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One of the best things about getting news online, be it on blogs or elsewhere, is that it’s so easy to take the information and dig in deeper. Since bloggers and online journalists can link to primary sources for their reporting, everyone can easily engage with the issues they care about on a deeper level.

Political engagement is what we care about the most at OpenCongress. We think it’s fundamental for fighting corruption, dysfunction and apathy in our government. That’s why we’re striving to make the best primary source information on Congress for political bloggers to use. Every page on OpenCongress gives you—

• The best one-page summary — all the crucial official information on bills, issues, senators and reps. is available at-a-glance on a single page.
• The ability to write your members of Congress — login (or register) to your free “My OpenCongress” account, and emailing your federal elected officials about a bill is just one click away.
• A chance to create political networks — use our pages to coordinate actions with people that feel the same way as you on an issue. OpenCongress pages have created powerful coalitions that have affected legislation.
• Information in context — Rather than just showing bills, senators, reps. and issues, we let you know you which ones people are paying the most attention to on the internet and which ones are “hot.”

Here are five ways bloggers and journalists can use OpenCongress right now to help shed more light on D.C. and give people the information they need to hold power accountable:

1) When You Write About a Bill, Give a Link

Too often, bloggers and journalists don’t give a link when they write about bills in Congress. Sometimes they don’t even tell readers exactly which bill they’re talking about. Providing a link to a bill turns a blog post into an opportunity for real political engagement because it gives your readers a chance to get involved by doing their own research and taking action. Plus, links go a long way to boost the credibility and value of your posts.

We have pages for every single bill in Congress. You can find “hot” bills here, and you can use the search bar in the upper right to find all other bills. Our bill pages combien official information about Congress with news and blog coverage, and the social wisdom of our users. See a sample bill page by clicking here.

As a bonus, every time you link to a bill on OpenCongress, your post will automatically show up on that bill’s OpenCongress page in the blog or news coverage feed. OpenCongress is the most popular government transparency site in the U.S., and we’ve had some reports of links on our bill pages creating a lot of traffic.

2) Link to the Exact Provision You’re Talking About

When you write about a specific provision in a bill, you can use OpenCongress to give your readers a link directly to the provision you’re talking about so they can read it in context for themselves. This way you can have the authority and trust that a primary-source link gets you, even when you’re writing about a single line of text, or a single word, within a gigantic, 1,000+ page bill.

To generate the links, just scroll over any section of legislative text on an OpenCongress bill page and a “permalink” button will appear. Click the button to create a custom url that you can use to bring your readers directly to the part of the bill you are writing about.

3) Show People How Their Members of Congress Voted

Every time Congress takes a vote on a bill, amendment or nomination, OpenCongress creates a page that shows how every member of Congress voted. Linking to our roll call pages lets your readers dig down to see how their own senators and representatives voted. Then they can either email their elected officials in one click from the OpenCongress page to tell them how they feel about their vote, or remember the vote for when election time comes around.

You can find roll call pages on the “actions and votes” tab of bill pages, or at our main roll call page.

We also offer the ability to link to vote position breakdowns by party, so, for example, you can easily share a link to the Democrats who voted “no” on health care, or the Republicans who voted “aye” on the stimulus.

4) Give an Unbiased Way to Learn About Members of Congress

People want to know who their representatives and senators actually are and what they actually stand for. But too often, that information is hidden by spin and bias. At OpenCongress, we have comprehensive, fact-based pages for every member of Congress including information on their voting history, bill sponsorship and co-sponsorship, committee assignments, biography and much more.

Members of Congress’s official pages are full of tailored information and politically-convenient statements. Wikipedia pages don’t have comprehensive information on actual bills and votes. When you write about the congresscritters, there’s no better place to link to than OpenCongress to give your readers an unbiased source to learn all about them. Our pages are built on raw data — members of Congress can’t hide from the facts we present.

5) Link to Race Pages to Build Knowledge About Candidates

As the mid-term election season ramps up, we’re providing simple pages that give you the basic facts for each Senate and House race. The 2010 RaceTracker is a non-partisan, fully-referenced, open-source and crowd-sourced wiki project tracking every congressional race, nationwide.

So, when you’re talking about Sen. Arlen Specter re-election chances, you can easily share information on his challengers from the left and the right. RaceTracker pages show you who’s a confirmed candidate, who’s considering, and who is just rumored to be running. They also show you how much money each potential candidate has raised, and give you links to get more background info about each candidate.

What resources on Congress do you want that we aren’t providing? Leave a comment on this post or email us at writeus@opencongress.org and we’ll build it if it is technically possible.

OpenCongress is a non-partisan, non-profit public resource website — we encourage you to link back to this post and share what you find here with friends and bloggers. Thanks for using OpenCongress to help build factual public knowledge about Congress.

Read all blog posts here, or subscribe to our RSS feed to keep up with what’s really happening in Congress.

Article Tags: best practices transparency OpenCongress participatory politics

Rep. John Murtha [D, PA-12], Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, has died at the age of 77 from complications resulting from gall bladder surgery he had last week. Murtha has served as representative for Pennsylvania’s 12th district since 1974.

We have a comprehensive bio of Murtha on the OpenCongress Wiki, which you can view here.

Mutha’s seat will be filled by special election, making it a likely Republican pick-up. Pennsylvania’s 12th district voted for McCain by .4% in 2008 and it has a PVI rating of R+1.

Photo from Center for American Progress Action Fund used under CC license.

Article Tags: PA-12 John Murtha

C-SPAN called out Obama last month for not televising health care negotiations like he said he would do while on the campaign trail. Well, since he’s starting over on negotiating health care, Obama has decided to let the C-SPAN cameras in on the next round of talks:

President Obama moved to jump-start the stalled health-care debate Sunday, inviting Republicans in Congress to participate in a bipartisan, half-day televised summit on the subject this month.

