When you can get at them, Congressional Research Service reports are incredibly useful. Why aren't they all available, digitally, to taxpayers? You never really know if you have the latest versions, or what topics are just plain not available.
You've got to wince at the irony of the CRS report on intergovernmental sharing of information that's not available online except by the good graces of the Federation of American Scientists.
Yes, this has been a sore point for years. The most recent concerted effort to make the reports publicly available is from the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland (http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/crsreports). There was an attempt in the 108th Congress to mandate web-based public access to the reports (H.R. 3630, introduced by Representative Christopher Shays), but it died in committee.
Posted by: Susan Nevelow Mart | March 13, 2005 at 09:38 PM