The 'who' is Thomas Jefferson, although this is not about Thomas the person, but about the research tool that bears the name of our third President.
Most of us get the majority of our news from television, internet news sites, newspapers or a combination. I depend on all three to get the latest headlines and commentary. The problem, though, is that unless you can cut through the spin, your facts are colored by others' opinion, and there's a whole lot left out.
If, for example, you want information on what members of Congress are doing to support veterans and you're looking for it on the TV, you're not likely to get a very good picture of who is doing what. You could use 'the Google', but there's a whole lot to wade through.
That's where Thomas comes in.
THOMAS was launched in January of 1995, at the inception of the 104th Congress. The leadership of the 104th Congress directed the Library of Congress to make federal legislative information freely available to the public.
So, for regular folks who just want to know who supports what in Congress, it's pretty easy to just search on a member's name and a key word and get what you're looking for. For example, I can search on 'McCain' and 'veterans', and find legislation containing both the Senator's name and the word 'veterans' and look at the details of the 8 pieces of legislation that my search returns. Or I can enter 'Kerry' and 'veterans' and search through the 46 entries, or 'Obama' and 'veterans' and peruse 49.
Fascinating, isn't it?
Of course, the numbers don't tell the whole story. You actually need to read the legislation, or at least the summary, to see what it is and who co-sponsored. Still, it's an interesting exercise that you can use with whatever topic you're interested in. 'Jobs', for example, returns McCain, 2, Obama, 27 and Kerry a whopping 34. Again, not scientific, but telling nonetheless.
You can also search a member's name and look at all the legislation an individual has sponsored. You should probably set aside a lot more time to look through Obama's 123 or Kerry's 174 than McCain's 38, but since you won't see most of this stuff on TV, it's worth a look just to see what your Congressfolk are sponsoring.
The Library of Congress is an incredible source of information. There are others, like Project Vote Smart, that report candidates positions on issues, and are tremendous resources as well. For example, on the Project Vote Smart site, you can compare Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama's interest group ratings on a variety of topics. Like veterans' issues.
Senator McCain supported the interests of the Disabled American Veterans 20 percent in 2006.
In 2006 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave Senator McCain a grade of D.
Senator Obama supported the interests of the Disabled American Veterans 80 percent in 2006.
In 2006 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave Senator Obama a grade of B+.
You would think CNN would have told us that with all the talk of who has a strong record of supporting the troops. But they don't, and I'm not sure why, exactly, since you'd think people would be interested in knowing this stuff.
It does take a bit of work to find out who really votes in the interest of the majority of Americans, but it's worth the effort. Still, after a few hours of reading legislation, it's good to be able to get a summary from another trusted source.
