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Assorted Links 6/27/10

Brown Bailout

• Drafting Effective Federal Legislation and Amendments, July 21, 2010
• Preparing and Delivering Congressional Testimony, July 22, 2010
• Advanced Federal Budget Process, August 2-3, 2010
• Advanced Legislative Strategies, August 4-6, 2010
• Mark Twain on Copyright - "Remarks of Samuel Langhorne Clemens Before the Congressional Joint Committee on Patents, December, 1906 (Mark Twain on Copyright)"
• Persuading Congress: Candid Advice for Executives - "Persuading Congress, by Joseph Gibson, is a very practical book, packed with wisdom and experience in a deceptively short and simple package.
  
  This book will help you understand Congress. Written from the perspective of one who has helped put a lot of bills on the president's desk and helped stop a lot more, this book explains in everyday terms why Congress behaves as it does. Then it shows you how you can best deploy whatever resources you have to move Congress in your direction."
• Undercover Operation: Strippers Take Clothes Off! - "Here is a truly wonderful story: After a six-month (!!) undercover sting operation, the men of Charlottes's finest have concluded that strippers take. their. clothes. off.
  
  Thank goodness we have a police force, to protect us from dangerous naked women. I think Mr. Fall has it right, below:"
• Rolling Stone - "This sort of thing is what happens when a senior officer and his aides, under pressure, blurt out the truth. Biden is indeed something of a stuffed shirt, and the president has been disappointing to many people who once hoped for more.
  
  Update: Most of the general’s dissatisfaction appears to have been generated by friction with US ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who was himself a 3-star general and former commander of US forces in Afghanistan. The sometimes controversial COIN changes that McChrystal has instituted are changes to Eikenberry’s policies, while the ambassador has declined to release funds to sponsor the kind of local anti-Taliban militias and infrastructure upgrades in Kanduhar that made the Sons of Iraq game changers in the Sunni-dominated Iraqi province of Anbar. As for Holbrooke and Jones, well: Too many cooks spoil the broth.
  . . .
  Update 5: The Rolling Stone article itself. Read for content -- and not for the reporter’s reflexively anti-military spin -- it’s not so bad, really. The 'Biden who?' thing was about keeping his mouth shut if he had to answer a question about his previous disagreement with the vice president at a dinner party in Paris."
• Does McChrystal Rhyme with MacArthur? - "Look past McChrystal, a man who has given his life to the military, and has much to show for it. Look at the enlisted guys who are just beginning their careers, or the NCOs or junior officers who are in the third or fourth tours (in either Iraq or Afghanistan). They’re growing frustrated. They’re in an impossible situation. They are fighting a war that depends upon strong support here in the United States, and that aims to boost support for a government that no one believes in. And while they understand COIN as preached by McChrystal, they struggle with the rules of engagement that COIN requires."
• Greenberg: For-Profit Schools ... Subprime Redux? - "But [Steve Eisman of FrontPoint Partners]’s comments were the most direct. Key claims include:
  
  * 'Until recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive as the subprime mortgage industry. I was wrong. The for-profit education industry has proven equal to the task.'
  
  * With Title IV student loans, 'the government, the students and the taxpayers bear all the risk and the for-profit industry reaps all of the rewards.'
  
  * 'We have every expectation the industry’s default rates are about to explode.'
  
  * 'How do such schools stay in business? The answer is to control the accreditation process. The scandal here is exactly akin to the rating agency role in subprime securitizations.'"
  
  Steve Eisman & FrontPoint Partners Ira Sohn Presentation: Subprime Goes to College
  
  
• Without Good Evidence, Bad Evidence Must Do - "Lawyers fight tooth and nail over the admissibility of evidence in a typical case. The reason they fight is simple: There's evidence to be had and rules to apply in determining its admission. Thanks to Mr. Richardson, we can argue the nuanced points all day long.
  . . .
  Prosecutions alleging domestic violence are fraught with arguments, and decisions, that wreak havoc with the rules of evidence. Proponents argue that the nature of the relationship, private and personal, precludes the availability of reliable evidence, and thus gives rise to a different set of rules that should permit evidence that would otherwise be laughed out of court. The use of rampant hearsay evidence is indefensible, but proponents contend that a murderer shouldn't get away with it just because they've killed the only competent witness.
  
