A resource is a source or supply from which benefit is produced. Typically resources cannot be consumed in their original form, but rather through development and investigation, they can be processed into more usable things. Following is a list of cloud resources for you to use and investigate as we explore the subject of American government and political science in general. Consider this page a thought dumpster as we explore the implications and different nuances of American and world politics.

FRONTLINE

FRONTLINE is a public affairs program that produces and broadcasts in-depth documentaries about various subjects. Produced at WGBH-TV in Boston, Massachusetts, and distributed through the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States, the program has been critically acclaimed and received numerous awards. 

FRONTLINE offers an unflinching and compelling look at complex, vital, and often-controversial subjects. Each broadcast consists of a long-form news documentary. Topics run the gamut such as Bernie Madoff's intricate fraud, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, AIDs, racial issues, and Wal-Mart's effect on the U.S. economy.

The Civil War by Ken Burns

Between 1861 and 1865, Americans made war on each other and killed each other in great numbers—if only to become the kind of country that could no longer conceive of how that was possible. The Civil War was fought in 10,000 places, with more than 3 million Americans fighting in it, and over 600,000 men—2 percent of the population—dying in it. What began as a bitter dispute over Union and states' rights, ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America. More than Lincoln realized at the time, his 1863 Gettysburg Address was prophetic: the war was about a "new birth of freedom."

The Avalon project

The Avalon Project at Yale University is a collection of several hundred documents in law, history, and diplomacy available in English that date from ancient times to the 21st century. The home page permits users to search the collections and gives access to the documents under the alternate headings of major collections, titles, subjects, and authors. The home page also gives access to the bibliography for the documents, a text comparison (using side-by-side frames) of six documents, a statement of purpose for the project, and a list of new entries.

Because the documents are all in English, most are easy to read and understand. The most difficult are those that were written originally in the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which are transcribed with the spelling and syntax of that era.

national council for the social studies

Founded in 1921, the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) engages and supports educators in strengthening and advocating for social studies. With members in all 50 states and 69 foreign countries, NCSS serves as an umbrella organization for elementary, secondary, and college teachers of history, geography, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and law-related education.

NCSS defines social studies as "the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence." Within the school program, social studies provides coordinated, systematic study drawing upon such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology, as well as appropriate content from the humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences. In essence, social studies promotes knowledge of and involvement in civic affairs. Since civic issues—such as health care, crime, and foreign policy—are multidisciplinary in nature, understanding these issues and developing resolutions to them require multidisciplinary education.

U.S. CapitOl Historical Society

The United States Capitol Historical Society was organized in 1962 to study and interpret to the public the rich heritage of the Capitol building and the United States Congress. It is the only private non-profit educational organization dedicated solely to recording the history of the building and Congress, which serves as the instrument by which the American people govern themselves.

Active in the founding of the Society in 1962 were the bi-partisan leadership of the Congress, respected historians, other interested citizens, and the catalyst and first Society president, Fred Schwengel, then a Congressman from Iowa. All incumbent Members of Congress are honorary members of the Society. The Society, with the support of the National Geographic Society, originated early in its history its first and most successful historical publication: We the People, the Story of the United States Capitol. Now in its 15th edition, more than five million copies of this informative and popular history have been sold in six languages.

The Society realizes the great need for providing factual information and insight into the history of the nation to both young and old. It promotes an informed body of citizens able to recognize the blessing that is America’s representative system of government, the sacrifice that has brought it about, and the legacy of past generations who have preserved and carried it forward.

British Pathé

British Pathé was once a dominant feature of the British cinema experience, renowned for first-class reporting and an informative yet uniquely entertaining style. It is now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in existence. Spanning the years from 1896 to 1976, the collection includes footage from around the globe of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, sports, and culture. The archive is particularly robust in its coverage of the First and Second World Wars. Its entire archive of 85,000 historic films has been uploaded in high resolution to its YouTube channel. This unprecedented release of vintage news reports and cinemagazines is part of a drive to make the archive more accessible to viewers all over the world.

Ted Talks

TED was conceived in 1984 by architect and graphic designer Richard Saul Wurman who observed a convergence of the fields of technology, entertainment, and design. The first conference, organized by Harry Marks and Wurman in the same year, featured demos of the Sony compact disc and one of the first demonstrations of the Apple Macintosh computer. From 1990 onward, a growing community of "TEDsters" gathered annually at the event in Monterey, California, until 2009 when it was relocated to Long Beach due to a substantial increase in attendees. Initially, the speakers had been drawn from the fields of expertise behind the acronym TED, but during the nineties, the roster of presenters broadened to include scientists, philosophers, musicians, religious leaders, philanthropists, and many others. Currently TEDGlobal and TEDx have spun off from the original idea giving the organization a truly global and independent existence. Speakers are not paid, and they must also relinquish the copyrights to their materials, which TED edits and distributes under a Creative Commons license.

