http://www.govtrack.us/blog A community analysis of U.S. legislation, hosted at GovTrack.us. Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:57:38 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last week I added a new feature to GovTrack called Community Q&A. It was inspired by a question I received by mail (the subject of my last blog post). If one person that has a question actually took the time to email, then there must be hundreds of other questions ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/07/06/questions-and-answers-your-questions-your-answers/ A visitor to this site asked me: Q: How can I find out what a particular representative voted upon and then went back to change his/her vote? I understand that this is done very often so that the hometown folks think that he/she voted one way, but that they go back ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/07/06/can-representatives-change-their-vote/ This post comes from Martha Sherwood, 2nd time GovTrack blog submitter and a legal researcher in a consumer law office. Martha works for a lawyer who blogs at Bankruptcy Law Network. Martha holds a doctorate in biology. There are currently four bills pending in Congress to address the credit crunch in ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/04/29/student-loan-bailout-bills-rife-with-fiscal-pitfalls/ Today's post is from Joshua Freedman, a full time mortgage broker. He owns and operates Freedman Capital Group LLC in Pittsburgh, PA and specializes in commercial and residential loans. (By the way, I edit the posts a little bit...) Over and over politicians have told us that they ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/03/13/mitigating-the-foreclosure-crisis-with-eased-broker-restrictions-on-loans/ Today's post comes from Edwin. The United States Congress, like the State of South Carolina, has bills pending that address the problem of a paperless electronic voting system. We blogged about the dangers of the lack of a paper trail associated with the electronic voting system used in South Carolina, Trust ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/03/10/the-eletronic-voting-paper-trail-debate/ This post comes from Martha Sherwood, a legal researcher in a consumer law office. Martha works for a lawyer who blogs at Bankruptcy Law Network. Martha holds a doctorate in biology. Student loan debt is a huge and growing problem for American families. As Congress rushes to patch the holes in ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/03/06/student-loan-bills-a-problem-obscured-by-the-mortgage-mess/ The following submission by Mary Lou Diehl was originally posted on the website Fair Elections Wisconsin. Thanks for the submission, Mary! H. R. 5036: The Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008 This bill was introduced into Congress on January 17, 2008, by Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey. HR ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/03/05/returning-to-hava-holt-introduces-emergency-assistance-for-secure-elections-act/ - @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { color: #0000ff } --> H.R. 3793: Veterans Guaranteed Bonus Act of 2007 was introduced in the House on Oct 10, 2007, sponsored by Rep. Jason Altmire [D-PA]. S. 2400: Wounded Warrior Bonus Equity Act was ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/01/16/two-veterans-affairs-bills/ This post was written by Coby Logen (a pseudonym), who blogs on government website matters at .govWatch and has worked to improve government websites for the past five years. He has a Master's degree in usability. We all know that government documents can be hard to understand. Tax forms ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2008/01/12/the-plain-language-bill-is-a-no-brainer/ Congress is on break until mid January, so we'll be going into a bit of hibernation here at GovTrack. Check back when Congress resumes mid January for the new GovTrack Community Blog, legislative analysis written by and for the users of this site. Also, a quick plug for "Computing in the ... http://www.govtrack.us/blog/2007/12/21/see-you-on-the-flip-side-of-winter-recess/