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This research paper seeks to explain why celebrities appear before congressional committee hearings between 1973 and 1999 by evaluating the personal ambitions of members of Congress and the collective goals of congressional committees. Using logistic regression, I use Fenno's committee typology (Prestige, Constituent, and Policy) to predict which committees are most likely to invite celebrity witnesses. I also test various individual-level markers of ambition for committee chairs to predict which committee chair is most likely to invite a celebrity witness. In sum, the results appear to suggest that "prestige" committees and chairs who are ideological outliers are more likely to invite celebrity witnesses than other committee chairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On January 1, 2000, the NAACP formally initiated a tourism boycott of the state of South Carolina, to be lifted only when the Confederate flag was removed from atop the capitol building. The 2000 state legislative session was consumed with the flag debate and resulted in the flag's movement to its current location: a flagpole in front of the capitol. My analysis of legislative votes on the issue will demonstrate the significant role played by Republican legislators in blocking the flag's removal from statehouse grounds and the failure of Democratic legislators to cohere around the NAACP's legislative agenda. In this paper I argue that the outcome of the legislative vote on the issue was the result of hesitancy and ambivalence on the part of white Democrats, who remained undecided about the strategic benefits of embracing this civil rights issue. White Republicans on the other hand moved decisively and dramatically within the legislature and embraced a racially conservative position on the flag. This case study provides further evidence of the shifting positions of the parties within the South in respect to civil rights issues. The symbolic nature of the dispute provides more clarity regarding the ideological components of civil rights since participants were forced to speak normatively about their stand on the issue. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past forty years, the use of discriminatory voting devices such as poll-taxes and literacy tests have been completely eliminated, voter registration and participation among African-Americans and other ethnic minorities have dramatically increased, and the Black Caucus has risen to a position of marked prominence in the U.S. House, all of which is attributable, at least in part, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.Yet the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives began hearings in October 2005 on the renewal of Sections four and five of the VRA which are not scheduled to expire until 2007. Why so early? The answer comes as another question: how can the VRA be altered to meet the voting rights challenges of the twenty-first century, and pass judicial scrutiny?This paper will attempt to address this question in three parts: Part I will briefly sketch the history of the VRA, with particular attention to the debate in Congress leading up to the 1982 renewal of the Act and subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions which have impacted the effectiveness of Sections four and five. Part II will then analyze the solution to the problem as offered by J. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center and former Section Chief of the Voting Rights Section of the Department of Justice. Part III will then discuss additional changes which the author believes would augment the effectiveness of the Mr. Hebert's proposal. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martha Alito's emotional breakdown during her husband's 2005 Senate Confirmation Hearings indicated to many that the Senate engaged in character assassination rather than information gathering about Samuel Alito, Jr. Using the Bales' Interaction Process Analysis and other methodology, I will code eight Senate hearings spanning 8 presidents, from Justice John Harlan to Samuel Alito, Jr. for evidence to determine whether the Senate has lost its sense of civility toward Supreme Court nominees over the past 50 years.The Bales' Interaction process "sees the group's activity as divided between two foci: an external component directed toward problem solution, task activity or dealing with the environment; and an internal component aimed at meeting the needs of the members, keeping the group together, and the expression of feeling" (Lutzger 1969, 143). This group-level analysis quantifies the interaction of group members using twelve categories, ranging from "giving suggestions" to "showing antagonism" where the speaker deflates the status of another or defends or asserts self. (Lutzger 1969, 144). Lutzger coded the interaction of the committee members at hearings with each other and with the hearing witness. My analysis will include the confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito (2005), Stephen Breyer (1994), Clarence Thomas (1991), Sandra Day O'Connor (1981), William Rehnquist (1971), Abe Fortas (1965) , Byron White (1962), and John Harlan (1955). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article compares the questioning of celebrity and non-celebrity witnesses by members of the U.S. Congress using a previously developed analytical technique known as Bales' Interaction Process Analysis. It raises some important and interesting questions about celebrity appearances before Congress, including the nature of the content of celebrity testimony and whether celebrities appeal to emotion or do they invoke facts and appear to members of Congress as serious, knowledgeable and convincing witnesses.