PoliticalGraveyard.com

News and Bulletins About The Site

Comments and Questions

Sunday, May 13, 2012

A new version is now being installed, with thousands of updates and new people.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Political Graveyard is now coming to you from our new web host, HDL. I have also updated the design of the site and added many new features.

Friday, May 7, 2010

The new version of the site, installed early this morning, adds more than 12,000 new individuals and many more details. The ethnic/religious coding has been revised, so that all ancestry groups, from African to Icelandic, are treated in essentially the same way.

I'm still busy fixing some glitches, but most things are in good shape. Let me know (political graveyard at gmail dot com) if you find anything that doesn't work like it should -- especially if it hasn't been fixed by this weekend.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

I have mostly finished installing the new version of the web site, including 12,000 more people and many updates.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Political Graveyard is moving from Paul Haas's Hamjhudo to HostMonster. This should make the site easier and quicker to access. There will surely be some hiccups in the transition, so please bear with us. I'm hopeful that we can be up and running on the new server within the first few days of February

Many thanks to Paul for being such a generous host for the past ten-plus years!

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).

"Enjoy the hospitable entertainment of a political graveyard." Henry L. Clinton, Apollo Hall, New York City, February 3, 1872

The Political Graveyard is a web site about U.S. political history and cemeteries. Founded in 1996, it is the Internet's most comprehensive free source for American political biography, listing 234,420 politicians, living and dead.
	The coverage of the site includes (1) the President, Vice President, members of Congress, elected state and territorial officeholders in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories; and the chief elected official, typically the mayor, of qualifying municipalities; (2) candidates at election, including primaries, for any of the above; (3) all federal judges and all state appellate judges; (4) certain federal officials, including the federal cabinet, diplomatic chiefs of mission, consuls, U.S. district attorneys, collectors of customs and internal revenue, and members of major federal commissions; and (5) state and national political party officials, including delegates, alternate delegates, and other participants in national party nominating conventions.
	The listings are incomplete; development of the database is a continually ongoing project.
	Information on this page — and on all other pages of this site — is believed to be accurate, but is not guaranteed. Users are advised to check with other sources before relying on any information here.
	The official URL for this page is: http://politicalgraveyard.com/news.html.
	Links to this or any other Political Graveyard page are welcome, but specific page addresses may sometimes change as the site develops.
	If you are searching for a specific named individual, try the alphabetical index of politicians.
	More information: FAQ; privacy policy; cemetery links.
	If you find any error or omission in The Political Graveyard, or if you have information to share, please see the biographical checklist and submission guidelines.
Site information: The Political Graveyard is created and maintained by Lawrence Kestenbaum, who is solely responsible for its structure and content. — The mailing address is The Political Graveyard, P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106. — This site is hosted by HDL. — The Political Graveyard opened on July 1, 1996; the last full revision was done on May 12, 2012.
Copyright notice: Facts are not subject to copyright; see Feist v. Rural Telephone. Original material, programming, selection and arrangement are © 1996-2011 Lawrence Kestenbaum. This work is also licensed for free non-commercial re-use, with attribution, under a Creative Commons License.