Talk:Congressional Research Service

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The following sources contain public domain or freely licensed material that may be incorporated into this article:

Report: The Congressional Research Service and the American Legislative Process. CRS Report of March 2008.
Internal memorandum to CRS Staff explaining policy on "access to CRS Reports". April 2007.
Internal memorandum to CRS Staff regarding "distribution of CRS Products to non-congressionals". March 2007.
S. 1578 (1998)
Letter regarding applicability of Speech & Debate Clause to that legislation regarding CRS reports on the internet.
CRS Report on "CONGRESSIONAL POLICY CONCERNING THE DISTRIBUTION OF CRS WRITTEN PRODUCTS TO THE PUBLIC". March 9, 1999. Hosted at FAS, but clearly a CRS report -- see [1].
"CRS Standards for Analysis." Internal memorandum January 2004.
Internal memo: Outside writing, lecturing activities by CRS Staff: objectivity. May 2004.
Outside Activities: Preserving Objectivity and Non-partisanship. Director's statement. January 2004.

‌The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

theopenhouseproject.com: Recommendations to Publish Congressional Research Service Reports.
New York Times editorial. May 11 2009.
New York Times article "Group Seeks Public Access to Congressional Research". May 4 2009.
Washington Post article on March 2007 memo regarding "distribution of CRS Products to non-congressionals". March 22, 2007.
Washinton Post article, "Hard-to-Get Policy Briefings For Congress Are Now Online". June 28, 2005 article regrading OpenCrs.com
Washington Post: "Watchdog Groups, Some Lawmakers Say Congressional Reports Should Be Made Public". February 19, 2007
Congress and freedom of information: A retrospective and a look at a current issue. (Section: "CRS reports reconsidered.") Government Information Quarterly Volume 26, Issue 3, July 2009, Pages 437-440.
A resolution to provide Internet access to certain Congressional Research Service publications. S. Res. 401. 12/11/2007.
Manager Censors Analyst at Congressional Research Service. Pogo.org. January 25, 2006
Congressional Research Service Products: Taxpayers Should Have Easy Access February 10, 2003. Pogo.org.
May 14, 2009, coaliton calling for Senators to allow public access of CRS reports

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CRS Report[edit]

I'm not fond of the redirect from CRS Report to Congressional_Research_Service, since I frequently insert the CRS Report wikilink to inform outsiders what a CRS Report is, leaving them quite befuddled.

I'm going to add a note to my to-do list to solve this problem, but if someone can tackle it in the meantime that would be great. Until then, I'm changing the redirect to point to Congressional_Research_Service#CRS_Products. Agradman ^talk/_contribs 15:16, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suddenly not so RS after all...[edit]

http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2011/01/quote-of-the-day-2.html In 2003, Dan invented a new standard of ‘neutrality’ that prohibits any analyst, no matter the weight of evidence, from stating that one position is stronger than another. The result is a remarkable watering down of CRS reports, a trend that has been noticed not only by congressional staff but by readers outside of Congress. Neither CBO nor GAO follows the standard of ‘neutrality[.]’

Ouch! Hcobb (talk) 06:07, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This appears to be a common refrain from long-time staff.

See long video of experts on CRS. http://transparencycaucus.org/events/2011/05/09/may-2011-act-event/

Luminousenchiladas (talk) 03:54, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

nonpartisanship - what exactly does that mean?[edit]

Nonpartisanship is a deceptive misnomer that attempts to paint a patina of objectivity onto material that is anything but objective. To many, nonpartisanship implies "unaffiliated with any political party, e.g. no Democrat or Republican bias". However, that definition is inadequate at best, deceptive at worst. What nonpartisanship should imply is "unaffiliated with any specific political philosophy, e.g. no bias in the Liberal, Conservative, Progressive, libertarian, Socialist, Communist, etc. direction". From my perusal of the work done by the CRS, that is just not the case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.188.178.22 (talk) 22:21, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Then you appear to be wishing to wield a definition of "nonpartisan" that is not in the English language dictionaries, which focus on relationship to party, not philosophy. --Nat Gertler (talk) 01:28, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

THOMAS defunct; Need expert update[edit]

On July 5, 2016, THOMAS was replaced by (or merged into) congress.gov. This article lists 14 places that still refer to THOMAS, as well as LIS and crs.gov. According to the article, these three websites have different contents and different access procedures.

Now that THOMAS is no more, this article needs a major update by someone familiar with the subject. For example, what was the purpose of switching over to congress.gov? With the reorganization, will all CRS Reports be available to the public? This update should be made in concert with changes to congress.gov. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 16:06, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Links to old revisions[edit]

I stumbled upon this article when it appeared like this [2], with lots of links to old revisions in the "Confidentiality of CRS Reports" section. I can't find the specific part of the MOS that says you're not supposed to do this, but I'm pretty certain links to diffs aren't supposed to be in mainspace, so I've removed them; I also removed a few parts that didn't really make sense without the diffs, and which were uncited. Thought I'd mention it here in case anyone ever wants to bring back anything useful from those old revisions. YorkshireLad ✿ ^(talk) 09:35, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]