AirCongress The Online Voice Of Capitol Hill

AirCongress today began tracking the best “tweets” that members of Congress post to Twitter, a mini-blog service that limits posts to 140 characters. Some of the AirCongress posts will be word-for-word “retweets” of what the lawmakers wrote (the abbreviation for a retweet is RT); others will summarize the content of one or more tweets on the same subject.

This new feature is called “Hill Tweet News,” or HTN for short.

As part of the service, each day at AirCongress.com I will post a sample of the latest tweets from @AirCongress and a button so readers can subscribe to @AirCongress in order to access the full version of HTN via Twitter.

Here are the samples from today’s first edition of the new weekday feature:

@askgeorge is dining with Obama on Wednesday and soliciting questions. Topics — economy, health care, education.

RT @TomCoburn Was just shut out from offering amendments on the Floor to the omnibus.

RT No. 1 pork project for today is $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. See @SenJohnMcCain for the other nine.

Click the button below to subscribe to “Hill Tweet News” and get access to the other news and information available through @AirCongress, including links to the YouTube channels for members of Congress.

It’s free for the first week, and after that, the introductory rate is only $3 a month. But subscribe now before the fee increases!

Categories: AirCongress, Arizona, California, Oklahoma, Health, Tom Coburn, Sen. John McCain, Budget, Education, Economy, George Miller, Hill Tweet News

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The House today narrowly passed a bill designed to improve mine safety despite a veto threat from the White House. The vote was 214-199.

Here are debate excerpts floor speeches by Democrats George Miller of California, Tim Bishop of New York, Rush Holt of New Jersey and John Yarmuth of Kentucky.

Categories: New York, California, Kentucky, New Jersey, Producer's Picks, Labor, John Yarmuth, Communications, Timothy Bishop, George Miller, Natural Resources, Rush Holt

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Friday’s acquittal of seven guards and a nurse on charges related to the death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson has thrust boot camps into the news again. The acquittal came two days after the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing on the topic.

Below are video excerpts. The speakers, clockwise from the top left, are:

• Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif.;
• Robert Bacon, whose 16-year-old died while attending a wilderness program;
• Cynthia Clark-Harvey, whose 15-year-old daughter died in a wilderness program;
• Greg Kutz, an investigator at the Government Accountability Office;
• Paul Lewis, whose 14-year-old son died at a residential treatment facility;
• And Allison Pinto, a research psychologist and professor in medical health.

Categories: California, Social Policy, Crime, Culture, George Miller

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That’s what House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller envisions as Congress plans to renew the 2002 education law known as the No Child Left Behind Act.

“Over the five years [since the law was enacted], we’ve seen a lot of districts, a lot of schools, use their resources rethink the process [of] what they were doing before No Child Left Behind,” the California Democrat said in a speech at the National Press Club. He said the goal of appropriations planned by the Democratic-controlled Congress is to make the next five years more productive than the previous five years, when Republicans were in control.

Part 1

Part 2

Categories: California, Education, George Miller

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Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.: “The Employee Free Choice Act is very simple. It’s very simple. When a majority say they want a union, they get a union. … It’s a great tradition of democracy — that the majority gets to say what they want, and they get to say it in the workplace just like they get to say it in the country.”

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., touting the Employee Free Choice Act on the Senate floor on the same day of the rally: “This is an idea that has been tried and tested.”

Categories: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Producer's Picks, Labor, Richard Durbin, Edward Kennedy, George Miller

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