  The only thing truly required to feel comfortable with the concept of convicting in the absence of good evidence is the certainty of the defendant's guilt, thereby justifying anything needed to obtain the verdict to validate that belief. When the defendant's guilt is prejudged, the absence of good evidence gives way to the admission of bad. After all, we can't let a man like Drew Peterson get away with it."
• Grassroots Lobbying, Campaign Finance Laws and the Integrity of Democracy - "It’s been my pleasure to guest blog this week on the topic of grassroots lobbying regulations. In the four previous posts, I’ve summarized the lessons from Mowing Down the Grassroots: existing lobbying regulations in 36 states are so broad as to cover situations in which individuals or groups communicate to other citizens about public issues (i.e., grassroots lobbying) and such regulations have costs that have gone largely unrecognized.
  
  The traditional rationales for regulating lobbyists -- corrupting or buttonholing public officials -- do not apply to grassroots lobbying; instead, states have asserted a right to know 'who is speaking' for the furtherance of the 'integrity of democracy.' I leave for others to debate whether such a purpose is a legitimate reason to burden political speech, association and the right to petition."
• Learning the rules of an unengaged president - "What do Gen. McChrystal and British Petroleum have in common? Aside from the fact that they're both Democratic Party supporters.
  
  Or they were. Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They'll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades. The management of BP were unable to vote for Obama, being, as we now know, the most sinister duplicitous bunch of shifty Brits to pitch up offshore since the War of 1812. But, in their 'Beyond Petroleum' marketing and beyond, they signed on to every modish nostrum of the eco-Left. Their recently retired chairman, Lord Browne, was one of the most prominent promoters of cap-and-trade. BP was the Democrats' favorite oil company. They were to Obama what Total Fina Elf was to Saddam.
  . . .
  Only the other day, Florida Sen. George Lemieux attempted to rouse the president to jump-start America's overpaid, overmanned and oversleeping federal bureaucracy and get it to do something on the oil debacle. There are 2,000 oil skimmers in the United States: Weeks after the spill, only 20 of them are off the coast of Florida. Seventeen friendly nations with great expertise in the field have offered their own skimmers; the Dutch volunteered their 'super-skimmers': Obama turned them all down. Raising the problem, Sen. Lemieux found the president unengaged, and uninformed. 'He doesn't seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers,' reported the senator.
  . . .
  'The ugly truth,' wrote Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, 'is that no one in the Obama White House wanted this Afghan surge. The only reason they proceeded was because no one knew how to get out of it.'
  
  Well, that's certainly ugly, but is it the truth? Afghanistan, you'll recall, was supposed to be the Democrats' war, the one they allegedly supported, the one the neocons' Iraq adventure was an unnecessary distraction from. Granted the Dems' usual shell game -- to avoid looking soft on national security, it helps to be in favor of some war other than the one you're opposing -- Candidate Obama was an especially ripe promoter. In one of the livelier moments of his campaign, he chugged down half a bottle of Geopolitical Viagra and claimed he was hot for invading Pakistan.
  
  Then he found himself in the Oval Office, and the dime-store opportunism was no longer helpful. But, as Friedman puts it, 'no one knew how to get out of it.' The 'pragmatist' settled for 'nuance': He announced a semisurge plus a date for withdrawal of troops to begin. It's not 'victory,' it's not 'defeat,' but rather a more sophisticated mélange of these two outmoded absolutes: If you need a word, 'quagmire' would seem to cover it.
  
  Hamid Karzai, the Taliban and the Pakistanis, on the one hand, and Britain and the other American allies heading for the check-out, on the other, all seem to have grasped the essentials of the message, even if Friedman and the other media Obammyboppers never quite did. Karzai is now talking to Islamabad about an accommodation that would see the most viscerally anti-American elements of the Taliban back in Kabul as part of a power-sharing regime. At the height of the shrillest shrieking about the Iraqi 'quagmire,' was there ever any talk of hard-core Saddamite Baathists returning to government in Baghdad?
  . . .
  Likewise, on Afghanistan, his attitude seems to be 'I don't want to hear about it.' Unmanned drones take care of a lot of that, for a while. So do his courtiers in the media: Did all those hopeychangers realize that Obama's war would be run by Bush's defense secretary and Bush's general?
  
  Hey, never mind: the Moveon.org folks have quietly removed their celebrated 'General Betray-us' ad from their website. Cindy Sheehan, the supposed conscience of the nation when she was railing against Bush from the front pages, is an irrelevant kook unworthy of coverage when she protests Obama. Why, a cynic might almost think the 'anti-war' movement was really an anti-Bush movement, and that they really don't care about dead foreigners after all. Plus ça change you can believe in, plus c'est la même chose.
  
