Secret Laws
Can you be required to comply with a government policy or law that is itself secret? Although we are not allowed to see the law in question, at least we can see the court documents and amicus curiae briefs filed in the court case challenging this situation. See:
- Confronting Secret Law by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (November 15, 2006).
USDA redefines hunger
Some Americans Lack Food, but USDA Won't Call Them Hungry. By Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post, Thursday, November 16, 2006; Page A01 The USDA has eliminated the term "hunger" from the categories it uses to describe impoverished households. The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security." This is absolutely horrendous that in the world's richest country (to say nothing of the 820 million hungry people in the rest of the world!), 12 percent of Americans -- 35 million people!! -- could not put food on the table at least part of last year. This is a good time to review Jessamyn's post from a few months back entitled, "reduce, reuse, and recycle... food." If the numbers above sicken you, please consider donating food and/or time to your local Food Not Bombs and/or donate food at your local food bank. Documents quoted:
- Household Food Security in the United States, 2005. US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
- The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
American Indian Heritage Month
November is American Indian Heritage Month. Following are some federal sites that offer excellent information about American Indians: Federal Resources for Educational Excellence, American Indian Heritage Month Resources The National Museum of the American Indian Smithsonian Education, American Indian Heritage Teaching Resources FirstGov, Native American and Tribal Cultural Resources And, if you’d like to include some Native American foods in your Thanksgiving celebration, the Native American Nutrition Education Database from the National Agricultural Library includes some sources with recipes. Mitsitam! (Which, to the Delaware and Piscataway people, means "Let’s eat!") Continue reading
Recombination, mashups and remixing at OCLC
Some OCLC Research Web services By Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President, OCLC Programs and Research and Chief Strategist, Next Space (No.4 2006).
'Web service' is the term used for a set of emerging approaches that allow applications to communicate more easily using Web-based protocols. Effectively, Web services are a way of allowing applications to interconnect ...
See our remix page for examples of remixing government information. While these aren't all Web Services in the technical sense, they are all examples of reuse of public information and the precursors to true web services for government information.
Continue readingUpdates on Presidential Signing Statement Page
Recently I've been able to update our page on Presidential Signing Statements with these three relatively new signing statements:
- 20061004 - No privacy reports under DHS?
- 20061013 - Keeping Internet gambling in the dark
- 20061017 - No information on threats to America