U.S. Congress voting

The great researchers at the Washington Post created a database that tracks member voting from both House and Senate. You can browse every vote since 1991, and can search by House or Senate member, by state, vote missers, bills, most voted on, vote margins and more. Here is the list (with links) of North Carolina 109th Congressional members.

Poverty and Opportunity

The Brookings Institution recently released a 80 page report (PDF) titled, "From Poverty, Opportunity: Putting the Market to Work for Lower Income Families. From the executive summary:
"In general, lower income families tend to pay more or the exact same consumer products than families with higher incomes....At least 1.6 million lower income adults pay excessive fees for furniture, appliances, and electronics. And countless more pay high prices for other necessities such as basic financial services, groceries, and insurance....Reducing the costs of living for lower income families by just one percent could add up to over $6.5 billion in new spending power for these families."

Top 10 Medical Web Sites

The Medical Library Association lists their top 10, most useful medical web sites for health consumers.