Nov. 5, 2009, 4:31 p.m.

Last week, Senator Feingold sent a letter requesting that the Government Printing Office post the Constitution Annotated online. The Constitution Annotated is a public document, and a great resource on the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution. It is nominally publicly available, but is online only in a PDF format. The Constitution Annotated contains analysis of 8,000 cases so to be truly useful, it seems obvious it must be searchable.

The GPO can take a simple step toward greater transparency by making this document available to the public in a navigable format. It could also ensure that rather than updating the Constitution Annotated every two years, as is the current practice, updates are posted in real time, as Senator Feingold also requested in his letter.

As Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, Senator Feingold gets it. We hope the Government Printing Office gets it too.

Senate Hearing on Secret Law

John Wonderlich

April 29, 2008, 3:52 p.m.

Tomorrow morning, the Senate Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government. In Chairman Feingold's words:

Senator Feingold is talking about memos put out by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), a part of the Department of Justice. The executive branch needs guidance on how the law affects its actions, and the OLC exists to provide legal interpretations for rest of the executive branch. These opinions strongly determine the nature of executive branch activities, and therefore have an undeniable bearing on the public interest. (more)