POLITICS ON THE NET

(Note: This summary of Web sites and information available is excerpted from America At Odds: An Introduction to American Government by Edward Sidlow and Beth Henschen, published by West/Wadsworth, 1998.

 

INTRODUCTION

The Pew Research Center for the American People and the Press offers survey data online on a number of topics relating to American politics and government.

http://www.people-press.org

 

Yale University Library, one of the great research institutions, has a Social Science Library and Information Services.

http://www.library.yale.edu/socsci/

 

News about international events at the Institute for International Economics.

http://www.iie.com/

 

The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) provides a database of national laws from countries around the world.

http://lcweb.2.loc.gov/glin/

 

For worldwide news.

http://www.worldwidenews.com/

 

another site offering access to worldwide news is E&P Directory on Online Newspapers.

http://www.mediainfo.com/ephome/npapernphtm/online.htm

 

The Washburn University Law School and Virtual Law Reference Desk offers extensive information on international affairs, including United Nations materials.

http://law.wuacc.edu/washlaw/

 

 

THE CONSTITUTION

 

The World Wide Web version of the Constitution provides hypertext links to amendments and other changes.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html

 

The home page of Emory University School of Law offers access to a number of early American documents, including scanned originals of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

http://www.law.emory.edu/FEDERAL/

 

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia has a 'Net page at

http://www.libertynet.orgn/~ncc/

 

For information on the effect of new computer and communications technologies on the constitutional rights and liberties of Americans, go to the Center for Democracy and Technology at

http://www.cdt.org/

 

The constitutions of almost all of the states.

http://www.findlaw.com/11stategov

 

Constitutions of various other countries.

http://www.eur.nl/iacl/const.html

 

 

FEDERALISM

 

If you want to read The Federalist Papers,

http://www.mcs.net/~knautzr/fed/fedpaper.html

 

The Electronic Policy Network offers "timely information and leading ideas about federal policy and politics."

http://epn.org/

 

A summary of some milestones in the growth of national power in the United States at

http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu./

~heywood/literary/Federalism.In.The.US.html

 

The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) aims to "strengthen the American federal system and improve the ability of federal, state, and local government to work together cooperatively, efficiently, and effectively."

http://www.access.gpo.gov.acir/

 

The Brookings Institution, the nation's oldest think tank, is a good source for information on emerging policy challenges.

http://www.brook.edu/

 

A more libertarian perspective on issues such as federalism, the Cato Institute has a Web page at

http://www.cato.org/

 

 

CIVIL RIGHTS

 

The Free Expression Clearinghouse is a Web site designed to feature legislation updates, legal briefings, and news on cases of censorship in local communities.

http://www.FREEExpression.org/

 

The leading civil liberties organization, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),

http://www.aclu.org/

 

Here are some of the current choices given on the ACLU's home page: Church and States; Criminal Justice; Cyber-Liberties; Death Penalty; Free Speech; Lesbian and Gay Rights; Reproductive Rights; and Students' Rights.

 

The Liberty Counsel is a nonprofit religious civil liberties education and legal defense organization established to preserve religious freedom.

http://www.lc.org/

 

All of the decisions of the United States Supreme Court relating to constitutional issues by using a site developed by Cornell University Law School at

http://www.law.cornell.edu/syllabi?constitutional+unconstitutional

 

Summaries and the full text of constitutional law decisions by the United States Supreme Court are included at the following site:

http://oyez.nwu.edu/oyez.html

 

 

CIVIL RIGHTS

 

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); contains extensive information about African American civil rights issues:

http://www.naacp.org/

 

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC):

http://www.mundo.com/lulac.html

 

LULAC's site offers a history of this national Hispanic organization and other information on Hispanics in the United States. Latino Link is another good source:

http://www.latinolink.com/

 

The Feminist Majority Foundation has a Web site called Women's web World. It offers information on empowerment and equality for women:

http://www.feminist.org/

 

Military Woman Home Page offers a wide-ranging discussion of women in the military:

http://www.generation.net/~century/mil_woman/homepage.htm

 

For perspectives on court cases dealing with sexual harassment, go to

http://www.vix.com/pub/men/harass/harass.html

 

