House Committee on the Judiciary Hearing held September 26, 2019 – The Federal Judiciary in the 21st Century: Ensuring the Public’s Right of Access to the Courts – Statement by The Honorable Audrey G. Fleissig</a, >U.S. District Judge, Eastern District of Missouri “…Based on the experiences of California and the FBI, upgrading the current Judiciary… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Congress
Congress releases whistleblower complaint alleging Trump abused his office
The New York Times – “After hearing that President Trump tried to persuade Ukraine to investigate a 2020 campaign rival, senior officials at the White House scrambled to “lock down” records of the call, a whistle-blower alleged in an explosive complaint released Thursday. In an attempt to “lock down” all records of the call, in… Continue Reading
How an Impeachment Process Inquiry Works
The New York Times – The inquiry into President Trump has the potential to reshape his presidency. Here’s how impeachment works. “…The Constitution permits Congress to remove presidents before their term is up if enough lawmakers vote to say that they committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”Only two presidents have been impeached… Continue Reading
How The Democratic Groundswell For Impeachment Happened
FiveThirtyEight: “On Tuesday afternoon [September 24, 2019], House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her plans to open an official impeachment inquiry of President Trump. Although she and others in House leadership positions have resisted opening formal impeachment proceedings for months, a deluge of new calls from more moderate members of her party may have cemented her… Continue Reading
U.S. Role in the World: Background and Issues for Congress
CRS Report via FAS – U.S. Role in the World: Background and Issues for Congress, updated September 23, 2019: “The U.S. role in the world refers to the overall character, purpose, or direction of U.S. participation in international affairs and the country’s overall relationship to the rest of the world. The U.S. role in the… Continue Reading
Ways and Means Committee Releases Report on International Drug Pricing
“Today, the Ways and Means Committee released a report, titled “A Painful Pill to Swallow: U.S. vs. International Prescription Drug Prices,” finding that U.S. drug prices are nearly four times higher than the combined average of 11 other similar countries, and that Americans pay as much as 67 times more than consumers in other nations… Continue Reading
The Language of Congress – What topics do members of Congress tweet about most frequently?
The Pudding – “We fed thousands of Congressional tweets to a machine learning algorithm in order to recognize political issues. We’ll keep doing this every day of the 116th congress, from January 3 2019 through January 3, 2021. These are the topics that dominate members of Congress’ public discourse—the issues they discuss (and don’t discuss).… Continue Reading
Why Americans Don’t Fully Trust Many Who Hold Positions of Power and Responsibility
Members of Congress and technology leaders are rated lower in empathy, transparency and ethics – “Public gives higher scores to military leaders, public school principals and police officers…” “People invest their trust in institutions and those who have power for a variety of reasons. Researchers have found that people’s confidence in others and organizations can… Continue Reading
Bipartisan Report Shows Recent Government Shutdowns Cost Taxpayers Nearly $4 Billion, 56,938 Years of Lost Productivity
“U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tom Carper (D-DE), the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), today unveiled a new bipartisan report that documents the cost to American taxpayers of the last three government shutdowns and the impacts they had on the economy and core government functions. The largest direct… Continue Reading
The Constitution Annotated Is Now Easier to Search and Browse
In Custodia Legis: “Constitution Day is [September 17, 2019], but it’s already off to a great start with the release of the Congressional Research Service’s new version of The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation, better known as the Constitution Annotated. The Constitution Annotated allows you to “read about the Constitution in… Continue Reading
Deepfakes Deserve Policymakers’ Attention, and Better Solutions
Center for Data Innovation: “Deepfakes—realistic-looking images and videos altered by AI to portray someone doing or saying something that never actually happened—have been around since the end of 2017, yet in recent months have become a major focus of policymakers. Though image and video manipulation have posed challenges for decades, the threat of deepfakes is… Continue Reading
How to Remove a Federal Judge and How to Impeach a President
Saikrishna Prakash & Steven D. Smith, How To Remove a Federal Judge, 116 Yale L.J. (2006). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/ylj/vol116/iss1/2 – “Most everyone assumes that impeachment is the only means of removing federal judges and that the Constitution’s grant of good-behavior tenure is an implicit reference to impeachment. This Article challenges that conventional wisdom. Using evidence… Continue Reading
