The theory was initially propagated by The Federalist website on Sep. 27. The article claims that in "Aug. 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings."
Facts First: This is false. The whistleblower submission form was revised in Aug. 2019, but the revision did not change the rules on who can submit a whistleblower complaint. The inspector general of the intelligence community said that having firsthand knowledge of the event has never been required in order to submit a whistleblower complaint.
The Green New Deal would likely cost upwards of $6.6 trillion per year. The federal government should look for cheaper ways to address problems like climate change. Instead of the Green New Deal, the federal government could adopt a revenue-?neutral carbon tax to decrease emissions without exacerbating the fiscal imbalance. Economists from across the political spectrum support carbon taxation as the most cost-?effective way to address climate change. And a carbon tax would be most effective if uniformly adopted by other countries, too.
But there is no statistically significant effect [of must access PDMP's] on a key medical outcome: opioid poisoning incidents. How is this possible?
The simplest explanation is that, despite all the hype, prescription opioids are not that dangerous, even in heavy doses, when used under medical supervision. Instead, most poisonings reflect use of diverted prescription opioids, or black market opioids like heroin, that users obtain when doctors cut them off from prescription opioids. These alternate sources may be adulterated. Under this interpretation, restrictions on opioid prescribing might even increase opioid poisonings.
Americans don't want a permanent ruling class of career politicians. But that's what the power of incumbency and all the perks that incumbents give themselves are giving us. We want a citizen legislature and a citizen Congress--a government of, by, and for the people. To get that, we need term limits. We should limit members to three terms in the House and two terms in the Senate. Let more people serve. Let more people make the laws. And let's get some people who don't want to make Congress a lifelong career.
Some say that term limits would deprive us of the skills of experienced lawmakers. Really? It's the experienced legislators who gave us a $17 trillion national debt, and the endless war in Iraq, a massive government spying with no congressional oversight, and the Wall Street bailout.
More than anything else, the Iran nuclear deal must be kept because the alternative is a return to ever-heightening tensions and clamoring by hawks in both countries. From 2003 to 2014, years of unrelenting U.S. sanctions and confrontation, Iran went from 164 centrifuges to 19,000. The hostile approach generates a more expansive, less transparent Iranian nuclear program and increases the chances for another disastrous U.S. war in the Middle East. Let's hope the Trump administration chooses not to go that route.
The children of H-1B workers suffer the most under this flawed system. Even though they are in a legal status, they are prohibited from working legally in the country that is their home. Worse still, even though they grew up in the United States, they become ineligible for their status once they reach the age of 21 as they are no longer a "minor" child of an H-1B, known as "aging out."
Even while delegating to the president broad powers to exclude immigrants, Congress expressly forbade banning immigrants based on their race or national origin. Pres. Trump will almost certainly run into legal difficulties if he attempts to carry out his promise.
For almost a decade, Congress debated creating an immigration system free from discrimination by nationality, country of birth, or country of residence. President-elect Trump, however, now proposes to discriminate unlawfully against certain foreign nationals on the basis of the same protected grounds without any legislation from Congress.
The wording of the Emoluments clause points one way to resolution: Congress can give consent, as it did in the early years of the Republic to presents received by Ben Franklin. It can decide what it is willing to live with in the way of Trump conflicts. If it misjudges public opinion, it will pay a political price at the next election.
If it doesn't act, could someone sue to enforce the Emoluments Clause? The Supreme Court could turn the dispute down on the grounds that it's a political question for which the indicated constitutional remedy should be impeachment.
Most of the foods that humans & animals have consumed for millennia have been genetically modified. Usually this was done through the unpredictable, haphazard technique of cross-fertilization, a technique whose development marked the dawn of agriculture. Yet the new law targets only the highly precise gene manipulations done in laboratories.
Anti-GMO activists oppose the new law because it preempts more rigorous regulation. And that's exactly what President Obama and Congress intended to do: they have helped consumers and advanced science, to the frustration of the anti-GMO crowd.
Low-income students shouldn't be condemned to low-quality schools just because their parents cannot afford a home in a wealthy neighborhood. The D.C. OSP was an important step toward breaking the link between home prices and school quality, so it's encouraging to see that D.C. is not likely to take a step backward. Ideally, though, Congress would take the next step from school choice to educational choice by enacting a universal education savings account program.
