Statistics on Aid to Haiti

As cited by Nicholas Kristof in today’s New York Times, the Center for Global Development has a good post on its site, Haiti Aid Facts.  These statistics provide quantitative background on giving to Haiti prior to the earthquake (for instance, 10 countries gave more than the U.S. per capita in 2008).

November 1989: Berlin Wall Falls

Notecard from Kennedy's 1963 speech in Berlin (NARA)

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Are you researching Eastern Europe?  A useful guide: WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources: Eastern Europe

CIA Torture Program

Reverberating through the normally slow final days of August were several announcements and releases from the government regarding Bush-era torture.

Release of Offical Descriptions of Interrogation Program
In response to two American Civil Liberty Union’s (ACLU) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits, the CIA Inspector General yesterday released dozens of (sometimes heavily redacted) documents providing official descriptions of the CIA’s torture program following 9/11.

1. ACLU’s press release
2. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel Documents set 1 and set 2
3. More information on the ACLU’s FOIA litigation

Specialized Interrogation Group
Yesterday, attorney General Eric Holder recommended a preliminary review into torture practices, led by John Durham who is already leading the investigation into the CIA’s destruction of torture videotapes.

Presidential Task Force Recommendations
The Department of Justice announced that the Special Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies has recommended that the administration create a specialized interrogations group bringing together officials from law enforcement, Defense, and intelligence communities.  The National Security Council would oversee the group.

The Obama administration also announced that the FBI would be taking over responsibility for interrogation from the CIA, with the director of the interrogation group reporting from the FBI.

National Security Archive: The Torture Archive
Along with (and including) the release of these documents, George Washington University’s National Security Archive announced the release on 8/25 of The Torture Archive: more than 83,000 pages of primary source documents relevant to the CIA’s torture program.

Stimulus Funding by County

ProPublica’s Recovery Tracker breaks down the federal stimulus by state, county, project, recipient, and agency responsible.  They’ve included per capita stimulus spending by county calculations and nestled those beside current county, state, and federal unemployment figures.

http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/

The ReDistricting Game

Every ten years, following the Decennial Census, state legislatures remap their congressional districts.  For obvious reasons, redistricting decisions play an enormous role in subsequent elections.  Play the ReDistricting Game from the USC Annenberg Center for a fun way to easily learn a lot more about this usually complicated process.

(Thanks HT and Internet Scout Project)

Citizens Jury Takes a Bow

Minnesota’s Citizens Jury on Election Recounts received a standing ovation when they shared their findings at the National Secretaries of State (NASS) Convention.  As reported in MinnPost:

“In the end, as if by magic, 24 people from across Minnesota who’d never met until six weeks ago came to broad — often unanimous — agreement on a series of practical recommendations to help fix election recounts.”

(Note: Speaking of the NASS….Use the NASS “Can I Vote” site to link to each individual state’s voting rules.  And, even better, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) compiles this information for all states into a handy table in its annual print publication, Book of the States.)

Health Care Reform

I’m feeling overwhelmed by the back-and-forth health care debate right now.  In addition to many disparate claims, there are figures being cited that beg for further investigation.  If you’re interested in digging a little deeper, here are some sources of health care and insurance data:

• The Agency for Healthcare Research (AHRQ) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides evidence-based information on health care outcomes, quality, cost, use, and access.  They publish the MEPS (Medical Expenditure Panel Survey), the HCUP (Healthcare Cost & Utilization Project), HCUPNet, and other data.
• The Center for Studying Health System Change is a nonpartisan policy center.  It conducts nationally representative household and physician surveys and physician surveys (since the late 1990s and early 2000s) relating to care access, quality, and coverage.
• Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services from HHS provides expenditure and outcome data by type of service and source of funding.
• A compilation of health policies enacted at the state level from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
• Data on health insurance coverage and utilization from the U.S. Census Bureau, as collected from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
• Search the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for their research and reports to Congress on health care policies; search the Congressional Budget Office for reports on cost implications.

ACORN and the Census

Is Michele Bachmann correct?  Are ACORN workers going door-to-door taking Census information?

FactCheck.org from the Annenberg Center nicely debunks Representative Bachmann’s ACORN allegations in their article: Is ACORN providing workers for the U.S. Census?

Read more about Census 2010 and why and how the U.S. government conducts a decennial census at their website, 2010.census.gov.

Franken v. Coleman

Eric Black writes an “advance checklist” at MinnPost preparing for the Minnesota Supreme Court’s Franken-Coleman ruling:

“As a certifiable member of the Franken-Coleman obsessed community, I naturally worry that the MN Supremes will seize on my absence from my post to issue the long-awaited opinion. In case they do, I wanted to leave behind my present and future checklist of what I’d be looking for if I had the Supreme ruling in front of me.”

More Sources on Iran’s Election

Tehran, 6/16/09 via Flickr Creative Commons (contact me for photo credit)

No surprise to his loyal fans (like me!): Nate Silver’s wonderful political statistics blog, FiveThirtyEight, has several excellent posts dissecting the returns in Iran:

• Iranian Election Results by Province
• Iran Does Have Some Fishy Numbers
• Polling Predicted Intimidation–And Not Necessarily Ahmadinejad’s Victory

(Thanks Carolyn.)

Iranians are organizing via text message, Facebook, and especially Twitter. Even if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can easily search and read Twitter posts at Twitter Search.

• Search #iranelection or #gr88, the current tags for this topic.
• Follow the guidelines posted in here in this “#iranelection cyberwar for beginners” (thanks, Lew).