CNN Student News
With the health care summit yesterday, this is a good time to showcase CNN's Student News which has short stories on yesterday's news.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A Day in the Life of the President
This is a nice article from the WashPost that details one recent day in the life of Obama. Since visitor lists are released 90 after the fact, it is fairly easy to look at what was going on. Above is an MSNBC video on the same subject from June.

Why You Should Use Google Apps - Google Does!
Yes, everyone working at Google "drinks the cool aid" and it's free. You can use it alone or for your classes or even your school. It includes items such as Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar and more. Look at the clip above for more reasons

Detailed Article on Congressional Black Caucus

Really this is an article on how a successful caucus works, complete with a great graphic. It is a good article for your students, but at the very least it is must for teachers to read.

Welfare in the US

Here is a graphic that lets you look at your county/city/town and see the number of people on welfare by race, and children vs adult. 

Follow the Competitive '01 Congressional Races 

The NYTimes has a blog page as well as an individual page (interactive map included) for the House and Senate for the competitive races this fall.  There is also a list of the upcoming primaries. 

A Day in the Life of Jimmy Carter

I "stole" this from my fellow blogger, Frank Franz who put it in a post on the AP Gov list serve.  It is great, though, as it gives you every thing that President Carter did each day he was pres.

How a Poll is Constructed

Here is a link from a political scientist that tells you how a poll is constructed.  Don't be fooled into thinking it is a liberal post simply because it is a on Daily Kos.  It is a well stated summary of how it is done (I can speak w. a little authority here since my Ph.D. is in poli sci).  If you want a more in depth explanation of the poll analysis, go here. 

Americana Phonic

Americana Phonic is a site that contains audio narrations of historical documents, including The Federalist Papers.

Federal Budget Challenge

Budget game I haven't seen before.

Twenty Two Interesting Ways To Use Twitter In [1]

View more presentations from Jackson Bates.

I can't say enough for Twitter for a way to find teacher resources quickly. It will only take you a week or so to find (there is a search engine) resources and then you will be amazed how helpful it is.

CSPAN Video

If you ever wanted to highlight what you are discussing in your class, CSPAN is the place. Here is Peter Orszag talking about Obama's budget proposal. He uses all the terms you are teaching your students such as discretionary and mandatory spending. Above is Sec of Defense Gates speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

CSPAN and Presidents

This CSPAN site has both a brief biography of all 44 US presidents as well as a number of useful links such as to their birthplace, museum/library, gravesite and more. But, it also includes any video that CSPAN has on each president and there is a surprising amount of information here.

Obama Budget Interactive

I have lived off and on in DC for most of my life and therefore grew up w. the Wash Post, but now that I am mostly paperless, I can't say enough for the NYTimes. This graphic on the budget is one such example. It allows you to see the big picture or drill down and see more specifics on the budget. It also allows you to look at both the 2010 and 2011 budget. In case you are curious, here is what we are doing in class with this budget interactive and the one from the OMB.

Net Neutrality
I like to have the students look at the changes from the Federalist & Republican (Anti-Federalist) parties to today and have the issues keep changing. New netrality, obviously is a much newer one and a great one to discuss with your students as the video from earlier today can attest.

Budget Charts
The White House has done a great job at putting helpful information online. If you look at the budget tables you will see such items as the total debt of the US from 1940 - present (table 7.1) and the US surpluses/deficits from 1789 to 2015 (Table 1.1).