Founded by Ralph Nader in 1971, Public Citizen is the consumer's eyes and ears in Washington. Claiming six divisionsone mission, the organization offers a variety of consumer services, including the latest news on corporate welfare, health care reform, and civil rights. You can learn about the many activities to which Public Citizen devotes its energies, including engaging in a wide variety of public interest litigation in federal circuit and state courts around the country; working to decrease reliance on nuclear and fossil fuels while promoting alternative energy sources; and informing the American public about the enormous impact of international trade and economic globalization on jobs, the environment, public health, and safety. Bookmark this oneits a great site to gather a multitude of critical information that an informed public should have. - Emily Soares
The Union of Concerned Scientists was formed in 1969 to protest the misuse of science and technology, a hot topic in these days of sheep cloning and genetic engineering. Its causes include promoting renewable energy, halting widespread destruction of the earth's natural resources, and forcing the shutdown of the country's oldest nuclear power plant. At the site you can review current legislative and policy debates, join one of the unions Action Networks, and review its publications on such topics as arms control, agriculture and biotechnology, energy, global resources, and transportation. - Rachel Saidman
It's all too easy to focus on current events in the U.S. and Europe and ignore the issues and problems of Third World countries. One World, "a community of over 120 leading global justice organizations," takes the concept of global community to a higher level by cataloging events in countries worldwide. You can access a vast amount of information through the various indexes, or search the database of articles and press releases to find the news youre looking for. Its an excellent resource for people who like to be globally informed. - Rachel Saidman
Human Rights Watch exposes human rights abusesincluding summary executions; torture; arbitrary detention; restrictions on freedoms of expression, association, assembly, and religion; and racial, gender, ethnic, and religious discriminationin more than 70 countries worldwide. The organization publicizes and documents abuses in such countries as China, Bosnia, Malaysia, Burma, and Haiti in the hopes of influencing other governments to impose sanctions. This Web site urges visitors to use the sample letters to key officials protesting governmental actions/policies as a starting point for their own involvement. Don't miss the Research section, where you can order and view summaries of Human Rights Watch reports on specific countries. - Rachel Saidman
The New Conservative World looks a lot like the old one, with sound bytes youll have trouble forgetting: Learn about the National Endowment for the Arts conspiracy to have other federal agencies steal more of your tax dollars for the arts!" I tried to go to the Rush Room for Netcasts of the Rush Limbaugh show, but my computer crashed (really, it did). New and old conservatives alike will find lots of resources here, including headline news, links to conservative organizations, and discussions on such hot topics as abortion and tax reform. Democrats and other liberals should probably avoid this site to keep their blood pressure down. - Rachel Saidman
It's hard to resist the idea of tax reform. I don't know of anyone who doesn't look at his or her paycheck stub every month and bemoan the amount of money paid to the government. The Federal Tax Reform Network, a nonpartisan group committed to tax reform, proposes two ways to improve the system: the Consumption Tax, which replaces income tax with a tax on the consumption of good and services, and the Flat Tax. While this site may not be a bad place to begin researching tax reform, I know there are more than two possible solutions to this hugely complicated issue, and I wouldnt rely on this site as the definitive source of information. - Rachel Saidman
Reason Online has an argument for everyone except unswerving centrists. Those who believe that the marketplace's invisible hand would tidy up our messy polity in a jiffy if only it were freed from the shackles of government bureaucracywill find plenty of support for their views in this libertarian magazine's online archives and selected current articles. Right- and left-wingers, meanwhile, will find themselves both nodding in agreement and shaking their heads in disgust. In addition to Reason editorials, features, columns, book reviews, interviews, and cartoons from 1994 on, Reason Online offers a vast and varied selection of links, as well as utilities that let you search the full Reason index and the Web site. - Sandra Stewart
This public-policy research foundation sees itself as torchbearer of the nation's founding ideals and urges that its philosophy be labeled "market liberal." But most people think of Cato simply as a libertarian think tank. However you want to describe the institute's views, you'll find plenty of them here. This extensive, searchable site gives you RealAudio archives of events held at Cato's Washington, D.C., headquarters; summaries and downloadable full texts of articles from Cato's array of publications; and transcripts of speeches and congressional testimony by Cato staff. It's an excellent resource for anyone researching public policy alternatives in general or the libertarian view in particular. - Sandra Stewart
Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) is a California advocacy organization devoted to promoting environmentally sensitive, family-scale agriculture that sustains local economies. Here you can keep up with the organization's current campaigns and find out how to participate; get the basics on sustainable agriculture; peruse an alphabetical list of community-supported farms, which for a regular fee will send you weekly shipments of fresh produce; locate a farmer's market; and learn how to control cucumber beetles, stink bugs, and other pests without chemicals. The site is limited by its exclusive focus on California resources and lack of in-depth material on sustainable agriculture, but it's worth a look if you live in the state and want to grow or eat organic produce. - Sandra Stewart
Site of the month!!
President Kennedy went to the brink of nuclear war protecting his right to assassinate Fidel Castro. Doctors injected plutonium into a poor black man who suffered a few bone fractures in a car accident, just to see what it would do. And Elvis conspired with Nixon to subvert the hippies. Horribly true and well documented, these facts are all found in the National Security Archive. Part library, part public interest law firm, part publishing company, the National Security Archive liberates documents from the seedy government labyrinths in which they lay. Armed with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), grants from philanthropists, and an unflinching crew of journalists, lawyers, and historians, the non-profit archive has gathered documents, pictures, audio tapes, and transcripts from decades of secrecy. Together they give a true picture of the secret missions and foreign policy of your government over the last 50 years. Not all of that can be accessed on this site, however; documentation of the Iran-Contra Affair is more than 20,000 pages alone. Most of the site is an overview of documents and publications available through the archive, and only those willing to travel to the actual archive at George Washington University can browse through it all. Despite this limited access and a few misuses of HTML, which render download times unnecessarily slow, a visit to the site is still worthwhile. The information should provide hours of family entertainment and learning on the inner workings of the U.S. government. Find the details of one of the Department of Energys less-popular programs, where doses of ionizing radiation were given to the poor, retarded, and elderly (that's one way to cut back on Medicare); or explore the archive's detailed findings of JFK's obsession with killing Castro, which lead to the the Cuban Missile Crisis. The archive also offers a resource for doing your own fun FOIA requests. The single most popular thing in the archive is the illustrious photo of The King and tricky Dick. Apparently the meeting occurred after Elvis slipped a note to guards at the White House gates asking Nixon to make him "an agent-at-large" in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. A short time later, the two had a public meeting where Elvis babbled about how the Beatles raped the country and insisted that he could stop the counterculture movement. Nixon, of course, agreed and gave Elvis an honorary appointment. - Robert Capps