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News and Bulletins About The Site
Sunday, October 1, 2006
Political Graveyard in New York Times. Today's New York Times, in an historical sidebar to the Mark Foley scandal titled Hitting a Self-Destruct Button, cites Political Graveyard's trouble and disgrace page, and quotes me on the history of sexual scandals among politicians.
This is the first time that the New York Times has ever mentioned the web site.
Saturday, July 1, 2006
Ten Years of Political Graveyard! On July 1, 1996, ten years ago today, The Political Graveyard first opened to the public, with about 12,000 politicians listed — mostly members of Congress. I had hoped to have the new version ready by now, but with one thing and another, it got delayed. It will be coming soon, though.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
New version now being installed! I'm currently putting up the new version of all Political Graveyard pages. The new pages have the date of March 10, 2005 at the bottom. During the transition, old and new pages will coexist, and some links may not work. Please bear with us.
Sunday, February 6, 2005
I've been getting settled into my new job as Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds, but I'm also still working on getting the long-delayed new version online. Because there are so many changes, I will probably try running a test version first.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Search the site! On the main page, I now have a freetext search function, courtesy of Google. I'd be interested in any comments on this feature.
I'd like to make the the small logo (on the Google site-search results page) background transparent, so that it's not in a white box. If you can help with this, let me know.
New version coming. A complete new version of the web site, with thousands of additions, corrections, and updates, and some new features, will be online soon, I hope by July 4th.
Friday, June 18, 2004
I am a candidate this year for Washtenaw County (Mich.) Clerk and Register of Deeds. I'm unopposed in the August 3rd Democratic primary. I face a Republican incumbent on November 2nd, but this county has become strongly Democratic, and my chances are very good. The campaign web site is KestenbaumCampaign.com.
Win or lose, I plan to continue to update and expand The Political Graveyard.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
House Committee rejects database bill. The House Energy and Commerce Committee unfavorably reported H.R. 3261. Special thanks to committee members John Dingell (D-MI), Joe Barton (R-TX), Cliff Stearns (R-FL), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Rick Boucher (D-VA).
The committee approved a competing and much less drastic measure, H.R. 3872, which deals only with "highly time sensitive" information, and instruct the Federal Trade Commission to take action against unfair trade practices. The two bills (one from Judiciary, the other from Energy and Commerce) may be taken up by the Rules Committee; further bulletins will be posted if that happens, or if database legislation is considered in the Senate.
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
Action needed to stop database bill. The "database protection" bill, H.R. 3261, is moving forward in Congress. This bill would endanger content-based web sites by creating a property right in factual data, allowing "fact owners" to sue in federal court and seize computers and other property. The intent is to reverse the Feist decision ruling that facts can't be copyrighted.
If this bill becomes law, I will be forced to shut down The Political Graveyard to avoid being sued by Marquis Who's Who, Congressional Quarterly, owners of newspaper obituary databases, and probably dozens of other publishers, who could claim that I used a "quantitatively substantial" amount of their data.
See the Public Knowledge Issue Analysis, or the links in the February 1 entry below.
The bill has been reported out of the Judiciary Committee, and is now before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Your help is needed now! Use the Public Knowledge Action Alert. Sign up, and easily generate a fax to the committee members.
Sunday, February 1, 2004
Who owns facts? A very worrisome development in Washington: the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved and sent to the House floor a bill which is claimed to "curb database copying".
The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act of 2003 would make it possible for facts to be "owned". Disclose owned facts, and face a federal lawsuit from the "fact owner".
Previously, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1991 decision Feist v. Rural Telephone, had declared that facts are not copyrightable. This new legislation is an attempt to overturn the Feist decision.
The Political Graveyard web site has a link to the Feist ruling at the bottom of every page. If facts become property, compilations like mine will be placed in severe jeopardy.
For example, I have found many politician birthdates and birthplaces in Marquis Who's Who publications. Under this law, Marquis would own that information, and be entitled to sue me for damages. Moreover, while the suit is pending, they could seize ("impound") all my computers.
The bill is opposed not only by the American Library Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the ACLU, but by Amazon.com, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Google, Yahoo, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
However, the combined effort of these organizations (the NetCoalition) was not sufficient to educate the committee on the costs and risks of this idea.
In support of the bill are database and software firms, including the owners of Lexis/Nexis.
The Association for Computing Machinery is the leading organization of computer professionals. Currently they're polling the membership on whether to take a stand against the legislation. The following comes from that page:
It is common practice in science, education, government, and business to create data collections and make them available for others to use. Under current US law, once data and information are distributed to the public, they enter into the public domain. Researchers and consumers are then free to reuse them in countless ways.Some commercial interests are concerned that their data collections will be used contrary to their interests, and are proposing changes to US law that would create new ownership rights in a wide variety of the data and information collected and contained in online databases. They suggest that the current array of existing US laws are inadequate in that they fail to provide protection from acts of unauthorized uses of data contained in databases.A diverse coalition of database producers and users (the NetCoalition) opposes the broad legislative effort to expand legal protections for collections of data. They have concluded that the proposed legislation will lead to the growing monopolization of the marketplace for information, threatening the freedom individuals have to search, gather and exchange information over the Internet.The bill, H.R. 3261, was reported out by the House Judiciary Committee on January 21, by a vote of 16 to 7. The sponsors are Howard Coble (R-NC), Lamar Smith (TX), James C. Greenwood (PA), F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Michael R. Turner (OH), William D. Delahunt (MA), David L. Hobson (OH), W. J. (Billy) Tauzin (LA), Robert Wexler (FL), and Rob Portman (OH).
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The Political Graveyard is a web site about U.S. political history and cemeteries. It is the Internet's most comprehensive source for American political biography, listing 180,022 politicians, living and dead.
The Political Graveyard is created and maintained by Lawrence Kestenbaum, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who is solely responsible for its structure and content. Web hosting is provided by Paul Haas, of Ypsilanti, Michigan. The site opened on July 1, 1996; the last full revision was done on June 16, 2008.