U.S. Congress

Freedom of speech—the right to express opinions without government restraint—is a democratic ideal that dates back to ancient Greece. In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees free speech, though the United States, like all modern democracies, places limits on this ...read more

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of speech, religion and the press. It also protects the right to peaceful protest and to petition the government. The amendment was adopted in 1791 along with nine other amendments that make up the Bill of Rights ...read more

The Second Amendment, often referred to as the right to bear arms, is one of 10 amendments that form the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791 by the U.S. Congress. Differing interpretations of the amendment have fueled a long-running debate over gun control legislation and the ...read more

The three branches of the U.S. government are the legislative, executive and judicial branches. According to the doctrine of separation of powers, the U.S. Constitution distributed the power of the federal government among these three branches, and built a system of checks and ...read more

The veto power of the U.S. president is one way of preventing the legislative branch of the federal government from exercising too much power. The U.S. Constitution gives the president the power to veto, or reject, legislation that has been passed by Congress. What Does Veto ...read more

The legislative branch of the federal government, composed primarily of the U.S. Congress, is responsible for making the country’s laws. The members of the two houses of Congress—the House of Representatives and the Senate—are elected by the citizens of the United States. Powers ...read more

Daylight saving time has been controversial almost from its inception, and there’s been no shortage of myths and misunderstandings surrounding the concept of “spring forward, fall back.” But one of the more unusual aspects of daylight saving time involves the candy lobby and one ...read more

The newly declassified JFK files have been getting a lot of hype recently, but there’s another group of documents that historians and activists would like to release: The federal government’s files on unsolved murders related to the Civil Rights movement. In fact, a group of ...read more

Social Security numbers serve as sort of a national ID for American citizens, but it wasn’t always that way. When economist Edwin Witte helped develop the Social Security Act of 1935, the numbers were solely a way to keep track of the new retirement payment system. Witte and his ...read more

A filibuster is a political strategy in which a senator speaks—or threatens to speak—for hours on end to delay efforts to vote for a bill. The unusual tactic takes advantage of a U.S. Senate rule that says a senator, once recognized on the floor, may speak on an issue without ...read more

The U.S. House of Representatives is the lower house of Congress and plays a vital role, along with the Senate, in the process of moving proposed legislation to law. The bicameral relationship between the two bodies is vital to the American system of checks and balances that the ...read more

The United States Senate is the upper house of the legislative branch of the federal government, with the House of Representatives referred to as the lower house. In the United States, the terms “upper” and “lower” house are not literal; they date back to a time in the 1780s ...read more

In the summer of 1807, the city of Richmond, Virginia, played host to one of the most remarkable trials in early American history. The case involved several legal luminaries, but its undisputed star was the defendant, 51-year-old Aaron Burr. The New Jersey native had only ...read more

1. Delving into an Early Army Disaster On November 4, 1791, some 900 U.S. army troops under the command of Gen. Arthur St. Clair, a Revolutionary War veteran, were killed or wounded in a surprise attack by Native American warriors on the Ohio frontier. The following year, in ...read more

There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about the content of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. In full, it stipulates that, “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives ...read more

1. She struggled to find her calling. After graduating with a degree in biology from the newly opened University of Montana, located in her hometown of Missoula, Rankin got a job as a schoolteacher. But she quickly grew bored and restless, quitting only to find herself equally ...read more

Blanche K. Bruce The son of an enslaved black woman and her white master, Blanche Bruce grew up a house servant on plantations in Virginia, Mississippi and Missouri. He had a privileged upbringing by slave standards and was permitted to study with a private tutor, but when the ...read more

1. Winston Churchill (1963) The former British prime minister and staunch American ally during World War II was the first foreign national to receive honorary United States citizenship. Eight states had already granted honorary citizenship to Churchill, whose mother was ...read more