The administration argues that closing Gitmo is a "national security imperative" and a resource drain. Both points are overstated. Yes, Gitmo is bad for the nation's image and thus unhelpful to counterterrorism. Still, there is little evidence that the prison, as opposed to U.S. wars, generates terrorism against the U.S. The White House's rough and probably overstated estimates, meanwhile, say that closing the prison would save $335 million over 10 years--that is .00005% of projected Pentagon spending over the decade, leaving aside war costs.
This raises the opportunity and risk costs of nuclear, making it unattractive to investors. Capital-intensive power facilities take longer to build, which means that investors have to defer returns for longer than if they had invested elsewhere.
But the final nail in the coffin for the industry would be if the federal cap on the liability that nuclear power plant owners face in case of accidents (the Price-Anderson Act) were to be lifted.
Conservatives project nuclear power as the solution to greenhouse gas emissions. But they should resist that argument. If we slapped a carbon tax on the economy to "internalize" the costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions- the ideal way to address emissions if we find such policies necessary--then the "right" carbon tax would likely be about $2 per ton of emissions. That's not enough to make nuclear energy competitive against coal or natural gas according to calculations performed by the Electric Power Research Institute. In any case, if nuclear offers a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it should have to prove it by competing against alternatives in some future carbon-constrained market.
Some legislators argued that to pass new legislation would only provide the government convenient new legal justification for its spying--which it would interpret broadly. One Cato scholar wrote that it "would effectively represent a repeat of the Protect America Act fiasco of the previous decade--an act of Congress that made legal a previously illegal surveillance program that did exactly nothing to protect the country, while costing billions and subjecting Americans to continued mass surveillance. Real Patriot Act 'reform' should substantively bar the government from indiscriminate bulk surveillance. Anything less risks laying the groundwork for another decade of abuse."
On the opposite side of the argument stood some pro-privacy groups who held that modest reforms were better than no reforms at all
The law here is unsettled, especially as the right to the free exercise of religion is pitted against the right to be free from discrimination. For example: a Christian couple who own a small farm open to the public for seasonal activities were fined $13,000 for declining to host a same-sex wedding.
Freedom of association--the simple idea that people are free to associate, or not, as they wish--certainly isn't what it once was. Under common law, if you represented your business as "open to the public," you had to honor that, with exceptions for unruly customers. These rules left ample room for freedom of association, albeit with serious exceptions like Jim Crow, the deplorable state-sanctioned discrimination enforced by government.
Unfortunately, all but a handful of states have considerable restrictions on access to police disciplinary files. In some states, even prosecutors cannot review those files. Federal entities that wish to encourage more open state government could look to states with publicly accessible disciplinary files and develop best practices guidance or model legislation to that effect.
There are already several such proposals in Congress. But what the Republican candidates for president have to say about the issue will be even more important. In 2010 and 2014, opposition to ObamaCare was a potent weapon in the GOP arsenal. (The party fared less well in 2012, when Mitt Romney was uniquely unsuited to criticize the health-care law.) In 2016, ObamaCare's cost and failures should be a problem for Hillary Clinton. However, this will be a problem for her only if the Republican candidate can offer a credible market-based alternative.
The fact of the matter is that community college completion rates are atrocious: a mere 19.5% of first-time, full-time community college students complete their programs, and that rate has been dropping almost every year since 2000. Meanwhile, the for-profit sector has an almost 63% completion rate at two-year institutions, and that has been rising steadily.
The other huge problem is that the large majority of job categories expected to grow the most in the coming years do not require postsecondary training. [About 70%] of the new jobs will require a high school diploma or less.
It turns out that for nearly every Ex-Im financing authorization that might advance the fortunes of a single US company, there is at least one US industry--and often dozens or scores of industries--whose firms are put at a competitive disadvantage because supply is being diverted, market power is being shifted, and the cost of capital is being lowered for their foreign competition. These are the unseen consequences--the collateral damage--of Ex-Im's mission.
It's not that Congress woke up one morning and agreed to simultaneously promote and deter U.S. solar energy consumption. But that's what Washington--with its meddling ethos and self-righteous politicians--has wrought: policies working at cross-purposes.
EPA runs 37 laboratories housed in 170 buildings located in 30 cities. That agency concluded GAO "needs to revise its overall approach to managing its 37 laboratories to address potential overlap and fragmentation and more fully leverage its limited resources." The waste just keeps going on and on.
This year, as versions of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act are introduced in a number of state legislatures, there will obviously be fierce opposition. I expect, however, that this Nebraska breakthrough for pro-lifers may well become law in certain states.
One of those laws is likely to come before the Supreme Court. Five members of the current US Supreme Court would give serious consideration to Nebraska's assertion of a compelling interest in preserving the life of an unborn child whom substantial medical evidence indicates is capable of feeling pain during an abortion.
