The Congressional Record is the official, daily record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. There are four parts of each issue: (1) House of Representatives, (2) Senate, (3) Extension of Remarks, and (4) the Daily Digest summary of the day's activities. You can access individual issues of the Congressional Record through FDsys, a service of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). There is now an easier way to view individual issues on your iPad because the Library of Congress partnered with the GPO to release a free app last week called, appropriately enough, The Congressional Record.
From the main screen of the app, you select a specific day then tap the view button. The app provides access to January 4, 1995 (the 104th Congress) to the present.
You then see up to four buttons for the four parts of the daily Congressional Record, such proceedings in the Senate. (You only see buttons for the parts that are available for that day.) A fifth button displays the entire Congressional Record for that day.
When you view the text, you are presented with a PDF file, so it looks exactly like the printed Congressional Record (and exactly like what you would get from the FDsys website).
When a specific issue is displayed, you can search for specific terms in that issue. Search results start to appear as you type, and the terms are highlighted in the text in blue. Just tap on an occurance to see it.
You can only search within a specific issue; if you want to search across multiple issues, you'll need to use another resource. And you need to know the specific day that you want; the app doesn't include any sort of index. Once an issue is displayed, the app lets you e-mail that issue to someone, or you can send it to another app on your iPad that handles PDFs.
On the main page of the app, at the bottom, the app shows you what is going on today on the House and Senate floor, and you can tap on an entry to jump to a corresponding page on the Library of Congress THOMAS website.
This app only works on the iPad, not the iPhone, but that makes sense; it would be difficult to read an issue on the tiny iPhone screen. [UPDATE: As of July of 2012, the app now works on the iPhone too. This is a nice update, but you need to squint to read the CR on a small screen!] You can get more information on the app from this post by Andrew Weber, the Legislative Information Systems Manager the Law Library of Congress, and in this Library of Congress press release.
For the attorneys, lobbyists and others for whom the Congressional Record is a valuable resource, you now have an easy way to access it from your iPad.
Click here to get The Congressional Record (free): 
