I am a non-artisan. Never was any good at the creative arts. Couldn’t draw hands for squat. Don’t even ask me about pottery…
Anyway, the Straight Dope for all things re: Capitol Hill is Congressional Quarterly. Some of it is pay, but in an election year, I’ll bet you will find much of what you are looking for for free. I can’t get it to pull up right now. (Can’t get this to post, either.)
Yeah, I was gonna ask if you were interested in what the farmers, merchants and other non-artisan classes had to say!
Another excellent resource is http://www.vote-smart.org – not only gives you the votes, but tells you how each senator/congressperson/presidential candidate is “rated” among various lobbyist groups. This can be highly informative to know if a candidate scores very low by the Association of Americans for Everything that’s Good and Noble, while ranking high with the National Alliance of Puppy Kickers.
The Senate has a record of roll call votes, but they are broken out by vote, not by Senator. You can go here to see every roll call vote and then look to see whether or not Kerry voted “yea”,“nay”, or he wasn’t present:
http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d108query.html
Each of these pages is broken up by Congress (108th, 107th, etc.), so to get Kerry’s complete record you’ll have to do some searching, but it’s all there. You can also search the Congressional record for any speeches he made.