After reading Will Bunch cringing about Trump’s address to the UN last week and China summit, and yet another Natalie Harp expose on the Daily Beast, my thought is “how can we get out of this mess?”.

Finding voting records on your state representative

Recently, I wanted to get information on the voting record of my representative in the Oregon House of Representatives. Oregon does have an online portal (Oregon Legislative Information System) to allow people to investigate legislation and voting records. From review of the online interface, it was easy to search for bills by bill number, and to get various information on those bills, but I did not see a way to get the voting record for my representative.

Fortunately, OLIS has an OData API to be able to create queries and get data from the system. Together with Claude Code, I was able to create several Python scripts to be able to get the voting record for a representative (House or Senate). I am linking to these scripts as Gists on Github for now, I am not sure yet if I want to create a repo for them. However, they may help others to have some examples to start their own investigations.

getMeasures.py (get a list of bills)
getEnactedMeasures.py (bills that have passed and become law)
getVotesOnLaws.py
getVotingRecord.py (get a voting record for a representative for a specific legislative session)

Saw this at Walmart today – loved it!

Tropical Storm Bertha is making landfall. What is not happening is any mention of the phrase “Gulf of Mexico”. (NBC, CBS, CNN) – just “Gulf” or “Gulf Coast”. Hmph!

Gregg Nunziata talks with Richard Bernstein, former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, about the Supreme Court’s blockbuster term — election law, tariffs, the National Guard, and birthright citizenship — and whether the Court would stop a president who tried to seize ballots in the 2026 election. (Spoiler alert: he thinks there are enough votes on the Supreme Court to stop this). I enjoyed this episode, it covered a number of cases I was not aware of in the latest term of the Supreme Court.

The Just Security site has published a list of its recent stories concerning ICE/BP activities in Minnesota. Today’s story (The Top 10 Questions The Trump Admin Needs to Answer About Minnesota) is definitely what journalists and Congress should be asking.

At The Bulwark, Bill Kristol’s Morning Shots newsletter for today has two great pieces on the people of Minneapolis and the departure of Greg Bovino – an excellent read!

A prayer for Minneapolis

Another week, another murder in Minneapolis by ICE agents after the murder of Renee Good. Today at Mass, one of our songs had a verse that was especially appropriate for the situation in Minneapolis and our country:

In the midst of persecution, Lord, stand by me

When my enemies surround me, Lord, stand by me

When the tyrant wields his terror and the armies wage their might

When the darkness overwhelms me, Lord, stand by me

Remembrance of the 5th anniversary of the January 6th Insurrection

Here we are, five years later…some people would say that the insurrectionists won (Trump is back in office, Jan6 insurrectionists were pardoned). We still have a democracy, but it is heading towards authoritarianism. I hope the results will eventually head back towards democracy.

Previously on this weblog:

Other coverage:

Frank McPherson
Politico – Back in power 5 years later, Trump has all but erased the stain of Jan. 6
NPR – This Jan. 6 plaque was made to honor law enforcement. It’s nowhere to be found at the Capitol
New York Times – Jamie Raskin: Jan. 6 Never Ended
Joyce Vance/Civil Discourse – January 6th Again
Joyce Vance/Civil Discourse – The Dangerous Revision of Jan 6 History on the WH Website
Garrett Graff/Doomsday Scenario – Five Ways to Remember January 6th
CNN – The political divide over January 6 is only deepening five years after the deadly US Capitol attack
US House of Representatives – Democrats hold a meeting to mark the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Jack Smith testimony transcript (also local copy)
Video of Jack Smith testimony

With the Trump act of war on Venezuela, I am resuming capturing the CNN live blog for this topic at my Linkblog47 linkblog.