The most successful advocacy group for older Americans is the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP):

http://www.aarp.org/

 

The home page of the National Organization for Women (NOW):

http://www.now.org/

 

Articles dealing with harassment, age discrimination, and other forms of employment discrimination, you can access an online newsletter called Arent Fox Employment News:

http://www.arentfox.com/newslett/employ/

 

For information on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990,

http://janweb.icdi.wvu.edu/kinder

 

Another site that has links to the ADA and resources on disability-related employment issues is sponsored by Iowa State University:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~sbililng/ada.html

 

The Lesbian and Gay Alliance against Defamation has an online News Bureau:

http://www.glaad.org/

 

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POLITICAL PARTIES

 

The Pew Research Center for the American People and the Press offers survey data online on numerous issues:

http://www.people-press.org/

 

For insights into a liberal approach to political and economic issues, you can explore the Democratic party's site:

http://www.democrats.org/

 

Similarly, you can explore predominantly conservative views on a number of issues by accessing the Republican National Committee's Web offerings:

http://www.rnc.org/

 

To learn more about socialist views, you can access the Socialist party's Web site:

http://socialist.org/home.html

 

For a libertarian view of politics, you can visit the site of the Libertarian party:

http://socialist.orgn/home.html

 

For a listing of political sites available on the Internet, sorted by country:

http://www.agora.stm.it/politic/home.htm

 

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INTEREST GROUPS

 

The Public Interest Research Group offers a host of lobbying and public-interest activities:

http://www.igc.apc.org/pirg/

 

You can access the home page of the NRA at

http://www.nra.org/

 

You can find links to numerous interest groups at the following site:

http://www.yahoo.com/government/politics/interest groups/

 

The home page for the AARP can be found at

http://www.aarp.org/

 

If you are interested in the NEA, its home page can be found at

http://www.nea.org/

 

IPL Association offers links to at least six hundred professional and trade associations in the United States:

http://www.ipl.org/ref/AON

 

Generally, you can find lists of interest groups operating at the local, state, and federal levels by simply going to a search engine, such as Yahoo, and keying in

 

interest groups

CIVIL RIGHTS

 

The Martin Luther King Directory:

http://www-leland.stanford.edu/group/King/

 

If you are interested in learning more about the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the laws it enforces, how to file a charge with EEOC, see:

http://www.eeoc.gov/

 

POLITICAL PARTIES

 

For a list of political sites available on the Internet, sorted by country:

http://www.agora.stm.it/politic/home.htm

 

The Democratic party:

http://www.democrats.org/

 

The Republic National Committee:

http:www/rnc.org/

 

The Libertarian party:

http://www.lp.org/lp/lp.html

 

The Socialist party:

http://socialist.org/home.html

 

The Pew Research Center for the American People and the Press offers survey data online on how the parties fared during the 1996 elections, voter typology, and numerous other issues:

http://www.people-press.org/

 

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PUBLIC OPINION

 

The Pew Research Center for the American People and the Press has conducted public opinion polls on a number of topics:

http://www.people-press.org/

 

Recent polls conducted and analyzed by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research:

http://www.lib.uconn.edu/RoperCenter

 

"Resources for Public Opinion Research at Yale:"

http://www.library.yale.edu/socsci/printfor.html

 

National Election Studies (NES):

http://www.umich.edu/~nes/

 

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ELECTIONS

 

You can find out exactly what the letter of the law is with respect to campaign financing by accessing the Federal Election Commission:

http://www.fec.gov/

 

If you want to look at the data available from the Federal Election Commission in a more user-friendly way, you can access the following nonpartisan independent site. there is also a detailed section on soft-money contributions:

http://www.tray.com/FECInfo/

 

The Document Center of the University of Michigan offers a comprehensive collection of government documents, related news stories, and links to other sites:

http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/docnews.html

 

Another site that offers information on campaign financing, as well as voting:

http://www.vote-smart.org/congress/index.html

 

Data on election results can be obtained from the Congressional Quarterly's Web site:

http://voter96.cqalert.com/

 

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POLITICS AND THE MEDIA

 

Total News Now offers a directory of more than a thousand news sources, including Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and USA Today:

http://totalnews.com/

 