The president made the offer in an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric hours before the network televised the Super Bowl. Obama challenged Republicans, who have been largely unified in opposing his proposals, to bring their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system to the public discussion.

“I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues,” Obama said. “What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table. . . . I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward.”

If Republicans accept the invitation, the summit will be held on Feb. 25. Ezra Klein has some thoughts on what to expect. One thing to keep in mind is that Congress’s authority to use budget reconciliation for health care will expire in April when the new budget resolution for 2011 is passed. That means that barring some kind of breakthrough with Republicans, conservative Senate Dems, or progressive House Dems, after this meeting on Feb. 25, there won’t be much time left for Congress to pass a bill.

Article Tags: C-SPAN Health care

I’m in New England where, ironically, it’s been beautiful and sunny all weekend. But I hear there’s been a bit of snow in Washington D.C. At least, that’s the excuse those lazy senators and representatives (and the rest of the federal government) are giving for canceling their work day today and postponing all votes until Tuesday.

Anyhow, I’m postponing the weekly “The Week Ahead in Congress” post until Tuesday morning, so grab the RSS feed to stay on top of Congress’s legislative schedule. There should be some interesting stuff coming up in the latter half of the week, like a jobs bill in the Senate and a bill to repeal the health insurance industry’s antitrust exemption in the House.

If you’re in D.C., hit someone in the face with a snowball for me, and I’ll see you on Tuesday. Otherwise, I’ll be here throughout the day with links and updates on health care, jobs, financial reform and the rest of Congress’s agenda.

Above photo, “All You See is the Rear View Mirror,” from Flickr user LitLinx used under a CC license.

Article Tags: snOMG Snowmaggedon Snowpocalypse

Here is a look at what we’ve been up to this week at OpenCongress:

• President Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 was released on Monday. A closer look at it reveals clues as to what the president has planned on a range of issues from health care to taxes.
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint of Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy banning gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military. Both agreed the policy should end. In other gay rights news, Congressional Republicans are fighting to prevent gays and lesbians from getting legally married in the District of Columbia.
• Donny has a comprehensive rundown of what is ahead for financial reform in the Senate.
• Congress is looking at a 775% tax increase for pipe tobacco.
• The Democrats may finally have settled on a path forward to pass health care reform. The relevant question, though, is whether they can pull it off. Democrats, however, still do have a “Plan B.”
• A bipartisan group of senators have introduced a bill (S.2977) banning civilian trials for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other co-defendants. In other national security news, the House is working on passing a cybersecurity bill (H.R.4061).
• Senate Democrats announced their own jobs package.
• After 10 months of waiting, the Senate finally confirmed Patricia Smith as solicitor of the Department of Labor. The problem of un-appointed nominees in the Obama administration, however, still persists.
• If you at all enjoyed the Q&A session president Obama held with the House Republicans, sign the petition and demand a regular “question time.”

We here at OpenCongress greatly appreciate your comments and encourage participation on the site. Keep it up.

Is this morning’s press release from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd [D, CT] the death knell of financial reform?:

“Last night, Senator Shelby assured me that he is still committed to finding a consensus on Financial Reform, but for now we have reached an impasse.”

“While I still hope that we will ultimately have a consensus package, it is time to move the process forward.”

“I have instructed my staff to begin drafting legislation to present to the committee later this month.”

Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic: “If Shelby isn’t on board, then it’s pretty likely Republicans at large aren’t on board. That means any bill Dodd is finalizing will be a waste of his time, because Republicans will use their 41 votes to block it. That is, if it even gets out of committee, which isn’t a given.”

You would think that a bill giving members of Congress a chance to go down on record in opposition to the Ugandan Parliament’s move to make “homosexual behavior” punishable by death would appeal to both parties. Well, Rep. Howard Berman [D, CA-28] recently introduced a resolution disapproving of the Uganda bill, and of the 38 co-sponsors that have attached their name to the bill, just one of them is a Republican — Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen [R, FL-18].

Here is a perfect example of how the Senate works: Sen. Richard Shelby [R, AL] has put a blanket hold on every Obama nominee because of a disagreement over two pork projects in his state.

I have previously discussed the problem with Senate holds, but it basically boils down to the fact that any senator can block any measure, or in this case the confirmation of dozens of government officials, by threatening to grind all Senate action to a halt.

Shelby is angry that the Obama administration is not moving fast enough or may ax two earmarks that could means billions for Alabama. Talking Points Memo has the details on the two projects:

-A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: “Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals.” Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

-An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: “[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won’t build” the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based "at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.”

Regardless of which party is in power, the inability of the Senate to let the individuals chosen by the president to do their jobs is troubling. And this problem is significantly worse now that it was during President Bush’s first year in office.

As I noted yesterday, Sen. Harry Reid [D, NV] has brought up the idea of bypassing the holds by filling vacant positions while the Senate is in recess – a move known as a recess appointment.

President Bush made 171 recess appointments during his years in office while President Clinton made 139. Obama has yet to make any. In fact, he is the only president in the past 30 years to not make a recess appointment during his first year in office.

During the later Bush years, Senate Democrats often used “pro forma” sessions in the Senate to prevent the president from making recess appointments. A “pro forma session” is when the Senate is called into session, often for just a few seconds, by as little as one senator. Though nothing gets done, the Senate is technically in session, which means recess appointments can’t be made.

This tactic, however, is not available to Republicans as long as they remain the minority party in the Senate.

Article Tags: Senate Hold Barack Obama Harry Reid Richard Shelby