New From USA.gov

USA.gov, the website for federal government information, has recently added two new links to its State Government page:

1) State governors' most recent "State of the State" addresses, which address each governor's legislative initiatives and budget priorities (previous speeches are archived back to 2000); and

2) The President's 2010 Budget and State-by-state fact sheets from the White House Office of Management and Budget that show how the Budget is expected tol affect each state.

On the USA.gov home page, there is also a new link to the Transportation Security Administration's Heightened Flight Security Measures following the December 25 incident aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

Global Terrorism Database

Global Terrorism Database (GTD),

is an open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world from 1970 through 2007 (with annual updates planned for the future). Unlike many other event databases, the GTD includes systematic data on domestic as well as international terrorist incidents that have occurred during this time period and now includes more than 80,000 cases.

This database is in Beta release. Navigation is easy. Users can search the database or browse by region, country, perpetrator, weapon type, attack type, or target type. Data is displayed in a clean format including a time line chart and a table. Table displays data by date, country, city, perpetrator, fatalities, injured, and target type. The extended display of a table adds information pertaining to region, attack type, and weapon type.

Check it out for yourself and share your comment!

DOJ Releases Anti-Terror Memos and Opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel

From the DOJ website:

The Department of Justice today released two previously undisclosed Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memoranda and seven previously undisclosed opinions. "Americans deserve a government that operates with transparency and openness," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "It is my goal to make OLC opinions available when possible while still protecting national security information and ensuring robust internal executive branch debate and decision-making."
The two memoranda memorialized that certain legal propositions in ten OLC opinions issued between 2001 and 2003 no longer reflected the views of OLC and "should not be treated as authoritative for any purpose." They further explained that some of the underlying opinions had been withdrawn or superseded and that "caution should be exercised" by the executive branch "before relying in other respects" on the other opinions that had not been superseded or withdrawn.
The opinions and memoranda are available at http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/documents/olc-memos.htm.