The blogosphere recently exploded in outrage over awareness that Congressional Research Service research is not publicly available.

For those who do not know, CRS is the research arm of Congress. They are probably best known for budget analysis, but they also do an incredibly wide variety of other top-notch research. You might remember some of their research, which concluded a war with Iraq would be expensive leading to an upset White House that dismissed the report as it did with most every other piece of questioning.

The research has always been difficult to attain, although for a while there was a new report posted everyday on their Web site. During this time, I would visit the Web site every day in order to download any relevant research. That daily feed, however, was killed off a couple years ago.

Now there is a movement to demand the research be available to the public.

I am in favor of this, of course, but wonder if the argument for freeing the research limited. Recently, I have been thinking about classified documents and the role of copyright (e.g., the US government can not copyright documents), tax-payer funded classified research, and open access. Would those calling for an open CRS also call for an open DNI?

Some people would and some wouldn’t, but how would the argument evolve into the two primary branches?