Recommendations of the Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission

The Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission issued their recommendations to the Legislature yesterday. The Commission was established by SJR 22 during last year’s legislative session, “to conduct a fact-finding study on immigration issues and to issue a commission report outlining suggestions and proposals to address the issues of illegal and legal immigration in Alabama to the Legislature, Governor, and members of the Alabama Congressional Delegation.”

The recommendations span the following categories: Federal Government, Public Education, Public Benefits, Public Health, Public Safety, Workforce, and Legal.

According to the Commission’s charge, “All meetings of the commission shall be open to the public and all documents, testimony, minutes of discussions, and other commission documents shall be made available to the press and the public.” Unfortunately I can’t find any of the documentation where they say how they arrived at these recommendations.

More coverage is available from al.com.

We’re #49!

The Campaign Disclosure Project recently released its report, Grading State Disclosure 2007, in which states were evaluated on “four specific areas of campaign finance disclosure: state campaign disclosure laws; electronic filing programs; accessibility of campaign finance information; and the usability of state disclosure web sites.”

Alabama received an overall grade of F and rank of 49 (Wyoming is #50; Washington is #1).  In the state-by-state summary, it is noted that Alabama’s rank in usability of the disclosure web site dropped 15 places from the 2005 to 2007 reports.

Previous reports available: 2005, 2004, 2003

Wikipedia

As a librarian, I get to sit in meetings or read articles/discussion lists and hear people rant about the evils of Wikipedia.  Full confession: I use Wikipedia.  I even edit it occasionally!  And, even though this isn’t really documents-related, I decided to post this here:  the Pew Internet and the American Life project did a survey and discovered that roughly 36% of american adult internet users consult Wikipedia.  Not only that, they found that Wikipedia was more popular among the well-educated [considered someone with a college degree].  This adds an interesting wrinkle to the debate!

Federal libraries

In Tuesday’s Washington Post, “The Regulators” column highlighted the concerns that librarians & industry folks alike have raised regarding the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) decision to downsize or eliminate their public reading room.  The NHTSA reading room is just another in a line of Federal Government libraries to be targeted for elimination - following the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to close most of their regional libraries.  [Alabama is located in EPA region 4,  and the library is located in Atlanta.]

More information can be found on the American Library Association’s web site.