Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with legislature

Illegal Immigrants in College

madmamasmith — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:04:22 -0800

Can anyone tell me the percentage of children of illegal immigrants who attend college? Specifically in Texas. We are arguing the HB 104 (in state tuition bill) in my government class and I need to know how many children of illegal immigrants who were not born in the US actually attend institutions of higher education....

What law would be really good for a state legislature to pass or repeal?

Mr. Justice — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 07:31:13 -0800

What law would be really good for a state legislature to pass or repeal? This is a practical question, seeking practical answers: I have a friend who is a good-government, reform-minded state legislator who is looking for suggestions, but the deadline for filing in this part-time legislature is one week away for the biennium (two-year period).

How do you track legislation without bill numbers?

shivohum — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 20:07:18 -0800

How do you track U.S. federal legislation for which bill numbers -- either of the house record (H.R.) or Senate (S.) variety -- have not yet been assigned? In the debate about the recent network neutrality amendment to a house bill (the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006"), I noticed that it was extraordinarily difficult to find the bill itself on any of the normal bill tracking websites like Govtrack or Thomas.

It was difficult enough finding the bill's name mentioned in the articles about the network neutrality amendment. Clearly the article's authors assume their readers are not interested in such "technical" information. But I found it ridiculous that I couldn't find the bill on the bill-tracking sites. I found it serendipitously when I stumbled on the house energy committee's dedicated website from google.

The problem, I discovered was that the bill lacked a house record (H.R.) number -- a status I believe it will maintain until the house committee marks it up and sends it out to the full house. I'll put aside for a moment the fact that many of the "civics 101" citizen-help websites mislead readers by suggesting that a record number is the first thing a bill gets.

Is there some centralized way of tracking these bills rather than visiting every relevant committee website? Am I missing some feature on Govtrack or Thomas that would enable me to do this? Thanks.