Then you find there’s an interactive program called “ASK THE WHITE HOUSE,” which enables you to submit questions to and have “live chat sessions” with cabinet secretaries, senior White House officials, and even, I gather, the First Lady. But not the president, although he is the only one most people want to question.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/

KIDS LEARN ABOUT U.S. PRESIDENTS

     A special kids’ site about the presidents.

http://kids.aol.com/homework-help/junior/america/presidents

VISITING THE U.S. CAPITOL

     Used to be that anyone could wander unhampered around the Capitol and congressional office buildings. Then, in 1983, a bomb went off in the Senate chamber at 10:58 p.m., on a night the Senate had planned to work late. It had adjoined earlier, however, and no one was hurt. This led to identification tags for employees, but things rocked along pretty easily for a few more years. In 1998 a mentally ill man killed two Capitol policemen, and those policing positions, where retired police officers once collected easy money, ceased to be a sinecure. Then it came out that the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on 9-11-01 was almost certainly headed for the Capitol. That tore it. You can still visit your senator or representative’s office, in fact they’d like you to do so, but you will be searched first. Here is a list of forbidden objects:

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/visit/prohibited-items.cfm

     But you can still take a Capitol tour:

http://www.house.gov/house/tour_services.shtml

     Or you can take a C-Span video tour of the Capitol while still at home:

http://www.c-span.org/capitolhistory/

KIDS IN THE HOUSE

     Here kids can learn about the U.S. House of Representatives.

http://clerkkids.house.gov/congress/index.html

KIDS IN THE SENATE

     Here kids can learn about the U.S. Senate.

http://www.congressforkids.net/Legislativebranch_senate.htm

VISITING THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

     Many people don’t realize that it’s possible for an ordinary citizen to sit in the Supreme Court chamber and listen to the justices question attorneys in a case before the court. Of course, you must time your visit for a date when the justices are hearing oral arguments. After the justices have heard arguments on the cases before them, they hole up in their private quarters to write their opinions. If you tour the Court on one of those days, you will merely see the empty courtroom.

     Here is the SUPREME COURT’s official site, and why they had to make every document a pdf you must download onto your computer I do not know, but idiocy abounds everywhere.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/

FOLLOW THE COURT CASES IN OYEZ

     OYEZ, a website about the Supreme Court, is much more accommodating than the Supreme Court’s own website. If you are interested in a case before the Supreme Court, you can follow it in OYEZ.

http://www.oyez.org/

     OYEZ allows you to “browse the justices” and hear them speak, and it even has a blog called SCOTUS. Which blog is boring unless you have a professional interest. But, SCOTUS has a wiki feature, meaning that people can put their own comments into that part of the blog. This is called the PRAWFS BLAWG, “Where Intellectual Honesty Has (Almost Always) Trumped Partisanship Since 2005.” I don’t think they’d allow just anyone to post comments on a PRAWFS debate, but I noticed some comments are decidedly irreverent, and PRAWFS do seem to have more fun than other watchers of the Supremes.

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2008/02/congress-revers.html

KIDS LEARN ABOUT THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

     A kids’ site about the Supreme Court.

http://www.surfnetkids.com/supremecourt.htm