  Except in one respect. There is a big hole where our strategy should be."

How to make a liberal case for Israel

• New Or Used?: The Third Car Edition (teen driver) - " My soon to be 16 year old daughter will be driving soon. She is heavily involved in sports and marching band, so a car for her to get to such things would be a great relief for mom and dad. That’s 1000’s of miles to and from school, and whatnot! We will have NO car payments around the same time (wife’s 2005 Exploder will be paid-off in July).
  
  So what to get??? A 3rd car to use as a city car? A newer used car for wife, I jump into the Explorer and share it with daughter?
  
  A car for daughter solely??? We will not be getting rid of my truck or wife’s explorer. It has to be used, domestic brand prefered, but V-Dubs are OK. And no more than 8 grand."
  
  Lots of good advice in the comments.
• The Search World Is Flat - "How does Google’s unchallenged domination of Search shape the way we retrieve information? Does Google flatten global knowledge?
  I look around, I see my kids relying on Wikipedia, I watch my journalist students work. I can’t help but wonder: Does Google impose a framework on our cognitive processes, on the way we search for and use information?
  . . .
  -- Students who bring academic experience to an online research task are more likely to succeed than those with technical expertise alone:
  . . .
  --The highest performing students use copy/paste to organize their thoughts.
  . . .
  --Younger students tend to be more opinionated than their elders; they begin to write their essay after only seeing 5 URLs, and they extract sources mostly to support their beliefs
  . . .
  --Google is the source.
  . . .
  --Search processes showed a definite lack of imagination on the students part. For instance, they made little or no effort to restructure search terms.
  . . .
  --Most of the students performed rather a small number of actions, going though 18 different web sites to find 2 or 3 quotable sources, this without much difference between graduates and undergraduates.
  . . .
  There is little doubt that the overwhelming use of technology such as search engines -- and the preeminence of Google in that field -- tends to flatten global knowledge. Let’s not forget that Google’s algorithm is based on popularity rather than relevance; the PageRank system acts as some kind of popular voting in which links are the ballots. The consequence is a self-sustaining phenomenon in which superficial research will value the most popular results which, in turn, are linked and gain in popularity, and so on.
  
  And, unfortunately, most of the searches are superficial. ‘It is certain that an overwhelming amount of information reduces serendipity’, says Monica Bulger. ‘Over a thousand of results, we tend to select the top five’."
• The Age of the Infovore - "Tyler Cowen’s 'Create Your Own Economy' is now out in paperback entitled 'The Age of the Infovore', perhaps an acknowledgement that the initial title wasn’t working out.
  
  I liked the book at lot. As suits the infovoracious it is wide-ranging, somewhat scattershot but extremely creative, original and thought-provoking. If the book has a theme it is that different people think very differently - not just that they have different tastes or different beliefs but that the entire way they organise the world is different - and that the internet offers some people a much better way to order their encounters with the world than they have previously been offered. It changed the way I think."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the early 1970s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• Mickey Foley: The Doomer's Curse - "Mickey Foley takes a look at the underlying motivations of people who predict collapse of society as a result of Peak Oil, Anthropogenic Global Warming, or other causes. Foley sees Doomers motivated by an underlying desire to lower the status of others in order to boost their own relative status.
  
