Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman on Wednesday resumed a perennial attempt by some lawmakers and open government advocates to make reports produced by the Congressional Research Service more easily accessible to the public. In a letter to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer, he called for an automatically updated clearinghouse for the documents so "those with power and those without have equal access to this important resource."

Over the past decade, a series of bills requiring public access to CRS reports has made little progress, including a 2007 measure introduced by former Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. Under the chairmanship of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., last Congress, the Rules Committee authorized CRS to create software to let senators place individual reports on their Web sites. That did not go far enough, Lieberman wrote. Read the full story here.

Also: The FTC and members of Congress Wednesday expressed outrage over the surge in Internet con artists trying to cash in on the $787 billion economic stimulus bill President Barack Obama signed into law two weeks ago. FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Acting Director Eileen Harrington said complaints about scams "mushroomed overnight" and the agency is working with popular Web services like Facebook and Google to crack down on crooks. Read the full story here.