Two decades after it began, there’s no end in sight to legal wrangling over the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Is this how litigation is supposed to work? Like the radiation that was intentionally released from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the late 1940s, a lawsuit brought on behalf of individuals claiming radiation sickness has been out [...]
While Alabama’s new law aimed at restricting illegal immigration has caused a firestorm of protest among national press and pundits, it appears that most Americans strongly support such legislation. Rasmussen Reports has conducted a new survey showing that the 67% of likely voters favor stricter sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and the [...]
One of the many good things about a federal system of government is that the states can serve as laboratories testing different solutions to similar problems. Texas and California provide a stark contrast in approaches to fiscal management, with starkly different results. Read more in Jay Ambrose’s commentary in The Orange County Register.
Two days after Jack Roberts’ second commentary in The Oregonian critical of Attorney General John Kroger’s Department of Justice, The Oregonian reports that Kroger has asked his chief criminal lawyer, Sean Riddell, to step down. Barely two weeks ago Kroger said an internal investigation had revealed no problems with Riddell’s performance. Read more here.
Two weeks ago we reprinted my commentaries in The Daily Caller and the Missoulian on the national campaign seeking judicial enforcement of a claimed state public trust responsibility to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Today I am following up with a comment on the recent Montana Supreme Court decision. In the earlier posts, I pointed out [...]
GREEK ECONOMIC CRISIS GIVES CONTEXT TO ETHANOL SUBSIDIES DEBATE - Greek citizens are rioting in the streets of Athens in opposition to austerity measures taken by the debt-ridden Greek government. Meanwhile, a bipartisan vote in the United States Senate spells the beginning of the end for annual subsidies to American ethanol producers. What do these [...]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OREGONLIVE.COM 6/16/11 – Can’t anyone here play this game? That was the lament of legendary baseball manager Casey Stengel in 1962 when, at age 72, he led the first-year New York Mets to a record 120-loss season. But Oregonians may be asking the same question about the state Department of Justice under [...]
The “individual mandate” aspect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) has naturally drawn the most attention due to the multiple lawsuits challenging its constitutionality. However, section 2572 of Obamacare, titled “NUTRITION LABELING OF STANDARD MENU ITEMS AT CHAIN RESTAURANTS AND OF ARTICLES OF FOOD SOLD FROM VENDING MACHINES,” presents an interesting [...]
Do high tax rates yield more revenue for government? Or do they discourage private enterprise and thus reduce revenues? In the world of Washington politics, where fact and fiction often get equal billing, the debate will never end. But for some hard numbers on the federal tax rates and revenues since 1951 see Alan Reynolds [...]
The many lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare and slowly working their way through the federal courts. The 11th Circuit heard oral arguments last week and two other appellate courts will hear arguments in the next couple of months. Lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey, who represent 26 states on one of the lawsuits, explain [...]
REPUBLICANS FORM SOLIDIFIED FRONT ON CNN DEBATE – Though typically an inveterate politics-watcher, especially of the GOP, I turned off the CNN analysts at the end of last night’s presidential debate to let my own impressions of what had transpired sink in. There were two takeaway moments that I knew the pundit class would focus [...]
The announced candidates for the Republican nomination for President of the United States debated in New Hampshire last night. Here is Michael Barone’s assessment of how the candidates did. The bottom line: Mitt Romney is the front runner for now, but it’s a wide open race.
Twenty years ago the apparent absence of spotted owls in Northwest forests provided the spark for ongoing tensions between timber communities and environmentalists. In West Virginia today, the presence of bullet casings from a century old labor dispute have helped ignite a battle over the future of coal-rich Blair Mountain. Read more…
CONGRESSIONAL REPORT DETAILS UNABASHED GERRYMANDERING – A report on Congressional redistricting in yesterday’s New York Times makes clear that Oregon is not alone in facing difficult political challenges in redrawing House district boundaries to reflect the 2010 census. What is both remarkable and discouraging in the story by Jennifer Steinhauer is the extent to which the process [...]
Conservative columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady writing in the Wall Street Journal and liberal columnist Charles M. Blow writing in the New York Times agree with the recent report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy that the forty year war on drugs is a collossal failure in need of “a paradigm shift in global drug [...]
POLITICIANS LYING, PHILANDERING, AND SOMETIMES BREAKING THE LAW – Having now admitted he was responsible for sending a picture of a pants-clad man’s crotch from his Twitter account – and that his previous vociferous claims of having been the victim of a “prank” and hacking were false – Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is facing some [...]
