A petition entitled, “Equal Medical Rights for the Fort McClellan Toxic Exposure Veterans,” got its start here yesterday, and it already has over 75 signers. Its purpose is to seek passage of a medical and disability bill for service veterans of Fort McClellan, Alabama. That’s H.R. 2052, The Fort McClellan Health Registry Act. That bill [...]
… the opposition to S. 894, the Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2011. It’ll be the featured bill in the WashingtonWatch.com email newsletter this week, so a lot of people will be clicking through to read the comments. What will they see? One person—a logged-in user—who supports the bill says, “I hope this bill [...]
Tomorrow is a day for remembering America’s veterans. As we noted last year, Memorial Day hasn’t always fallen on a Monday. In the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90-363), Congress changed it from May 30 each year – the anniversary of the original Decoration Day in 1868 – to the last Monday in May. [...]
A visitor to WashingtonWatch.com writes in about the tenor of discussion on H.R. 3491, the Thomas G. Schubert Agent Orange Fairness Act: With all due respect WashingtonWatch.com why is it that people are allowed to leave vicious & mean spirited comments about recipients of a bill. Why do you allow these people to continually leave [...]
Today is the official anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I, and a day that we remember and honor all veterans. According to the Wikipedia history of Veterans Day, President Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed an Armistice Day for November 12, 1919. The United States Congress passed a concurrent resolution seven [...]
Here’s the WashingtonWatch.com email newsletter for the week. Subscribe here. email newsletter | tell a friend | wiki | about | home | log in On the WashingtonWatch.com Blog Just two weeks after the passage of the bailout bill, and one day after a Treasury Department official declared, “we are committed to transparency and oversight [...]
I’m always interested by the personal stories that show up in the comments here on WashingtonWatch.com. It’s a window onto people’s experiences in some of their most difficult times. Here’s a sampling. On H.R. 261, The Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2007, a thirteen-year-old shares the sadness of having a father in [...]
In a May, 1788 letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, Thomas Jefferson wrote a famous line: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” Watching the bills introduced in Congress can help illustrate the mechanics of that process 220 years later – in the government Jefferson helped found. H.R. [...]