The Foreign Service Journal, September 2003

Site gives a donation toward medical care, parent training, or adoption counseling for at-risk pregnant women. A click on another site gives money to educate women in develop- ing countries ( w ww.twowings. o r.at ), and another will help protect air quality ( w ww.iwantcleanair. c om ). If you want to find sites for more o r different charities, www.thenon- p rofits.com provides links to over 90 free donation sites. Most of these Web sites also include online stores and appeals for direct donations. For those who want to be sure their clicks won’t be wasted, One-Click Charity Check has verifications and evalua- tions of the various sites and organi- zations ( h ttp://kimberlychapman. c om/charitycheck/charitycheck. h tml ). — Aster Grahn ■ C Y B E R N O T E S 12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 3 Site of the Month: Thomas h ttp://thomas.loc.gov/ Every fall, as children head back to school and FS personnel settle into their new postings, Congress slips back into Washington and gets to work again. AFSA monitors congressional issues and debates from the Capitol, but now there is a tool for those who can’t make it to the meetings, yet want to keep an eye on our legislative bodies. Thomas (named after Thomas Jefferson, whose picture graces the site) is a searchable database offered by the Library of Congress “to make federal leg- islative information freely available to the Internet public.” The site is dedicat- ed to databases of legislative documents, including current proposed bills, com- mittee reports, historical documents, and public and private laws passed since 1973, as well as a list of roll-call votes for both the House and Senate from 1990 to the present. Thomas conveniently allows different levels of search, by keyword/phrase or by bill number. There is a section on legislation pertaining to terrorism or the 9/11 attacks. The site also provides basic information on the legislative process, addresses for legislators, and legislative schedules. One of the most useful fea- tures is the “Bill Status and Summary” link, which gives all the basic information about a bill, as well as links to its full text and other useful references. — Aster Grahn T HE R EMINGTON