journalists be their own best watchdogs, by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and Web sites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency.
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