  'The Doomer is motivated by much more than a perverse sense of altruism. He mainly desires to see everyone brought down to his level. His fondest wish is for everyone to be as emotionally crippled as he is, and, if they could also be paralyzed fiscally, that would be great too. The argument for the necessity of disaster is merely an excuse for his vindictive fantasies. This is the Doomer's Curse: to wallow in despair, to sneer at the happiness of others, to revel in schadenfreude and to believe that he has humanity's best interests at heart. The Doomer honestly thinks that a universal depression (in the emotional sense) would lay the foundation for a better world, but this belief is rooted in his own selfishness, not in a rational socioeconomic analysis.'"
• Why Engineers Hop Jobs - "People in my generation have a very low tolerance for bullshit, and software engineering, in general, is a very high bullshit career. If you couple that with the standard load of bullshit you would get from a non-technical Harvard MBA type boss -- like many CEOs that you find trying to get rich in Silicon Valley by hiring some engineers to 'code up this idea real quick' -- it's no wonder that a good engineer will walk off the job after his one year cliff vesting.
  . . .
  I recognize the value of business people and management. Somebody has to sell the code that I write, which in turn puts food on my table. Since I am an engineer, I like iterative optimization. Every time I have left a job, I have further refined the requirements that a person must fill before I agree to work for him. After every job, I add one or two requirements to the list, and I have found that my happiness at work improves dramatically with every step."
• Toyota To Produce Small Subarus. And A FT-86baru? - "Toyota will supply small Subarus to Fuji Heavy, so that Fuji Heavy and Subaru can focus on midsize cars. According to information developed by The Nikkei [sub], 'Toyota and Fuji Heavy intend to release a jointly developed sports car under their respective brands as early as the end of 2011.' If the Nikkei has its stuff together, then we might finally see the often delayed FT-86 next year. As a Toyota and a Subaru."
• Anti-virus is a Poor Substitute for Common Sense - "A new study about the (in)efficacy of anti-virus software in detecting the latest malware threats is a much-needed reminder that staying safe online is more about using your head than finding the right mix or brand of security software.
  . . .
  'People have to understand that anti-virus is more like a seatbelt than an armored car: It might help you in an accident, but it might not,' Huger said. 'There are some things you can do to make sure you don’t get into an accident in the first place, and those are the places to focus, because things get dicey real quick when today’s malware gets past the outside defenses and onto the desktop.'"
• 800 Watt Portable Generator - "I've owned this generator for two years and it's great for light field work. Turn all your electric tools (weed trimmer, hedge trimmer, leaf blower, even electric chain saws) into gas tools. This generator is OEM'ed to a lot of distributors, who then put their own facade on it. The cheapest version appears to be available at Harbor Freight for $99.
  
  It's very robust and endures overload gracefully (it just peters out without any damage.) It's the antithesis of the previously reviewed Honda EU Series. You could wear out and throw away a lot of these generators for the price of one of the Honda inverter generators."
• Bringrr Ensures That You Never Leave Your Phone At Home - "Bringrr is a small Bluetooth accessory that detects when your phone is nearby. If you start your car and the phone isn’t present, it will emit a sound to let you know. It’s small, rather cheap ($35) and helps to ensure that you never leave home (or anywhere else, for that matter) without your phone."
• How To Recycle An Airplane - "A recycled jetliner produces tons of metal and millions of dollars in parts, but a mistake could cost hundreds of lives. Here's how the company that salvaged the plane from Lost does its destructive business.
  
  A car's typically just parted out once and then scrapped at the end of its life, but a jumbo jet is full of thousands of valuable parts that will be salvaged or recycled numerous times. One passenger plane may transition into service transporting packages, or off to commercial service in Africa, and then the fuselage used for training purposes.
  
  Approximately 450 large aircraft are completely scrapped and disassembled each year, according to the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association, with another 5,900 passenger jets to be recycled by 2028 according to Boeing. Given the high prices for parts, dangerous materials, and the risk involved in recycling airplane parts it's not a job for any dismantling yard.
  
  'In short, it's not like the auto [recycling] business,' says aviation archeologist and plane recycling expert Doug Scroggins, who was responsible for recycling the airliner that's the centerpiece for ABC's Lost and serves as managing director for ARC Aeropsace Industries. 'If you sell an engine off an aircraft and it crashes, you're going to be spending a great deal of time in jail.'"
• 'I Hate My Room,' The Traveler Tweeted. Ka-Boom! An Upgrade! - "You might think that the only ones following your online musings are your mom and college pals. But if they include a gripe about a hotel, the front-desk clerk at the offending property may be listening, too.
  
  Hotels and resorts are amassing a growing army of sleuths whose job it is to monitor what is said about them online--and protect the hotels' reputations. These employees search social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for unhappy guests and address complaints. They write groveling apologies in response to negative reviews on TripAdvisor. And they keep tabs on future guests who post about upcoming stays--and sometimes offer them extra perks or personalized attention at check in.
  
  For travelers, the upshot is that if you use social media, your complaints could have more power. In years past, guests unhappy about a lumpy bed, grimy bathroom or an awful view had to take their frustrations to the front desk or hotel manager and hope for some restitution. Now, with some guests having hundreds--and even thousands--of followers on Twitter and Facebook, complaints can have a big audience. It's like every guest has a virtual megaphone."
• One Droid X killer feature the iPhone 4 lacks - "Though the 4.3-inch display (in the case of already-small smartphone displays, bigger is better), the Flash 10.1 support, DLNA streaming, and the Texas Instruments 1GHz ARM processor are nice, the icing on the cake is the built-in Wi-Fi hotspot--or what Verizon calls the 3G Mobile Hotspot."
• World Cup 2010: Kenya's field of dreams – if you inflate it, they will come - "The screen is inflated – it blows up like a bouncy castle – the PA system is cranked up and suddenly the sights and sounds of the World Cup are beamed into an African community that might otherwise have missed out.
  