Thus both sides' fears are justified. Both sides of the abortion debate are learning why government should not subsidize health care.
USW and the unions feel that they have earned the president's support. The president is presumed to owe Big Labor for his election last November. Will the president do what is overwhelmingly in the best interest of the country? Or will he do what he thinks is best for himself politically? The president should reject the recommendations of the USITC & deny import restrictions altogether. A decision to reject trade restraints in the tires case would be reassuring to a world that is struggling to grow out of recession. The costs of any protectionism under these circumstances could unleash a protectionist backlash in the US & around the world. It would be far less costly for the president to reject trade restraints altogether.
Known officially as the Employee Free Choice Act, the card-check legislation would effectively abolish the secret ballot in workplace elections for union representation. It would also require employers to submit to binding government arbitration if they cannot reach an agreement with union representatives, forcing companies to submit to contracts that may imperil their very survival.
The sobering experience of unionized companies offers a further warning against tipping the playing field further in favor of union organizers. A resurgence of union representation in the private sector would threaten to plunge even more U.S. companies into financial distress and put more American workers in danger of losing their jobs.
There is no excuse for Palestinian suicide bombing, but Israeli actions also exacerbate hostilities. In principle, separation seems the best answer to stop the killing. For this reason, a security fence makes sense--if it actually separates Jew from Arab. Unfortunately, to protect a number of disparate Israeli settlements erected in the midst of Palestinian communities, Israel currently is mixing Jew and Arab and separating Arab from Arab. Thus are sown the seeds for conflict. After 36 years of occupation, the land remains almost exclusively Arab. The limited Jewish presence is the result of conscious colonization. The settlements require a pervasive Israeli military occupation, imposing a de facto system of apartheid. Separation offers the only hope, but separation requires dismantling Israeli settlements.
What is this thing that some lawyers find so threatening? Arbitration is simply private court. Lawyers with a vested interest in a monopoly court system are trying to stop the arbitration business from developing. Lawyers who feel threatened by arbitration assert that arbitration is fine when it's used by two well-informed businesses. But when ordinary consumers are "forced" to use arbitration, that takes away their constitutional right to a jury trial. But there's nothing forced or mandatory about it. Contracts are the result of choice. People should be free to choose for themselves what contracts to make and what rights to give up.
The evidence is overwhelming that oil and gas production is one of the least environmentally damaging ways to get energy. The hysterical attacks against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are little but recycled attacks launched three decades ago against development at nearby Prudhoe Bay. However, environmental impacts there have been minimal. For instance, there were about 5,000 caribou on the North Slope of Alaska when drilling began there. Today, there are 23,000. Offshore oil development and drilling in the lower 48 states--including, as The New York Times recently reported, in wildlife refuges--involves even fewer problems.
The truth is that these ultra-rich Americans aren't being as selfless as it may seem. Most billionaire families engage in careful estate tax planning by, for example, depositing their fortunes into family foundations--to avoid having the long arm of the IRS reach into their graves for a dime.
The dirty little secret of the death tax is that the people clobbered by it are not billionaires. More often they are ordinary Americans with medium sized estates--the millionaire next door. I am talking about ranchers, farmers and self-starter business owners. Every year thousands of heirs are forced to sell the family farm or business to pay estate taxes. It's unjust given that this tax is imposed on dollars already taxed when the income was earned.
Supporters point to two sources: Congress's power "to regulate commerce" and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Not so, said a district court (reversed by an Appeals Court). The act does not regulate commerce. And the 14th Amendment protects against state violations, not against private acts.
Violence against women is a national problem. But that does not make it, under the Constitution, a federal problem. Congress's power to regulate commerce is not a power to regulate everything.
People should not be forced to contribute money to artistic endeavors that they may not approve, nor should artists be forced to trim their sails to meet government standards. Defenders of arts funding seem blithely unaware of this danger when they praise the role of the national endowments as an imprimatur or seal of approval on artists and arts groups. I suggest that that is just the kind of power no government in a free society should have.
The American Founders knew that the solution was the separation of church and state. Because art is just as spiritual, just as meaningful, just as powerful as religion, it is time to grant art the same independence and respect that religion has. It is time to establish the separation of art and state.
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The above quotations are from Cato Institute congressional voting recommendations.
Click here for other excerpts from Cato Institute congressional voting recommendations. Click here for other excerpts by Cato Institute. Click here for a profile of Cato Institute.
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