I got home from work today and went to Google to try to find a list of
the 13 Senators who voted against the Rice confirmation.  I tried
everything!!!!!!  What would have been the correct way to query Google
to get the list of those Senators?
I am quite frustrated.

Howdy, Carolyn!

I've located your info, but it was surprisingly difficult to do so.
Most of the news stories I found that discussed Dr. Rice's
confirmation hearings mentioned the number of Senators who voted
against her, but did not name all of them. A Google News search
finally led me to a Bloomberg article that provided the full list:

"The dissenting votes came from 12 Democrats and independent James
Jeffords of Vermont.... Along with [Barbara] Boxer and [Mark] Dayton,
Democrats voting against Rice were Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Evan Bayh
of Indiana, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Richard Durbin of Illinois,
Tom Harkin of Iowa, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts,
Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed
of Rhode Island."

Bloomberg News: U.S. Senate Confirms Rice as Secretary of State (Update2)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aSd23amib6_Q&refer=top_world_news

You can also find the full list of dissenting Senators on Rush
Limbaugh's site, complete with a couple of snide remarks by Rush:

"Here are the people who voted against Condi Rice: Senators Kerry,
Byrd, Boxer, Dayton, Jeffords, Kennedy, Harkin, Dusty Harry Reid, Dick
Durbin, The Lout -- Frank Lautenberg -- Carl Levin, Akaka from Hawaii,
(My favorite sentence, when they do the roll call, is: 'Senator
Akaka!' Every time I hear the name I think what I'm actually hearing
is 'Senator Caca.') and Senator Bayh."

Rush Limbaugh: Media Shrugs as Democrats, Led By Klansman, Fail to Block 
Black Woman from Door to State Department
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_012605/content/america_s_anchorman.guest.html

When information that you know is out there is elusive, it's sometimes
good to try the shotgun approach, and use several different
combinations of keywords until one of the combos hits the jackpot.
After numerous failures, this was the search strategy that paid off
for me:

Google News Search: "secretary of state" "dissenting votes" "voting against rice"
http://news.google.com/news?q=%22secretary%20of%20state%22%20%22dissenting%20votes%22%20%22voting%20against%20rice%22&num=100&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&c2coff=1&safe=off&sa=N&tab=wn

Best,
Pink

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Request for Answer Clarification by schmooz-ga on 27 Jan 2005 10:57 PST

Hi Pink - Could you tell me some querys you used to get Google to
reveal this to you?  I tried just about anyting I could think of from
. . . 13 nay votes on rice . . . to . . . . list Senators vote on
confirmation . . . . and on and on!  Did a specific Google query lead
you to the list or was it just intuition, gained from your perspective
- now that I know you are the moon :).

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Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 27 Jan 2005 12:08 PST

Thanks for the five stars! Regarding the construction of Google
queries, the best general advice I can give is to think about the
wording that is likely to appear on the page you're looking for.
Rather than phrasing the "question," you phrase the "answer" (as if
you were on the TV show "Jeopardy!") So, if you're looking for
something like "How many species of wombat are there?", you would use
a search phrase such as "there are * species of wombat OR wombats".

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Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 28 Jan 2005 13:27 PST

I just realized that my analogy involving the TV show "Jeopardy!" is
dead wrong. On "Jeopardy!" your response is in the form of a question.
Auggh, another instance of "hardening of the smarteries." I need to
take a swig of my memory elixir, if I could just remember where I put
it. ;-)

Great - thanks, sorry about the Clarification question (that I tried
to remove).  You told me what you queried . . . in your answer.  C

I didn't Google it. But I did go to the US Senate website and look at
the days votes.  Finding the 13 Senators names was substantially
easier than writing each of them an email.  All but Senator Akaka from
Hawaii make you fill out a web form to give the good Seantor feedback.