Congressional Research Service Reports Leaked

[BirminghamExaminer]

Senators John McCain (R) and Patrick J. Leahy (D) have fought for transparency in government every year since 1998 by introducing bills to have these reports made public. The CRS, a branch of Congress is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act or FIOA. Though McCain and Leahy have supported an open government by introducing a bill trying to make the record public, the bill has been rejected each year.

Though the CRS reports are meant to be secret, selected reports have been leaked over the years to special interest groups who then use them to aid their agenda. In the meantime, the reports have been kept secret from the public. Until now that is.

Read the rest here: http://www.examiner.com/x-1172-Birmingham-Progressive-Politics-Examiner~y2009m2d8-Congressional-Research-Service-Reports-Leaked

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. REC THIS ONE UP, FOLKS! AND DOWNLOAD THOSE PDFS!

[ggould1]

2. I hope they don't get pulled. nt

[BadgerKid]

3. There needs to be a torrent. n/t

[BirminghamExaminer]

5. I wish there was. Awesome idea.

[BirminghamExaminer]

28. Wikileaks is now directing people to piratebay for torrent downloads

[BadgerKid]

30. I saw that on /. just now.

Link to torrent:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4713076

[lostnotforgotten]

4. That Is One Boatload Of Reports

eom

[Pryderi]

6. Damn. I wish the links were pdfs...downthemall would kick ass.

[BirminghamExaminer]

10. I think they are PDFs. I've been downloading. What's downthemall?

[Pryderi]

14. It's an add-on for Firefox that will download files that are linked or embedded. You can get it

here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/201

What is DownThemAll?

DownThemAll (or just dTa) is a powerful yet easy-to-use Mozilla Firefox extension that adds new advanced download capabilities to your browser.
DownThemAll lets you download all the links or images contained in a webpage and much more: you can refine your downloads by fully customizable criteria to get only what you really want.
DownThemAll is all you can desire from a download manager: it features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400%, it allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time and, last but not least, it's fully integrated into your favorite browser!

[BirminghamExaminer]

15. Thanks, I just so happen to be using Firefox

And am downloading the extension now. Are you saying it will or it won't work with pdfs? Well I'll find out.

[Pryderi]

16. It will work for pdfs, but each of those links from wikileaks goes to a separate page and not the

pdf file itself.

Downthemall is a handy utility.

[BirminghamExaminer]

17. I see what you mean now. Damn.

[Pryderi]

7. Maybe we could divvy up the work?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

8. by subject or by month?

[Pryderi]

9. It's too overwhelming...there are thousands.

[BirminghamExaminer]

11. Maybe if everybody would take a month?

[Pryderi]

12. I'll bet they'll be taken down in less than a week.

[BirminghamExaminer]

13. That's what I'm afraid of

[pmorlan1]

18. Curious Report

I wonder who asked for this report in October of 2002?

Members of the U.S. Congress Who Have Died of Other
Than Natural Causes while in Office

[BirminghamExaminer]

19. Wow

[snot]

20. k&r'd

[pmorlan1]

21. Medicare Choice Report Gone

Looks like one of the reports is already gone -

RS: Medicare Choice, June 6, 2003
There is currently no text in this page, you can search for this page title in other pages or edit this page

[BirminghamExaminer]

22. I hope it's just because they're overrun

I've been getting some error pages because the site is so busy.

[BirminghamExaminer]

23. I'm downloading random stuff that looks interesting and hoping for the best

I downloaded the bit on smallpox just before the medicare one and it's still there. I suspect that the medicare one might just be an error on wikileak's part. At least, let's hope so. It just seems if they were going to pull something, it would be something like homeland security stuff.

[Pryderi]

24. I hope some newspapers and reporters got them.

[benld74]

25. Site is overloaded, I cannot get to anything

[BirminghamExaminer]

26. They've been having trouble on and off all day

Because of an overloading of visitors to the website. Keep trying. I'm going to keep downloading stuff a bit at a time when I can get back on. It'll probably slow down late tonight...well...I hope!

[BirminghamExaminer]

27. I just checked and am having no problems downloading PDFs

[BirminghamExaminer]

29. I'm downloading the entire thing as a torrent

You can get it on piratebay here: http://thepiratebay.org/tag/wikileaks

You must have a torrent application to get torrents. Right now it looks like it's going to take 1 day, 4 hours!

[OnyxCollie]

31. K&R. nt

[HamdenRice]

32. Every Congress person is entitled to them. IIRC, one leaks them all on a web site

Many CRS reports are unremarkable. It's kind of like the "answer guy" for Congress. If you have a question, you ask CRS and they answer it.

Although nominally secret, a huge amount of them are made public -- just not by CRS. "Leaked" may even be too strong a word. Many are simply published by various branches of government who get them.

Weirdly, for example, the State Department under Colin Powell published the infamous CRS report about Bush's planning to cancel or postpone the 2004 election -- which made me think there was a huge amount of infighting going on.

IIRC, there is one Congress person who feels strongly about CRS reports and maintains a site in which he publishes every CRS report he can get his hands on. If anyone knows who this Congress person is, please post his name in this thread.

[HamdenRice]

33. My fav title: "CRS: Executive Branch Power to Postpone Elections, July 14, 2004"

That was when Bush was behind in the polls and floating the idea of canceling the Bush-Kerry election.

The State Department published it on their website.

[BirminghamExaminer]

34. I've downloaded the entire lot of them

As a torrent. Yes, these things have been leaked for years, one at a time. Now they're all public as it should be.