The Legislative Branch

Tomorrow's topic is Congress, the institution that is vested with the American national government's legislative power. Instead of talking about it, we'll watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a 1939 film that highlights (among other things) the rules-drivenness of the House and Senate chambers and the implications this has for how and when laws are passed.

In the US's bicameral Congress, the two legislative houses function as largely separate institutions -- they have separate memberships, leadership structures, and procedural rules. You can read about it all on their separate websites, one for the Senate and one for the House of Representatives. The Senate and House sites also serve as portals to the individual websites of each member of Congress (for example, here's the for Yvette Clarke, the representative for the NY district where I grew up; ISU, meanwhile, falls into IL's 11th district, represented by Jerry Weller). You might also check out the C-SPAN website, which has a wealth of multimedia resources and information on day-to-day congressional developments.

On a lighter note, here's a quiz on how you measure up as a 1930s spouse to give you a feel for the time period in which Mr. Smith was produced, and a modern-day Simpsons parody, Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington.