For still more up-to-the-minute information about what’s going on at the White House, click on its blog:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/

KIDS LEARN ABOUT U.S. PRESIDENTS

     Here’s a special kids’ site about the presidents. Adults can learn a lot from it too.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/white_house_101/

VISITING THE U.S. CAPITOL

     Used to be that anyone could wander unhampered around the Capitol and congressional office buildings. Then, in 1983, a bomb went off in the Senate chamber at 10:58 p.m., on a night the Senate had planned to work late. It had adjoined earlier, however, and no one was hurt. This led to identification tags for employees, but things still rocked along quietly for a few more years. In 1998 a mentally ill man killed two Capitol policemen, and those policing positions, where retired police officers once collected easy money, ceased to be a sinecure. Then it came out that the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on 9-11-01 was almost certainly headed for the Capitol. That tore it. You can still visit your senator or representative’s office, in fact they’d like you to do so, but you will be searched first. Below is a list of forbidden objects. As you can see from the chart, you can take more into the Capitol than into an airplane, but they’re extremely fussy about what you take into the galleries that overlook the House and Senate floors. So, if you want to watch your senator in action, leave your cellphone – and your handcream – elsewhere.

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/visit/prohibited-items.cfm

     The CAPITOL VISITOR CENTER. In spite of its nervous attitude, Congress still wants you to feel welcome. It has in fact recently rolled out an extremely expensive CAPITOL VISITOR CENTER just for you and me, even though many of us might have preferred something a little cheaper. Anyway, it’s got lots of marble and great features; click below to learn more about it.

http://www.visitthecapitol.gov/

     You can also take a C-Span video tour of the Capitol while still at home. This is, of course, great for kids doing homework.

http://www.c-span.org/capitolhistory/

KIDS IN THE HOUSE

     Here kids can learn about the U.S. House of Representatives.

http://clerkkids.house.gov/congress/index.html

KIDS IN THE SENATE

     Here kids can learn about the U.S. Senate. You’ll also notice in the lefthand column that much more information about the American system of government is available on this site.

http://www.congressforkids.net/Legislativebranch_senate.htm

VISITING THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

     Many people don’t realize that it’s possible for an ordinary citizen to sit in the Supreme Court chamber and listen to the justices question attorneys in a case before the court. Of course, you must time your visit for a date when the justices are hearing oral arguments. After the justices have heard arguments on the cases before them, they hole up in their private quarters to write their opinions. If you tour the Court on one of those days, you will merely see the empty courtroom.

     Here is the SUPREME COURT’s official site, and why they had to make every document a pdf you must download into your computer I do not know, but idiocy abounds everywhere.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/

KIDS LEARN ABOUT THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

     A kids’ site about the Supreme Court.

http://www.surfnetkids.com/supremecourt.htm

FOLLOW THE COURT CASES IN OYEZ

     OYEZ, a website about the Supreme Court, is much more accommodating than the Supreme Court’s own website. If you are interested in a case before the Supreme Court, you can follow it in OYEZ.

http://www.oyez.org/

     OYEZ allows you to “browse the justices” and hear them speak, and it even has a blog called SCOTUS. Which blog is boring unless you have a professional interest. But, SCOTUS has a wiki feature, meaning that people can put their own comments into that part of the blog. This is called the PRAWFS BLAWG, “Where Intellectual Honesty Has (Almost Always) Trumped Partisanship Since 2005.” I don’t think they’d allow just anyone to post comments on a PRAWFS debate, but I noticed some comments are decidedly irreverent, and PRAWFS do seem to have more fun than other watchers of the Supremes.

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2008/02/congress-revers.html