  Within a few minutes the screen, the brightest thing for miles around, draws a crowd and the spectacle of the world's best players strutting their stuff is greeted with whoops and cheers.
  
  England fans may feel hard done by following the team's poor performance on Friday but they could learn patience and optimism from the people watching this temporary screen in the town of Kilifi and surrounding areas just north of Mombasa thanks to a project called Kenya Field of Dreams."
• Verizon Motorola Droid X Hands-On Review - "Still, the Droid X's closest kin is the Sprint Evo. Both devices run on Android, both offer mobile hotspot functionality, and both have very similar screens, physical dimensions and feels. As for which one is better for you, it really comes down to a few simple questions: Do you demand 4G network access, and how much are you willing to pay each month?
  
  The Sprint Evo is a tricky device. Yes, it offers Wimax and mobile tethering, but these things do not come cheap--the mobile hotspot feature costs users an extra $30 per month, and users must pay $10 extra per month to use the Evo over any other Sprint phone, whether or not they live in a Wimax-covered city. (Sprint attributes this surcharge to a 'premium multimedia experience,' vague language that has many tech critics screaming shenanigans.) Verizon doesn't charge users a premium to use the Droid X over their other phones (although their network isn't the cheapest to use either), and the mobile hotspot fee is just $20 on top of your bill.
  
  So which phone is for you? The answer is actually quite simple: If you're already locked to Verizon on contract, go with the Droid X. If you've signed to Sprint, go with the Evo. And if you're on AT&T, there's always a little device called the iPhone 4."
• Top 10 Clever Google Voice Tricks - "Earlier this week, Google Voice opened to everyone in the U.S.. The phone management app is great, but even cooler hacks exist just under the hood. Here are our favorite tricks every Google Voice user should know about.
  
  If you're just signing up for Google Voice, and wondering, in general, what it's good for, we've previously offered our take on whether Google Voice makes sense for you, and how to ease your transition to your new number and system. Google Voice also offers the option to just use it for voicemail and keep your number, but you won't get use of much of the SMS features touted here. Now, onto Voice's lesser-known perks and features:"
• Set Google Voice as Your Skype Caller ID - "A Google Voice number, one that rings all your phones, makes good sense as the caller ID number for outgoing Skype calls. Google Voice blocked the verification SMS that Skype needed until recently, but Google's flipped the switch and made it convenient."

. . . . . . . . .


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June 27, 2010 07:37 PM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

Glossary of Legislative Terms: "Joint Explanatory Statement of Managers"

Joint Explanatory Statement of Managers: Statement appended to a conference report explaining the conference agreement and the intent of the conferees.

This definition is from the Glossary in our Congressional Deskbook. Perfect reference tool of Congressional jargon and procedural terms. Congressional Deskbook: The Practical and Comprehensive Guide to Congress, by Michael Koempel and Judy Schneider.

TheCapitol.Net offers training and a Certificate in Congressional Operations and Federal Budgeting. We show you how Washington and Congress work. ^TM

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June 25, 2010 07:37 AM   Link    Tips and Terms    Comments (0)

The Crisis in Public Sector Pension Plans

New Jersey’s defined benefit pension systems are underfunded by more than $170 billion, an amount equivalent to 44 percent of gross state product (GSP) and 328 percent of the state’s explicit government debt. Depending on market conditions, the state will begin to run out of money to pay benefits between 2013 and 2019. The state’s five defined benefit pension plans cover over 770,000 workers, and more than a quarter million retirees depend on state pensions paying out almost $6 billion per year in benefits. Nationwide, state pensions are underfunded by as much as $3 trillion, approximately 20 percent of America's annual output.

This path is not sustainable. In order to avert a fiscal crisis and ensure that future state employees have dependable retirement savings, New Jersey should follow the lead of the federal government and the private sector and move from defined benefit pensions to defined contribution pensions. While significant liabilities will remain, the first step to addressing the pension crisis is capping existing liabilities and providing new employees with more sustainable retirement options.

