Congress terminates access to CRS reports!
(In an effort to not blog what others are blogging...)
Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports are something that I've found very useful. They are commisioned by congress to provide analysis and background on certain issues and subsequently enter the public domain upon publication. For an unexplained reason, Congress removed them from the web recently, following a Bush administration tradition of depriving the public from valuable information. Here's how (one of my heros) Steven Aftergood (of the FAS) reports it in his Secrecy news bulletin:
_ACCESS TO CRS REPORTS AT ISSUE
Two weeks ago, Congress abruptly terminated the limited public access that had existed for several years to the official database of reports prepared by the Congressional Research Service (Secrecy News, 10/28/03).
Now, with his trademark resourcefulness and ingenuity, Russ Kick of TheMemoryHole.org has given back much of what Congress had taken away.
Hundreds of recent CRS reports, copied from the now inaccessible database, have been posted here:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/crs/
Meanwhile, dozens of public interest groups from around the country are petitioning members of Congress to support continued public access to the CRS database.
"We urge you to work with CRS to restore at least the same level of access to CRS reports that your web site has provided in the past," the organizations wrote to Rep. Christopher Shays and Rep. Mark Green in a November 3 letter organized by the American Library Association.
See a copy of the letter here:
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Posted by joebeone at Noviembre 6, 2003 08:38 AM