From Now Till Election, Congress to Make Itself Scarce
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 2nd, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
From Now Till Election, Congress to Make Itself Scarce
Caitlin Huey-Burns, RealClearPolitics
Never mind that this Congress is on track to becoming the least productive in modern history. By Friday, most lawmakers will be heading back to their home states and districts on a five-week recess, despite having plenty of items on their to-do list. They will return on Sept. 8 — but only for a few weeks before heading out again until after the November midterms. Welcome to the election year schedule. The light program allows for the nation’s legislators to be among their constituents in the final weeks of the midterm campaign. On the one hand, that’s seems like a smart strategy:…
Bipartisanship Is Alive and Well, But Not in the Obama White House
Michael Barone, RealClearPolitics
Bipartisanship is dead. That’s the conventional wisdom, and there’s a lot of evidence to support it. But there’s evidence to the contrary as well. On two important issues, veterans’ health and job training, congressional Republicans and Democrats have, with little notice, reached constructive bipartisan agreements. These are both issues on which everyone agrees government should be involved. The country certainly owes something to veterans. And no one’s proposing to eliminate job training programs altogether. But government is also not doing a good job on either. The Veterans Affairs…
The Islamic State’s Challenge
David Ignatius, RealClearPolitics
WASHINGTON — Warnings from U.S. officials about the terrorist Islamic State that has established a safe haven in Iraq and Syria sound ominously like the intelligence alerts that preceded al-Qaeda’s attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Richard Ledgett, the deputy director of the National Security Agency, told the Aspen Security Forum last week that the “most worrisome” threat he’s tracking are the thousands of foreign fighters training with the Islamic State. Lisa Monaco, the White House counterterrorism adviser, told the same gathering that the al-Qaeda spinoff poses a potential danger to the U.S….
Obama’s Possible Immigration Action: Would It Be Legal?
Michael Cipriano, RealClearPolitics
Even as House Republicans prepare to file a lawsuit over what they call President Obama’s abuse of executive authority, White House officials have let it be known that Obama is considering unilaterally issuing work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants as a way of shielding them from deportation. Aside from any political fallout from such a move, one question that has been raised concerns whether a president actually has such authority. The most prominent school of thought, legal experts say, is that the measure being floated would fall within a president’s purview….
