You'd Know if You Were Congressional

YOU'D KNOW IF YOU WERE CONGRESSIONAL
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Elizabeth Williamson]
This week, Congressional Research Service chief Daniel P. Mulhollan issued a memo to all staffers in the service, known as Congress's think tank. From now on, he wrote, CRS researchers will require a supervisor's approval before giving any CRS report to a "non-congressional" -- that is fellow researchers in "U.S. government entities and nongovernmental entities, the media and foreign governments, like embassies. The CRS works exclusively for Congress and is legendarily closefisted with its reports. For years, open-government groups and some members of Congress have fought unsuccessfully to put the reports online. Now it comes out that CRS researchers have been trading reports like baseball cards with these special non-congressionals, sharing knowledge on North Korean counterfeiting, wheat subsidies and other topics commissioned by Congress. That can continue, according to Mulhollan's memo, but "prior approval should now be requested at the division or office level."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR200703...
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