"The Crisis in Public Sector Pension Plans: A Blueprint for Reform in New Jersey," by Eileen Norcross and Andrew Biggs, Mercatus Center, June 23, 2010

Also see

Underfunded Pensions, Pension Dumping, and Retirement Security

Underfunded Pensions, Pension Dumping, and Retirement Security:
Pension Funds, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), Bailout Risks, Impact on the Federal Budget, and the Pension Protection Act of 2006

Compiled by TheCapitol.Net

Although the PBGC's liabilities are not explicitly backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government, Congress could face political pressure to bail out the PBGC at taxpayer expense should the agency become financially insolvent.

2009, 319 pages
ISBN: 1587331535 ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-153-4
Softcover book: $19.95

For more information, see 1534Pensions.com

RL34443, RS22650, R40171, RL34656, GAO-09-207, RL33937

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June 24, 2010 08:47 PM   Link    Publications    Comments (0)

June - August 2010 Legislative, Communication, and Media Training from TheCapitol.Net

Our latest email update:
http://www.thecapitol.net/PublicPrograms/email2010/email_2010_June22.html

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June 22, 2010 09:37 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 6/20/10

Here Come Da Judge! Andrew Napolitano on Lies The Gov't Told You & His New Fox Business Show

• Wi-Fi Classroom - How to Find, Track, and Monitor Congressional Documents: Going Beyond Thomas, June 24, 2010
• Wi-Fi Classroom - How to Research and Compile Legislative Histories: Searching for Legislative Intent, June 25, 2010
• Drafting Effective Federal Legislation and Amendments, July 21, 2010
• Preparing and Delivering Congressional Testimony, July 22, 2010
• Advanced Federal Budget Process, August 2-3, 2010
• Advanced Legislative Strategies, August 4-6, 2010
• Mark Twain on Copyright - "Remarks of Samuel Langhorne Clemens Before the Congressional Joint Committee on Patents, December, 1906 (Mark Twain on Copyright)"
• Persuading Congress: Candid Advice for Executives - "Persuading Congress, by Joseph Gibson, is a very practical book, packed with wisdom and experience in a deceptively short and simple package.
  
  This book will help you understand Congress. Written from the perspective of one who has helped put a lot of bills on the president's desk and helped stop a lot more, this book explains in everyday terms why Congress behaves as it does. Then it shows you how you can best deploy whatever resources you have to move Congress in your direction."
• DWI Convictions Due to Faulty Breathalyzer Calibration - "There is good reason to question the foundation of DWI laws and enforcement. Radley Balko makes the case that the federal push for reducing the national DWI BAC standard from .10 to .08 achieved little for public safety in Back Door to Prohibition: The New War on Social Drinking. Even Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) founder Candy Lightner regrets the no-tolerance direction her organization has taken: '[MADD has] become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned… I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.'"
• Now they finally have something to fight about - "
  
  The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.The previously unknown deposits -- including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium -- are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
  
  People, this could make the Dutch disease and blood diamonds look like kid's stuff, no? We have already seen all the years of violence, all the corruption and now there is actually something valuable in play. Kudos to the NYT reporter for recognizing this:
  
  
  Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.
  
  Not to mention how it will affect the US and our willingness to keep soldiers fighting and dying there."
• Congress to Big Biz: Lobby more, or else - "Congressmen, especially Democrats, like to attack lobbyists and lobbying. They also supposedly hate corporate influence through campaign spending. Why, then, are they always criticizing businesses that don’t lobby or give enough in the form of campaign contributions?
  
  Apple is the latest corporation in the crossfires for insufficient influence peddling/brown-nosing. Check out these nuggets from today’s Politico story:
  
  
  While Apple’s success has earned rock-star status in Silicon Valley, its low-wattage approach in Washington is becoming more glaring to policymakers….
  
  It is one of the few major technology companies not to have a political action committee….
  
  Compared with other tech giants, Apple’s lobbying expenditures are small. In 2009, Apple spent only $1.5 million to lobby the federal government, less than Amazon, Yahoo and IBM. In 2009, Google, for example, spent $4 million, Microsoft $7 million and AT&T $15 million….
  
  More lobbying benefits lawmakers. More lobbying means more people begging you for favors. It means more people hiring your staffers as lobbyists -- staffers who then become your fundraisers. It also means more job prospects for you when you call it quits."
• No Keynesianism in the Berliner Morgenpost - "Germany, of course, is one of the most successful countries in the world since its postwar reconstruction. (You could make a good case for giving Germany the 'best country award' for the last fifty or sixty years.) Yet German policymakers adhere reasonably consistently to the following views:
  
  1. It is the long run which matters and we should be obsessed with the long run consequences of our choices.
  
  2. Economic growth comes from high productivity, most of all in quality manufacturing.
  
  3. Borrowing to finance consumption is a nicht-nicht. Savings is all-important.
  
  4. If we need to make a big change, we'll all grit our teeth and do it. For instance Germany has done a good deal, on the real side, to restore its export competitiveness in the last ten years, not to mention unification and postwar recovery.
  