Another site for news sources is the Ultimate Collection of News Links:

http://pppp.net/links/news/NA.html

 

If you are interested in news stories covered by ABC, CBS, and NBC television since 1968, you can find abstracts of these stories at Vanderbilt University's Television News Archive:

http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/

 

To find out what newspapers are online and whether your own local paper may be on the Web, you can access Newspapers Online at

http://www.newspapers.com/

 

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DOMESTIC POLICY

 

A wealth of data on everything that has to do with crime, the Source Book of Criminal Justice Statistics:

http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/

 

The federal budget shows where federal funds go throughout the year. This site is slightly shorter than the actual budget and a lot easier to navigate:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/OMB/html/gud96gui.html

 

This site offers "A Citizen's Guide to the Federal Budget." If you can't get into this site, you can try going through the Welcome to the white House home page using the Virtual Library:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/

 

The site of the national debt:

http://www.census.gov/stat_abstract/brief.html

 

This site will give you "USA Statistics in Brief." If you can't get to it in this way, start with the U.S. Census Bureau's home page at

http://www.census.gov/

 

Click on "Subjects A to Z." Then click on "S" in the alphabetic line-up and then on "Statistical Abstract."

 

The main function of the Federal Reserve is to stabilize the economy:

 

http://www.frbsf.org/system/econinfo/inbrief/guides.html

 

The World Bank estimates that more than a billion people int he world are living in poverty:

http://www.pacificrim.net/~wgi/resource/gr_sa/poverty.html

 

The information you will be looking for is called "Economic Concerns-The World Game Institute."

 

For information on the 1997 budget of the U.S. government, you can access the following site:

http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/search/budget97.html

 

Information on a variety of topics, including veterans' pensions, Medicare and Medicaid, disaster relief, and government departments (such as the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services) can be obtained at

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Welcome.html

 

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THE NEWS MEDIA

 

The Boston Globe-

http://www.boston.com/globe/

 

The Chicago Tribune-

http://www.chicago.tribune.com/

 

The Los Angeles Times-

http://www.latimes.com/

 

The New York Times-

http://www.nytimes.com/

 

USA Today-

http://www.usatoday.com/

 

The Wall Street Journal-

http://www.wsj.com/

 

The Washington Post-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

 

A number of national news magazines are also on the Web:

http://www.pathfinder.com/

 

To find TV and radio (and other types of) news sources:

http://www.yahoo.com/News/

 

You can also go directly to one of the following sites:

 

MSNBC- http://www.msnbc.com/

 

CNN- http://www.cnn.com/

 

ABC- http://abcnews.com/

 

Fox News- http://foxnews.com/

 

The Welcome to the C-SPAN Networks site:

http://www.c-span.org/

 

An excellent source for breaking news is CNN/Time's AllPolitics:

http://allpolitics.com/1997/index.html

 

 

TECHNOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY

 

If you want to take advantage of push technology and "personalize" your news,

http://www.my.yahoo.com/

 

You can also obtain news tailored to your personal interests by using the PointCast Network:

http://www.pointcast.com/

 

After downloading and installing the free software provided by PointCast, your computer will connect to the 'Net, at any interval you choose, and download the most recent news about topics that interest you.

 

The Claremont Institute is an interactive community on the Internet that aims to bring Internet users together with public-policy organizations under "the broad umbrella of 'conservative' thoughts, ideas, and actions:"

http://www.townhall.com

 

In the United States, the AFL-CIO's Web page can be accessed through

http://www.aflcio.org/

 

Or, you can go directly to

http:/www.paywatch.org/

 

For information on labor issues in the United Kingdom, go to

http:www.Labornet.org.uk

 

 

CONGRESS

 

There is an abundance of online information relating to Congress and congressional activities. The THOMAS site (named for Thomas Jefferson), maintained by the Library of Congress, provides a record of all bills introduced into Congress, information about each member of Congress and how they voted on specific bills, and other information.

http://thomas.loc.gov/

 

GPO Access on the web offers information on Congress in session, bills pending and passed, and a history of the bills at

http://thorplus.lib.purdue.edu:80/gpo/

 

To learn more about how a bill becomes a law, go to

http://www.vote-smart.org/reference/primer/billaw.html

 

You can find E-mail addresses and home pages for members of the House of Representatives at

http://www.house.gov/

 

For E-mail addresses and home pages for members of the Senate, go to

http://www.senate.gov/

 

The Congressional Quarterly (CQ) is an excellent source for background stories on legislation, analysis of major issues, voting records, and election results. You can access the CQ's page at

http://voter96.cqalert.com

 

For information on the leadership of the 105th Congress, go to

http://www.vote-smart.org/reference/primer/clead.html

 

A number of Congress-related Web sites are sponsored by the Republican party.

