Videoconferencing via satellite. Opening Congress to the people: Technical report

The feasibility of using satellite videoconferencing as a mechanism for informed dialogue between Congressmen and constituents to strengthen the legislative process was evaluated. Satellite videoconferencing was defined as a two-way interactive television with the TV signals transmitted by satellite. With videoconferencing, one or more Congressmen in Washington, D. C. can see, hear and talk with groups of citizens at distant locations around the country. Simultaneously, the citizens can see, hear and talk with the Congressmen

NH Incumbents in Good Position for November Election 5/12/2004

Congressmen Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley, as well as Senators Judd Gregg and John Sununu, all have strong favorability ratings in New Hampshire. Gregg, Bradley and Bass are in strong positions for re-election in November

NH Congressional Incumbents - Likely Relection 10/06/2004

Republican Congressmen Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley and Senator Judd Gregg are all poised to win reelection in November. All lead their Democratic challengers by wide margins

Review Of Capitol Men: The Epic Story Of Reconstruction Through The Lives Of The First Black Congressmen By P. Dray

With complete narrative control Dray also locates the public history of Reconstruction\u27s openness to both black and white male political ambition against the counterpoint of white conspiracy and violence that, like termites, ate away at the foundation of the new era. [...] Dray does a fine job of carrying the stories past the Compromise of 1877, treating the Exodusters, the post-Reconstruction black congressmen, such as George H. White of North Carolina, and the final days of the men whose lives he chronicles

NH Congressmen Bass And Guinta Remain Unpopular 10/19/2011

New Hampshire’s U.S. Representatives Frank Guinta and Charlie Bass continue to be unpopular in their districts, while Senators Kelly Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen remain popular

When Politicians Talk About Politics: Identifying Political Tweets of Brazilian Congressmen

Since June 2013, when Brazil faced the largest and most significant mass protests in a generation, a political crisis is in course. In midst of this crisis, Brazilian politicians use social media to communicate with the electorate in order to retain or to grow their political capital. The problem is that many controversial topics are in course and deputies may prefer to avoid such themes in their messages. To characterize this behavior, we propose a method to accurately identify political and non-political tweets independently of the deputy who posted it and of the time it was posted. Moreover, we collected tweets of all congressmen who were active on Twitter and worked in the Brazilian parliament from October 2013 to October 2017. To evaluate our method, we used word clouds and a topic model to identify the main political and non-political latent topics in parliamentarian tweets. Both results indicate that our proposal is able to accurately distinguish political from non-political tweets. Moreover, our analyses revealed a striking fact: more than half of the messages posted by Brazilian deputies are non-political.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures, 2 table

Without More, There Is No More: Standing and Racial Gerrymandering in Wittman v. Personhuballah

In drawing election maps, racial gerrymandering separates minority groups, packing them into specific districts to weaken the power of their votes. In Wittman v. Personhuballah, the Supreme Court held that a group of Virginia congressmen that neither lived in, nor represented a district did not have standing to defend gerrymandering in that district. Although the Court had the opportunity to address the substantive issues in the case, it did not, leaving a substantial gap in racial gerrymandering jurisprudence. This commentary explores the consequences of this gap and argues that the Court should not find a legally cognizable right in a politician maintaining the racial makeup of his district, because it would result in non-resident politicians with greater rights than non-resident citizens, and it would further incentivize racial gerrymandering in the drawing of electoral maps

The birth of the congressional clinic

This paper investigates the impact of mortality in the districts/states represented in key congressional groups (i.e. committees, subcommittees, and parties) on the public investment in medical research in the US. I focus on National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grants awarded between 1985-2002. Exploiting the recomposition of any group after congressional elections, I estimate that the composition of the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (HouS), impacts the NIH budget: a 1% increase of life-years lost because of a disease in the districts represented in HouS increases the funds for clinical research on that disease by 1.2-3.2%. I also find that this impact results from the larger bargaining power of HouS or the House majority, or both groups, in the budget process. No group significantly impacts the allocation of funds for basic research, or the allocation of funds across states.health policy ; government policy ; publicly-provided goods ; medical research ; legislative bargaining