  5. These strictures should be enforced by rigorous rules, to limit temptation, because indeed you will find cases where it appears to make sense to break the rules.
  
  6. Values matter, as do norms of cooperation.
  
  7. Don't obsess over the creation of too many low-wage jobs, because in the longer run it will be bad for your cultural capital. If need be, pay people to be unemployed, but hold high human capital. In the longer run, try to educate them up to higher productivity and thus employment.
  
  8. Be obsessed with self-improvement, most of all at the personal level.
  . . .
  I'm a fan of the northern European social democracies, but in part they succeed because those countries don't follow all of the prescriptions you might hear coming from their boosters in the United States. For instance American liberals often admire the activist government in such countries, but it's built upon a very different set of cultural foundations. I hear or read liberals calling for the comparable interventions but usually remaining quite silent about the accompanying cultural foundations or in some cases actively opposing them.
  
  The cultural elements of the current Keynesian debates remain underexplored in the United States, but they are fairly well understood in Germany."
• Obama Oval: Nothing but nets - "President Obama has waited all this time to throw down the big Oval Office address to the nation. Tuesday night at 8 p.m. will be the debut Oval chat of his presidency -- carried live on all four networks, says Yahoo.
  
  Because nothing says 'I mean business' like wooden, artificial remarks to the pool camera from behind the Resolute desk to an impatient, non-cable audience who thought they were tuning into 'Losing it with Jillian.'"
• How Illinois is that? Testimony at Blagojevich trial: Barack, Rod and Tony hanging with Big Bob - "Hopium smokers might consider it a buzzkill, but Wednesday's testimony in the Blagojevich corruption trial sure gave me the munchies.
  
  What could be tastier than two Democrats -- President Barack Obama and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- hanging out with the treasurer of the Republican National Committee at a Wilmette fundraiser hosted by a political fixer who would soon be in federal prison?
  
  According to testimony by businessman Joseph Aramanda (who later wrote a $10,000 campaign check to Obama), it happened in 2003 as Obama was mounting a campaign for the U.S. Senate.
  
  Obama was there. So was Gov. Dead Meat. And their buddy, the political fixer they had in common, Tony Rezko, was there, too, because it was Tony's house.
  
  It's not unusual to see a bunch of suave Democrats at a Democratic fundraiser. But what about the chunky Illinois Republican boss, just chillin', shaking Aramanda's hand?
  . . .
  We're so focused on the criminal aspects, but what about the fascinating political aspects?
  
  Big Bob Kjellander, Republican bigwig and buddy of Bush White House Rasputin Karl Rove, was hanging at Tony's crib with Obama and Dead Meat. How cool is that?
  
  Was it the appetizers? Maybe fresh figs wrapped with prosciutto? Empanadas? A pitcher of Peach Bellini?
  
  Whatever the refreshments and sweet meats, Illinois political bosses are always hungry to cross party lines in order to score. Just the other day, in writing about the trial, I said party affiliation means nothing to them."
• I asked Helen Thomas about Israel. Her answer revealed more than you think. - "I merely asked a question with a video camera to a columnist. She answered me with an opinion that was unacceptable not just to me but to former and current press secretaries, politicians, the president, her agent and a great many other people. Her freedom of speech was not stifled; on the contrary, it was respected.
  
  She didn't say that the blockade was unjust, or that aid was not getting to Gaza, or that there was a massacre on the high seas, or that East Jerusalem is occupied, or that the settlements are immoral . . . and get out and go back to West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Eilat. No. This was not the two-state solution. This was get the hell out and go back to the places of the final solution, Poland and Germany. The Jew has no connection with the land of Israel.
  
  And why? Because, as Thomas went on to explain to me, 'I'm from Arab descent.' That's it? That's all you got? Do we all travel with only our parents' stereotypes to guide us, never going beyond them to get to a peaceful destination?
  
  In the past weeks I have relived this moment over and over, on television and radio, in newspapers and blogs. I've listened to a constant stream of commentary. And my sharpest impression is this: Where before I saw a foggy anti-Israel, anti-Jewish link, it's now clear. This feeling is not about statehood. It's about an ingrown, organic hate. It's a sentiment that bears no connection to history, dates, passages or verses. Erase the facts, the dates and the lore. Erase the Jew. Incredibly, even the Nazis said to the Jews, 'Go home to Palestine.' But Thomas and a babbling stream in our world and country dictate to Jewish people to 'go home to Poland and Germany.' Yeah, I said 'oooh.'"