 

House Republicans- http://gop.house.gov/

 

Hillsource, House Republican Conference- http://hillsource.house.gov/

 

Senate Republican Conference-http://www.senate.gov/~src/

 

The following Congress-related Web sites offered by the Democrats provide information on the minority leadership and give the Democratic position on major issues before Congress:

U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Leadership-

http://www.house.gov/democrats/welcome.html

 

Democratic Caucus Public Home Page-

http://www.dcaucusweb.house.gov/

 

U.S. Senate Democratic Leadership-

http://www.senate.gov/comm/Dem-Policy/general/index.html

 

For a nonpartisan view of congressional activities, you can go to C-SPAN's home page at

http://www.c-span.org/

 

At this site, you can find congressional Q&A (questions and answers), a congressional glossary, and summaries of major legislation.

 

Finally, if you want a change of pace, you might check out the following:

http://www.senate.gov/~wyden/beau/beau.htm

 

This is the Web Page for Beau, the guide dog for a visually-impaired aide to Senator Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and the first dog to appear on the Senate floor (after the full chamber voted to override its "no dogs allowed" rule).

 

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THE PRESIDENCY

 

The White House home page offers links to numerous sources of information on the presidency:

http://www.whitehouse.gov

 

The Library of Congress's White House page is another useful site that offers links to information related to the presidency:

http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/executive/fed.html

 

If you interested in reading the inaugural addresses of American presidents from Washington to Clinton,

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/inaugural/index.html

 

In addition to the full text of the inaugural addresses, this site provides biographical information on the presidents and a picture of each president.

The University of Maryland provides an annotated bibliography of the most useful general Internet sources of information on the U.S. presidency and the executive branch:

http://www.ltd.umd.edu/UMS/UMCP/MCK/GUIDES/presidency/

 

If you would like to research documents and academic resources concerning the presidency, a good Internet site to consult is that provided by Texas A&M University at:

http:/www.tamu.edu/whitehouse/

 

If you are interested in learning more about U.S. intelligence activities,

http://www.spystuff.com/listsites.html

 

The following White House site is sometimes called the "mother" of all government Web sites because of the extensive information it offers:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Welcome.html

 

At this site, you can obtain information on various government departments and agencies, evolving trends, news, changing laws and regulations, and a number of other topics, including Social Security benefits, Medicare, and Medicaid. You can also take a virtual tour of the White House, listen to speeches, learn the latest news from the White House, or go to the FAQs option to find out about White House services.

 

 

Another site containing information from the White House is:

http://www.epower.net/winthrop/whitehouse.html

 

For information on the 1997 budget of the U.S. government,

http//:www.gpo.ucop.edu/search/budget97.html

 

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THE BUREAUCRACY

 

The goal of the National Performance Review (NPR) is to "reinvent" the federal government-that is, transform it into a government that "works better and costs less:"

http://www.npr.gov/

 

To learn more about the mission of the General Services Administration (GSA) and its role in managing the federal bureaucracy, go to

http://www.gsa.gov/

 

Federal World is a government site that contains links to numerous federal agencies and government information:

http://www.fedworld.gov/

 

Another source for information on federal agencies is the Federal Web Locator, which allows you to search for agency names and find links to information about the bureaucracy:

http://www.law.vill.edu/Fed-Agency/fedwebloc.html

 

The Federal Register, which is the official publication for executive branch documents, including the orders, notices, and rules of all federal administrative agencies, is online at

http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/search/fedfld.html

 

The United States Government Manual contains information on the functions, organization, and administrators of every federal department.

http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/catalog/govman/html

 

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THE JUDICIARY

 

An excellent Web site for information on the justices of the United States Supreme Court is:

http://oyez.nwu.edu/oyez.html

 

This site offers biographies of the justices, links to opinions they have written, and, for justices who have served after 1920, video and audio materials. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court are also posted on this site. A planned addition to the site is a video tour of the Court.

