http://www.govtrack.us/blog The GovTrack blog includes site news and occasional analysis of U.S. legislation. Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:08:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today's question comes from Erika M: I see yea, nay, no, aye as the way congressmen voted.  What does aye mean? Ah parliamentary procedure. There's no meaningful difference between Yea and Aye, and Nay and No. They both mean "I vote in favor" or "I vote against". The difference is just a ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/11/18/aye-versus-yea-whats-the-difference/ Visitor WB asks: I understand there are different Bills passed by congress regularly. Some with "H.R.", "S", H. Res" and other variations. My questions is this: What are the types of Bills and what does each designations stand for? Where is each Bill valid? Who is subject to that ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/11/11/what-are-the-different-types-of-bills/ Donny Shaw over at OpenCongress says that House Republicans are explaining their views on the health care bill by linking people directly to the paragraphs in the bills they find important. I think that's great. They may be using OpenCongress, but we invented that feature over here on GovTrack --- ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/11/03/house-republicans-use-govtrack-to-read-the-bill/ I'm a wonk, you're a wonk. We like reading legislation and we're proud of it. Strut your stuff with GovTrack's new merchandise. About a month ago I started a t-shirt design contest. With a $100 prize at stake, about a dozen people submitted ideas --- three submitted shirt-ready images. Congrats to ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/10/15/govtrack-merchandise/ Conquest of the Planet of the Apes movie download Sara from Kentucky asks: I don't know if I am hearing accurate information. Some of us want bill numbers listed in newspapers so we can look them up. "America's Healthy Future Act"  has no number and Baucus's office says that it ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/10/14/when-do-bills-get-a-number/ Hey, we need some cool GovTrack apparel, right? Design a GovTrack t-shirt or send me a funny expression related to GovTrack to put on a t-shirt, and if I get some good responses I'll pick a winner and send back a $100 gift certificate to somewhere. Email your submissions to ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/09/19/design-a-govtrack-t-shirt-win-100/ Here's what's been happening with the site this summer: We've upgraded our hardware to top-of-the-line equipment so that we can keep up with the increasing number of visitors coming to GovTrack. I've hired a moderator (my first staff member!) to process the submissions to the Community Q&A section of the site. A ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/08/22/summer-site-updates/ GovTrack is going to be upgrading its hardware very soon now. We'll probably be down for about a day while we get the new hardware set up. Thanks for your patience.You may have noticed that last month especially as the health care reform bill was being debated, GovTrack had a ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/08/11/downtime-coming-up/ Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Full Business Meeting Tuesday 7/21/09, 10:00am, Russell 253 Summary This markup session was convened primarily to deal with transit funding reauthorization measures, and a number of other matters were dispensed with in the meantime. Almost all of the details at hand were worked out beforehand and behind ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/07/30/markup-review-senate-committee-on-commerce-science-and-transportation-july-21st/ GovTrack has taken the plunge to Twitter. I'll be tweeting from time to time as @govtrack. Also, I've put up recommended hashtags  on the pages for bills so we can more easily track the chatter on legislation happening in the twitterverse. (It's in the blue box on the right side.) You ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2009/06/29/our-first-tweet-and-a-preview-of-our-latest-experiment/