Indian Affairs is now on the path to full reconnection to the Internet. In a major development with regard to the Cobell v. Norton litigation, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit on May 14, 2008, granted defendants’ motion to vacate the December 17, 2001, Consent Order Regarding Information Technology Security and has given its permission for the information technology systems of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Office of Hearing and Appeals (OHA), the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST), and the Office of Historical Trust Accounting (OHTA) to be reconnected to the Internet. A copy of the Court Order is attached.

The Department, and Indian Affairs has worked long and diligently to resolve the IT security issues that have concerned the Court with respect to the Department’s systems housing Individual Indian Trust Data (IITD). Indian Affairs is pleased that the Court has granted this opportunity to improve our level of service to the tribes and individual Indian trust beneficiaries and to demonstrate our commitment to the protection and preservation of the IITD.

Political Interference with Climate Change Science under the Bush Administration: United States House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, December 2007 [Final Report]

"For the past 16 months, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating allegations of political interference with government climate change science under the Bush Administration. During the course of this investigation, the Committee obtained over 27,000 pages of documents from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Commerce Department, held two investigative hearings, and deposed or interviewed key officials. Much of the information made available to the Committee has never been publicly disclosed. This report presents the findings of the Committee's investigation. The evidence before the Committee leads to one inescapable conclusion: the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming."

(Links to the full report and supporting documents are available at the bottom of the web site.)

November 14, 2007?Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. announced today that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose.

...The agreement calls for definitive paperwork approved by both parties within 30 days with Public.Resource.Org making developer snapshots of the archive available in early 2008.

...This corpus will be integrated into the ongoing public services from organizations such as AltLaw and the Legal Information Institute, thus providing continuity of coverage into the future. Further announcements will be forthcoming on the availability of other case law, including Federal District and pre-1949 Appellate decisions.

Public.Resource.Org intends to perform an initial transformation on the federal case law archive obtained from Fastcase using open source ?star? mapping software, which will allow the insertion of markers that will approximate page breaks based on user-furnished parameters such as page size, margins, and fonts. ?Wiki? technology will be used to allow the public to move around these ?star? markers, as well as add summaries, classifications, keywords, alternate numbering systems for citation purposes, and ratings or ?diggs? on opinions.

General Petraeus' report on the situation in Iraq is available from the House Foreign Affairs Committee's web site.

International Herald Tribune
August 2, 2007

The largest closed collection of Nazi documents is managed by the International Tracing Service, created by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the chaotic aftermath of World War II to track down missing persons and help reunite families. After years of pressure from victims groups and from the United States, the 11 nations that govern the Tracing Service decided in May 2006 to make them accessible for the first time to researchers and to survivors?but the decision required ratification by all 11 countries and researchers still won't be able to browse the files freely. Instead, staff will search for material they request.