Tools
Bloglines is a FREE online service that helps you subscribe to and manage lots of web information, such as news feeds, blogs, activity at the capitol, and even audio or podcasts using RSS. Bloglines tracks the information you’re interested in, retrieves new stuff as it happens, and organizes everything for you on your own personal web news page.
RSS
RSS is an XML-based technology designed to summarize and index publications posted on the Web into a customized format that includes a title, a concise description of an article, and a URL link. With RSS, users can subscribe to specific news feeds to monitor lists of publications as they are updated. Users may then skim titles and descriptions of articles and choose to ignore the information, read a summary, or view the original source document via the URL link.
The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.” Use this site to find what others out there are writing about, or use bloglines to track a term on the web and see what people write about.
THOMAS is the legislation information gateway for the Library of Congress. If you are looking for information on legislation currently in either the senate or the house, this is the place to go. Search by keyword (e.g. horse slaughter), author, or specific bill (e.g. S.1915 or H.R.503). Cross-referencing features lets you see related bills, and, once the bill has been brought to a vote, you can see just how your representative or senator voted. Invaluable tool for holding our elected officials accountable for their actions.
The Texas Legislature Online serves much the same purpose as the Library of Congress’ THOMAS search, only on the smaller, but local scale of our home state of Texas. Navigating the structure of the Texas legislature will be your main challenge here. With special sessions happening at random times, and regular sessions only occurring every other year, figuring out exactly what is going on in our legislature might take a little extra effort, but will be worth the time when you want to know what’s happening with our state laws.
For the information-hungry, Texas Legislature Online hosts various RSS feeds to keep civic-minded Texans up-to-date on the latest bills, House and Senate calendars, committees, and bill analysis on a moment’s notice.
The Center for Responsive Politics 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. The Center conducts computer-based research on campaign finance issues for the news media, academics, activists, and the public at large. The Center’s work is aimed at creating a more educated voter, an involved citizenry, and a more responsive government.
Support for the Center comes from a combination of foundation grants and individual contributions. The Center accepts no contributions from businesses or labor unions. You can support the work of the Center directly by contributing through opensecrets.org.
