Do you want to find out about the status of a particular piece of legislation that is in the news? Or how your state's U.S. senator or the U.S. representative from your district voted on a specific bill? The best place to start is the Library of Congress's Thomas site (http://thomas.loc.gov).

If you have an interest in a particular policy area, the Internet offers all sorts of options. For example, you can learn about education policy by visiting the U.S. Department of Education web site (www.ed.gov/). If you want to find out about environmental programs, visit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency site (www.epa.gov).

The news media are another important source of information on various policies and programs. Some web sites specialize in collecting links to other sites that deal with specific issues. A good example is found at http://speakout.com.

As an exercise, see what you can find out about the latest interest-rate policies of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. You can start by going to www.economagic.com/fedbog.htm, but you might also want to explore various news media, such as www.cnnfn.com, http://cnbc.com, or www.bloomberg.com. What was the most recent decision of the Fed board concerning interest rates? What are the policy specialists saying about future policy directions? Will the Fed raise or lower interest rates over the next few months?