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
20061004 – No privacy reports under DHS?
In his October 4, 2006 Statement on Signing the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007 (H.R. 5441), the President said:
The executive branch shall construe section 522 of the Act, relating to privacy officer reports, in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.and
The executive branch shall construe section 503(c)(4) in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to require the opinions of heads of departments and to supervise the unitary executive branch. Accordingly, the affected department and agency shall ensure that any reports or recommendations submitted to the Congress are subjected to appropriate executive branch review and approval before submission.The full text of HR 5441 can be found on its Thomas page. Section 522 appears to be intended to prevent anyone but the DHS privacy officer from altering his/her reports:
SEC. 522. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used by any person other than the Privacy Officer appointed under section 222 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 142) to alter, direct that changes be made to, delay, or prohibit the transmission to Congress of any report prepared under paragraph (6) of such section.Makes you wonder why you'd want other people to alter the reports, or why a REPUBLICAN Congress might be concerned enough to put this provision into legislation. Section 503(c) does not appear to come with a subparagraph 4. If you spot such a provision or know what the President is talking about, please let us know in comments or by e-mail to admin AT freegovinfo.info Continue reading
20061013 – Keeping Internet gambling in the dark
The October 13, 2006 Statement on Statement on Signing the SAFE Port Act contained this statement:
The executive branch shall construe as advisory provisions of the Act that purport to direct or burden the conduct of negotiations by the executive branch with foreign governments, international organizations, or other entities abroad, that purport to direct executive branch officials to negotiate with foreign governments or in international organizations to achieve specified foreign policy objectives, or that purport to require the executive branch to disclose deliberations between the United States and foreign countries. Such provisions include subsections 205(d) and (i) and 803(b) of the Act; subsection 431(b) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, as amended by section 301 of the Act; and subsection 629(h) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended by section 404 of the Act. Such provisions, if construed as mandatory rather than advisory, would impermissibly interfere with the President's constitutional authorities to conduct the Nation's foreign affairs, participate in international negotiations, and supervise the unitary executive branch.The full text of the Safe Port Act can be found on its Thomas page. One of the more surprising areas where the Administration is refusing to report on is Internet Gambling. The President fears for the safety of the country if this report is made to Congress:
803 (b) Report Required- The Secretary of the Treasury shall submit an annual report to the Congress on any deliberations between the United States and other countries on issues relating to Internet gambling.One would think that the Administration would want to document progress towards eliminating Internet gambling. What purpose is served in keeping it secret? Of course, one can also be surprised that Internet gambling made into a ports bill to begin with! Continue reading