Pros and cons

A shortening of the Latin expression "pro et contra" (for and against). ProCon.org is a nonpartisan public charity that provides well-sourced pro, con, and related research on more than 50 controversial issues, from gun control and the death penalty to illegal immigration and alternative energy. With more than 12,000 pages of highly curated, referenced content, ProCon.org provides a platform for people to question information, evaluate opposing views, and debate them in a respectful way.

C-Span Classroom

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David Rumsey Map Collection

Mr. Rumsey's historical map collection has over 67,000 maps and images. The collection includes rare maps of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific region and the world dating from the 16th to the 21st centuries.

The collection categories include celestial, antique atlas, globe, school geography, maritime chart, state, county, city, pocket, wall & case, children's, and manuscript maps. You can search for specific examples such as pictorial maps, United States maps, geology maps, a California map, a New York City map, and U.S. Civil War maps, as well as many others.

There are also browse map categories: What, Where, Who, When. The collection is invaluable and can be used to study politics, history, art, and genealogy.

Annenberg classroom

In spring 2010, a nationally representative, random sample of 866 public high school social studies teachers ranked the Bill of Rights at the top of social studies education consciousness, saying it was absolutely essential for high schools to teach students “to identify the protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.”

Annenberg Classroom was launched in 2011 and connects a comprehensive curriculum on the Constitution to daily civics news and student discussion. Daily, nonpartisan writers sift through national and local news and select current events expressly for social studies classrooms.  At least once a week, they write an article on a portion of this news with links to the multimedia curriculum. One can use these articles — they’re called “Speak Outs” — in class or online. When students “speak out” at AnnenbergClassroom.org, they participate in a moderated, national dialogue with their peers.

the living room candidate

The Museum of the Moving Image's The Living Room Candidate contains more than 300 commercials from every presidential election since 1952 when Madison Avenue advertising executive Rosser Reeves convinced Dwight Eisenhower that short ads played during such popular TV programs as I Love Lucy would reach more voters than any other form of advertising. This innovation had a permanent effect on the way presidential campaigns are run.

Constitutional Rights foundation

The Constitutional Rights Foundation (CRF) is a non-profit, non-partisan, community-based organization dedicated to educating America's young people about the importance of civic participation in a democratic society. CRF seeks to instill in the nation's youth a deeper understanding of citizenship through values expressed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights and to educate young people to become active and responsible participants in society. CRF staff includes teachers and educators, lawyers, community organizers and fundraisers, designers, writers, and editors. They provide technical assistance and training to teachers, coordinate civic participation projects in schools and communities, organize student conferences and competitions, and develop publications in the following areas:

Law and Government programs and materials focus on how groups and individuals interact with the issues, institutions, people and processes that shape our laws and government.

Civic Participation programs and materials bring to life the rights and responsibilities of active citizenship by challenging young people to explore their community and plan and implement projects that address community needs.

Ballotpedia

Ballotpedia cultivates thriving citizenship through the free and open sharing of information and is the online encyclopedia of American politics and elections. Its goal is to inform people about politics by providing accurate and objective information at all levels of government.

Since Ballotpedia's founding in 2007, it has received over 750 million page views. Its work has been referenced in over 6,000 media outlets, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Politico. Ballotpedia covers local, state, and federal politics and, with an editorial staff of over 60 writers and researchers, its content includes neutral, accurate, and verifiable information on government officials and the offices they hold, political issues and public policy, elections, candidates, and the influencers of politics. Ballotpedia currently has over 220,000 encyclopedic articles.

The Silk Road

The Silk Road was a network of trade routes, formally established during the Han Dynasty of China, which linked the regions of the ancient world in commerce. As the Silk Road was not a single thoroughfare from east to west, the term 'Silk Routes’ has become increasingly favored by historians, though 'Silk Road’ is the more common and recognized name. Both terms for this network of roads were coined by the German geographer and traveler, Ferdinand von Richthofen, in 1877, who designated them 'Seidenstrasse’ (silk road) or 'Seidenstrassen’ (silk routes). The network was used regularly from 130 BC, when the Han officially opened trade with the west, to 1453 AD, when the Ottoman Empire boycotted trade with the west and closed the routes.

The oldest CONTINUOUS culture on earth

Archaeologists believe that the Aboriginals first migrated to the Australian continent around 70,000 years ago.

Aboriginals themselves, however, trace their creation back to the Dreamtime, an era long past when the earth was first formed. One Aboriginal man explained it thus:

‘By Dreaming we mean the belief that long ago these creatures started human society, they made all natural things and put them in a special place.

’These Dreaming creatures were connected to special places and special roads or tracks or paths. In many places the great creatures changed themselves into sites where their spirits stayed.

’Aboriginals have a special connection with everything that is natural. Aboriginals see themselves as part of nature … All things on earth we see as part human. It is true that people who belong to a particular area are really part of that area and if that area is destroyed they are also destroyed.’