Texas legislature in fiction

A post from our friends in the LRL library.

The Texas Legislature in Fiction
July 30, 2012
posted by TexasLRL in Interesting documents
While Texas and its people are a popular subject for fiction, rarely does the Texas Legislature take a starring role. The novels below, arranged alphabetically by author, represent a wide variety of genres and time periods, but are connected by their focus on Texas lawmakers, either as characters or as a major part of the setting. Some of these titles are available in the Legislative Reference Library's collection; the rest can be found in libraries throughout the state. (cont)

Texas Legislative Summaries now available

The House Research Organization (HRO), the Senate Research Center (SRC), and the Texas Legislative Council (TLC) have now published overviews of the session's accomplishments. Read more at the LRL's post titled 82nd Session Legislative Summaries.

Uniform Law Commission passes UELMA

Seen on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog:

ULC Passes Act to Promote Authentication, Preservation and Access to State Laws and Rules


Last night in its 120th annual meeting in Vail, Colorado, the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) passed the Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act (UELMA) in order to provide a set of rules for states to follow to establish "an outcomes-based, technology-neutral framework for providing online material with the same level of trustworthiness traditionally provided by publication in a law book." (cont)

Texas Session Laws - 82nd Regular Session

Brief post from the Legislative Reference Library of Texas blog regarding finding session laws and signed bill copies from the recent regular session of the Legislature.

School Finance in Texas

The Legislative Reference Library of Texas compiled some links about state finance in Texas.

Free state statutory law - ready for prime time?

I read Paul Hellyer's article "Research at Your Own Risk: Free online statutory codes are widely available, but are they good enough to meet users' needs?" (AALL Spectrum, February 2011, pp. 18-19) and was dismayed to find that most states still do not have current statutes and codes online, and some do not even indicate when the last update was. Hellyer conducted his research during 2010, three years after the AALL report, State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources, in which the same conclusion was reached.

Research at Your Own Risk: Free online statutory codes are widely available, but are they good enough to meet users' needs?

State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources

Reminder - the LRL has a new blog

A message from the Legislative Reference Library of Texas:

Hello ALL,

The LRL now has a blog, What's New, where we will post timely updates on legislative topics, new policy reports of interest, current events or hot topics, new or updated electronic resources at the LRL, legislative process and procedure, and interesting facts or useful sources that we uncover in our research. Recent posts include New interim reports, New laws taking effect January 1, 2011, Membership statistics for the 82nd Legislature, and Use Twitter to stay current on the Texas Legislature, and we have a regular Week in Review feature with new policy articles and reports.

We invite you to visit the blog often for updates, and add us to your RSS feed. We are also on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TexasLRL .

Best regards,

Melanie Harshman
Administrative Librarian
Legislative Reference Library

A note from Melanie Harshman of the Legislative Reference Library

A note from Melanie Harshman of the Legislative Reference Library:

Just wanted to let you all know, the Legislative Reference Library recently launched a redesigned website: http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/

New search and navigation options include:

• More informative menu categories
• Drop down menus to show the major sections in each category
• Menus on the left side of each second-level page which contain links to other pages within each category
• The ability to search Legislative Archive System and the Library catalog from the home page

 We've also added some new content. New features include:

• A revised and improved guide to researching legislative history and intent http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/legis/legIntent/legIntent.cfm
• Expanded information about Lieutenant Governors http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/legeLeaders/ltgovernors/ltgovbrowse.cfm
• Session snapshot pages which provide easy access to information about each legislative session http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/sessions/sessionYears.cfm
• More options for searching for legislative committees http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/committees/index.cfm
• A timeline of significant Texas water legislation http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/legis/waterTimeLine.cfm
• Easier access to online collections, including historical House and Senate Journals, House and Senate Rules, and Session Laws http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/collections/index.cfm
• Answers to frequently asked questions http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/genInfo/FAQ.cfm
• State agency hotlines and citizen assistance information http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/genInfo/stateAgencies.cfm

We also have a new collection of scanned session laws from Hein Online covering 1824 – 2007. We can provide individual session laws on request.

We also have a blog now - so check us out! Here is the site announcement on the blog: http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/whatsNew/client/index.cfm/2010/11/29/Welcome-to-our-new-site

New UK legislative web site

I rarely have to research United Kingdom law, but this post from the new In Custodia Legis blog from the Law Library of Congress regarding the new UK legislative web site had me in stitches. Go read it for yourself!