 

Another helpful Web site is:

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct

 

This is the index of the United States Supreme Court. It has recent Court decisions by year and name of party, and it also has selected historic decisions rendered by the Court.

FindLaw offers a free searchable database of Supreme Court decisions since 1907 at

http://www.findlaw.com

 

To date, the decisions of only one U.S. district court-the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi-are published on the Web:

http://sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu/~llibcoll/ndms

 

Increasingly, decisions of the state courts are also becoming available online. You can search through the texts of state cases by accessing WashLaw at

http://lawlib.wuacc.edu/washlaw/searchlaw.html

 

To learn more about the federal court system, go to

http://www.uscourts.gov/

 

This is the home page for the federal courts. Among other things, you can follow the "path" a case takes as it moves through the federal court system.

 

 

POLITICS OF REGULATION

 

In 1978, the Airline Deregulation Act was signed by President Carter:

http://www.air-transport.org/

 

Under "General Info" select "The Airline Handbook." Choose Deregulation.

 

The Internet Law Library, sponsored by the U.S. House of Representatives, offers links to federal and state legislative and regulatory materials, including the Code of Federal Regulations. Go to

http://www.house.gov/

 

You can find information on federal and state administrative law:

http://law.fsu.edu/library/adminpro.html

 

If you are interested in learning more about the procedures that federal agencies follow in their rulemaking and other activities:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/5/ch5.html

 

The Federal Web Locator allows you to search for the names of federal administrative agencies:

http://www.law.vill.edu/Fed-Agency/fedwebloc.html

 

For information on state administrative agencies and regulations:

http://www.law.fill.edu/State-Agency/statewebloc.html

 

The Web site of the U.S. Government Printing Office, called GPO Access, offers free online access to all of its databases, including the Federal Register:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/

 

For information on the functions, organization, and administrators of federal departments and agencies:

http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/catalog/govman.html

 

For news stories on environment-related topics from sources around the world, updated daily:

http://www.planetark.org/new/worldnews.html

 

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FOREIGN POLICY

 

You can find news about international events at an interesting Web site sponsored by the Institute for International Economics:

http://www.iie.com

 

To learn more about national security policy, you can go to the U.S. Department of Defense "Fact File" at:

http://www.dtic.dla.mil/defenselink/factfile/chapter 1

 

For information on the U.S. Department of State and its activities, go to:

http://www.state.gov/index.html

 

If you are interested in U.S. intelligence and terrorism, go to:

http://www.spystuff.com/listsites.html

 

The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) provides a database of national laws from countries around the world:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/glin/

 

If you are interested in reading Russian newspapers:

http://www.hooked.net/users/igort/news.html

 

The World Bank's home page offers a wealth of information on international development:

http://www.worldwidenews.com/

 

Another site offering access to worldwide news:

http://www.mediainfo.com/ephome/npaper/nphtm/online.htm

 

The Washburn University Law School and Virtual Law Reference Desk offers, among other things, extensive information on international affairs:

http://law.wuacc.edu/washlaw.html

 

Now that the Cold War is over, the Central Intelligence Agency has been declassifying a number of documents. Among them is a formerly classified report entitled "The CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs:"

www.odci.gov/csi/studies/97unclass/ufo.html

 

 

STATE AND LOCAL POLITICS

 

An excellent site, which gives you links to information about most of the fifty states, is

http://www.yahoo.com/Government/U_S_States/

 

Another site that gives you information on state and local government:

http://www.piperinfo.com/

 

If you want to find the E-mail address or home page for your state's representative(s) in Congress:

http://www.house.gov/

 

For E-mail addresses and home pages for your state's senators int he U.S. Senate:

http://www.senate.gov/

 

To find newspapers that may be online in your state or local area:

http://www.newspapers.com/

 

A good site for obtaining information on interest groups active in your state or local area is

http://www.yahoo.com/government/politics/




 

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