“Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of the day.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” – John Adams
If you don’t have time to watch C-SPAN all day, I have some simpler suggestions for how you can keep up with what’s going on in Washington in just a few minutes a day.
Thomas.gov is the place to go for the Library of Congress. The site actually states “In the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, legislative information from the Library of Congress.” Let’s hope so!
Click here to get a list of what’s currently happening. On the right side of the page you’ll get “On the House floor now” and “On the Senate floor now.” It’s real time information, and you can even subscribe in a reader.
If you want to know how your representatives voted on a past issue, click here to see Roll Call Votes.
Not sure who your representatives are? Everyone has 2 Senators and 1 Representative. Click here to enter your zip code and get their names and contact info.
WhiteHouse.gov is the inside scoop to what’s going on at the Executive Branch. To me, it reads more like an ongoing campaign speech, but you can get up-to-date press releases and issues information. You can click on The Briefing Room for Featured Legislation and Issues.
Citizen Link is a site hosted by Focus on the Family that deals with current issues relevant to American families. They stay on top of legislation and court cases that affect families and religion. You can also subscribe to their updates in a reader.
If you do have access to CSPAN, it’s pretty awesome. It’s literally a camera inside Congress. You can watch House and Senate proceedings as they happen. You can even go here to see a daily schedule in case you want to watch (or record) specific proceedings.
There aren’t many countries in the world that have this much access to their governments. We should take full advantage of this before we lose the privilege. And not knowing what’s going on could result in that loss.
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