Legislative Archive System

Email sent from Melanie Harshman regarding the new Legislative Archive System.

The Legislative Reference Library is pleased to announce the Legislative Archive System containing scanned bill files from the 57th Legislature (1961) - 77th Legislature (2001) is now available the public.

From the LRL homepage, www.lrl.state.tx.us, click on "Legislative Archive System" on the left. It works best with Internet Explorer.

You can also perform Advanced Searches, which allows searching bill captions across all sessions, and searching authors, subjects and actions across certain sessions. A detailed list of what options are available for each session is here: http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/research/billsearch/LASstatus.cfm

We also have a new "Bill Search" option on our website. This allows you to search by bill or chapter number, then link directly to the Legislative Archive System bill file, as well as other documents such as interim reports that may have followed implementation of the legislation.

We would be most appreciate of any problems, feedback or suggestions you may have using the system.

Best regards,
Melanie

Melanie Harshman
Administrative Librarian
Legislative Reference Library

Texas legislative timeline

I just found this while looking at the Legislative Reference Library website - a timeline of Texas legislative history. It gives a chart and narrative timeline of the different publications of the statutes and the recodification project. It's worth a look, and a tool for those summer associates who need to understand just how these funny black statutes work.

AALL Washington Affairs

FYI: AALL's Washington Affairs office publishes their newsletter and other papers at http://www.aallnet.org/aallwash/.

Conference reports

Unites States Congress Conference Reports
http://www.conferencereport.gpoaccess.gov/DefaultN.aspx

More information on this service: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/confrpts/index.html%20This This links to the current and previous congress's conference reports.

Tip of the hat to BeSpacific.com http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/016477.html

Federal legislation trackers

The Government Domain: 'Insanely Useful' Legislative Sites
By Peggy Garvin
Published on July 27, 2007
LLRX.com

Good article discussing federal legislative tracking web sites. Includes reviews of

• Congresspedia
• GovTrack
• LOUIS
• OpenCongress
• WashingtonWatch
• Where a Bill becomes a Law

Garvin notes that many of the sites depend on data provided by THOMAS.

Capitol Letters blog

August DALL meeting today:

Karen Brooks from the Dallas Morning News gave us the scoop on covering the most recent Texas legislative session via the Capitol Letters blog. (http://texaslegislature.beloblog.com/) It was quite an eye-opener.

If you do visit the blog, make sure you click on the links under Archives; the blog is on hiatus at the moment.

Civil Liberties Issues

BeSpacific.com has a post on recent civil liberty issues regarding amendments to FISA. (“Protect America Act of 2007,” S.1927)

More meeting details

August - bloggers from the Capital Letter Blog from the DMN
September - speakers from American Lawyer Media.

Details: http://www.dallnet.org/calendar.asp

Federal Public and Private Laws

Tip of the hat to - BeSpacific.com http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/014941.html

GPO’s Authentication initiative focuses on the primary objective of assuring users that the information made available by GPO is official and authentic and that trust relationships exist between all participants in electronic transactions. In furthering GPO’s mission to provide permanent public access to authentic U.S. Government publications, GPO is working to afford users further assurance that files are unchanged since GPO authenticated them.

The Public and Private Laws Beta application provides authenticated Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files for the 110th Congress only. Public and private laws within this application contain PDF files digitally signed and certified by GPO. These files have been digitally signed and certified using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology.

Source: http://fdlpdev.gpo.gov/plaws/index.html

Legislative wrap-up

The Dallas Morning News has a chart of bills that did and did not pass, with a brief description of each. You can find more information on bills at http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/Home.aspx.

If you go to http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/Reports/General.aspx, you can look for reports of bills that were filed, effective immediately, effective in 90 days, and other reports.

The Spy Act

Ed Foster really keeps on top of legal issues that affect consumers in the computer world. Here's a few snippets from a posting today on H.R. 964:

Last week a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce
approved H.R. 964, the Spy Act, which bans some of the more blatant forms of
spyware such as those that hijack computer or log keystrokes. The bill now goes
to the full committee for approval, and it's expected to move quickly as it has
strong bipartisan support.
...
Let's sum up. If the Spy Act become law,
hardware, software, and network vendors will be granted carte blanche to use
spyware themselves to police their customers' use of their products and
services. Incredibly broad exceptions will probably allow even the worst of the
adware outfits to operate with legal cover. State attempts to deal with the
spyware problem will be pre-empted and enforcement left up almost entirely to
the FTC. Gee, what's not to like in that deal?