Health Care Ad
The conservative group. "60 Plus Association" has just released its first ad on the health care debate which you can see above. The AARP doesn't have an ad out yet, but here is their page on why they generally like the changes being proposed in Congress. Below the 60+ ad is one from the liberal group Moveon.org on the public option.

Data from the Census Bureau & Bureau of Labor on Google
This is a pretty powerful device that Google has just added to their array of tools. Anything you can think of on populations in the US can be made into a simple chart as you can see above from mine where the unemployment rate in the US is compared to Virginia and my home county of Fairfax. Below that is a video explaining the tool. You can get information on all of the following:
CO2 emissions per capita, Electricity consumption per capita, Energy use per capita, Exports as percentage of GDP, Fertility rate, GDP deflator change, GDP growth rate, GNI per capita in PPP dollars, Gross Domestic Product, Gross National Income in PPP dollars, Imports as percentage of GDP, Internet users as percentage of population, Life expectancy, Military expenditure as percentage of GDP, Mortality rate, under 5, Population, and Population growth rate.

OpenCongress
One of my students found this site in completing a legislative project. It is a tremendous site that has every member of Congress, connections to all the committees, lists every bill before the Congress, who voted for them, who is the sponsor, a summary, connects them to the money list and much more. In short, you can do an entire assignment just with this site.

School Newspaper v. Justice Kennedy

"Justice insists on pre-approving school newspaper article." So much for free-press.

Financial Literacy

"Economics teacher Heather Hanemann has developed a curriculum based on several of the Planet Money podcasts."

Health Care Debate Resources
If you go here, you will see an assignment my US government kids will be given today. There are an abundance of resources that I have found (from the WashPost and NYTimes). You will also see that I have made the assignment on Google Docs. The nice thing about that is that my students will only see one link. Additionally, if you were to say download the assignment and then upload it into your Google Docs, you could easily add links and questions and make it your own assignment.

Health Care Bill

This is a great graphic that looks at the 39 House Dems that voted against Obama's health care vote. Basically it comes down to the ones voting against Obama's plan are in districts where McCain won in 2008.

Google Blog
If you have been reading this blog a while, you know that I like Google products that help me in the classroom. For example the other day I set up an "igoogle" page to house all of my favorite sites. Blogspot is a Google hosted item which I use for this blog. Google Docs is a great way for you and your colleagues/students to share projects. My wife and I have our family calendar on the Google calendar (with different colors for each person) and it is synched with my school Outlook calendar. There are, of course, lots of great videos for the classroom on Youtube (owned by Google). Finally I like Google Mail, not just because it is a good e-mail system, but my kids can video chat through it with their cousins in Maine (we're in VA). I also read a great book this past summer appropriately titled Planet Google. So if you are hunting for new Google ideas the Google blog should be helpful to you as they tell you about the products and then show you how to use it with a short video. Today, for example, they released Google Dashboard which is a way to control the information that Google stores on you, which in my case is growing rapidly!

Plug this Blogsite?!

If you live in the DC area you know of Jay Matthews who came up with the Challenge Index which features the top AP schools in the country. He and Valerie Struass are looking for the best education blogs. If you like this site, you might consider clicking on the article and leaving a comment or by e-mailing either Jay Matthews at matthewsj@wash.com or Valerie Strauss at theanswersheet@washpost.com (note you have to copy and paste the addresses into your e-mail). I heard about the article from FreeTech4teachers.com

VA Electoral Results for Last 12 years
If you are from VA, you will like this as it gives you county by county results for the state wide races for the last eight elections.

Open Secrets
I am in the midst of my Congress/Interest Groups unit and this is one of the sites I am going to use next week. It already has items such as how much has been raised for the 2010 races. So my congressman has three opponents and has far outraised them. You can get information on historical elections. There is much more on the site.

The Shape of Recessions

Is our current recession an L, a W, a U or a V? Check it out.

Twenty-One Interesting Ways to Use Audio in the Classroom
Perhaps the coolest thing about the above PowerPoint is that it just appeared on my Google Docs page as I was added as a collaborator. It was made by Tom Barnett whose blog is here. I have been using Google Docs this fall for my students group projects and love it. I even am going to try having students turn in some of their work this way as I am becoming frustrated by the clunkiness of Blackboard's way of turning in assignments. I'll do more on it later, but for now the twenty-one ways include podcasts with audacity, musical timers, recording projects in both audio and video and most importantly it includes all of the links for each idea.

Bureaucracy: Ambassadorial appoinments - Political Appointee vs. Career Foreign Service

I ran across this graphic on the The Monkey Cage blog. You won't find a political donor being sent to Bamako, Mali and unfortunately a career foreign service officer will never be the ambassador to Oslo, Norway.

Electing a US President in Plain English @ Yahoo! Video

The "in plain English" series is more about technical items (Google Docs, wikis, blogs, podcasts, etc.), but the one above simplifies the Electoral College.