Judicial Nomination Statistics and Analysis: U.S. District and Circuit Courts, 1977-2018, March 21, 2019. “Under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, the President and the Senate share responsibility for making appointments to the Supreme Court, as well as to various lower courts of the federal judiciary. While the President nominates persons to fill federal judgeships,… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Congress
Announcing the Brookings House Oversight Tracker
Brookings: “When Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in January, they pledged that the transition would usher in a period of vigorous oversight of the executive branch. As Lawfare readers know, that effort has featured a number of high-profile hearings, including a House Committee on the Judiciary session with then-Acting Attorney General Matt… Continue Reading
CRS – Special Counsel Investigations: History, Authority, Appointment and Removal
Via FAS: Special Counsel Investigations: History, Authority, Appointment and Removal, Updated March 13, 2019 “The Constitution vests Congress with the legislative power, which includes authority to establish federal agencies and conduct oversight of those entities. Criminal investigations and prosecutions, however, are generally regarded as core executive functions assigned to the executive branch. Because of the… Continue Reading
CRS – Congressional Access to the President’s Federal Tax Returns
Secrecy News: “By refusing to disclose his tax returns, President Trump has breached — and may have demolished — the longstanding norm under which sitting presidents and presidential candidates are expected to voluntarily disclose their federal tax returns. At the same time, there is reason to think that new norms of disclosure can be created.… Continue Reading
Public Sees an America in Decline on Many Fronts
Looking to the Future, Public Sees an America in Decline on Many Fronts – Majorities predict a weaker economy, a growing income divide, a degraded environment and a broken political system “When Americans peer 30 years into the future, they see a country in decline economically, politically and on the world stage. While a narrow… Continue Reading
CRS addresses whether Congress will have access to Mueller’s report
Via FAS – The Special Counsel’s Report: Can Congress Get It? Michael A. Foster, Legislative Attorney; Todd Garvey, Legislative Attorney. March 8, 2019. “Recent media reports suggest that Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III is close to concluding his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. As discussed in this separate Sidebar, Department of… Continue Reading
Trump’s Proposed Budget Would Devastate National Parks
Outside: A close reading of the President’s 2020 Department of the Interior budget reveals massive funding cuts for everything public-lands related—except for oil and gas “To understand any budget, all you need to see are the numbers. And when you look at the Trump administration’s 2020 budget proposal for the Department of the Interior, those numbers… Continue Reading
A new way to track Web censorship under Trump: Gov404
Sunlight Foundation Web Integrity Project: “Today, WIP is launching Gov404: The Web Integrity Project’s Censorship Tracker, a new tool to track unjustified removals of online resources and reductions in access to content across the federal government. Why are we aggregating these unjustified removals? As the government itself states in its Office of Management and Budget’s… Continue Reading
US Government Will Be Scanning Your Face At 20 Top Airports
BuzzFeedNews: “In March 2017, President Trump issued an executive order expediting the deployment of biometric verification of the identities of all travelers crossing US borders. That mandate stipulates facial recognition identification for “100 percent of all international passengers,” including American citizens, in the top 20 US airports by 2021. Now, the United States Department of… Continue Reading
Committee Report Confirms College is Still Well Worth the Cost
“A report released this morning by the Committee on Education and Labor reveals that a college degree is still well worth the cost. The report, titled “Don’t Stop Believin’ (in the value of a college degree)” collects the mountain of evidence showing that – despite the recent skepticism regarding the value of a college –… Continue Reading
New on LLRX – US takes tentative steps toward opening up government data
Via LLRX – US takes tentative steps toward opening up government data – At the beginning of this year, President Trump signed into law the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary Government Data Act, requiring that nonsensitive government data be made available in machine-readable, open formats by default. As researchers who study data governance and cyber… Continue Reading
In the Library’s Web Archives: Sorting through a Set of US Government PDFs
The Signal Blog – LC: “Today’s guest post is from Jesse Johnston, a Senior Digital Collections Specialist at the Library of Congress. The Digital Content Management section has been working on a project to extract and make available sets of files from the Library’s significant web archives holdings. This is another step to explore the web archives and make… Continue Reading