Radley Balko Discusses SWAT Teams and the Drug War on John Stossel's Show

• Try, Try Again - "The saga of Dr. Jayant Patel is that of a man who concealed his incompetence by never staying in one place long enough for consequences to catch up to him. But though he buried his true track record, Patel took care to bring with him enough social proof to persuade a new set of victims to trust him. As long as he could stay one step ahead, he was gold. It wasn’t as if nobody suspected Patel wasn’t all he claimed to be. One gets the sense that many of his patients had doubts even as they looked up to him from the operating table, but never enough to challenge him openly; to impel them to say the one thing that would have saved them: ‘I don’t want this doctor, get me another’. And yet the truth was that he was probably trying; trying hard to be a doctor. One of the charges against him was that he treated patients that’s weren’t even his. Maybe he figured he needed practice. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. But that didn’t help him because the basic problem was that Patel was incompetent. He should have been something else. And getting an incompetent to try harder only gets you more incompetence.
  
  Patel killled 17 people and removed many more organs and limbs than can easily be counted, often for no medical reason whatsoever. Wikipedia has a summary of his career. At each stage, 'Dr. E. Coli' as he came to be known in Australia, was suspected of being a dud. Yet such was the system of deference built into the medical system that he went on long after he should have been stopped."
• Book review: History and the Enlightenment by Hugh Trevor-Roper - "It was military service that taught Trevor-Roper his attitude of quizzical amusement about everything (or almost everything). He spent most of the Second World War in Britain decrypting German intelligence, but in 1945 he went to Berlin to write a report -- later a best-selling book -- demonstrating that, contrary to widespread belief, Hitler had indeed died in his bunker. These out-of-the-academy experiences turned him against the narrow disciplines in which he had been trained. Professional historians were in danger of killing off history, he wrote, just as philosophers were killing off philosophy, through a misplaced zeal for 'unimportant truth'. He therefore committed himself to promoting history as a public discourse aimed at helping ordinary readers to understand the world in which they live.
  
  During the war Trevor-Roper had fallen under the spell of Edward Gibbon, the 18th-century sceptic and author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. If there was such a thing as a perfect work of history, he thought, Decline and Fall was it, and if there was such a thing as a 'science of history', then its founder was not Marx but Gibbon, or rather Gibbon standing on the shoulders of the French social theorist Montesquieu. For the rest of his life, Trevor-Roper kept trying to persuade his fellow historians to recognise that their own discipline had a significant past, and the essays and lectures that he devoted to the task have at last been gathered together under the title History and the Enlightenment.
  
  He was not interested in the rather threadbare notion (doted on by some humanists) that the lights of truth were suddenly switched on in Europe at the beginning of the 18th century, revealing that the demons which people had spooked themselves with in the past were mere figments of their superstitious imaginations. The Enlightenment that Trevor-Roper celebrates is historical rather than philosophical: it is marked by Gibbon’s creation of a new kind of history, dedicated not to pointless facts or edifying examples but to 'sociological content' -- in other words, to the revolutionary notion that 'human societies have an internal dynamism, dependent on their social structure and articulation.' By bringing history 'down to earth', Gibbon and the other Enlightenment historians had contributed more to the discombobulation of know-nothing theologians than any number of philosophers would ever be able to do."
  
  . . . . . .
  
  
• Message to Freshmen: Let's Start with Kafka and Darwin - "For the past two years, Bard College has asked first-year students to read works by Kafka and Darwin over the summer. These texts then become subjects of analysis when the students arrive on campus in August for an intensive three-week program of reading and writing before the fall semester begins. Let me explain the thinking behind this approach.
  
  The idea of assigning summer readings to students entering college has three justifications. First, since American high school students usually take more of a vacation from serious thinking and study during the summer months than is warranted, readings remind them that college promises to be demanding and difficult and that it would therefore behoove them to stay in some sort of intellectual shape. This exercise is especially welcome because once high school seniors learn what college they will attend, they often cease to study seriously so that the final months of high school are wasted.
  
  The second reason for summer readings is that most colleges have a program of general education that complements the normal process of choosing a major.
  . . .
  In the case of Bard College, to some extent all three reasons inform our decision to assign summer readings to incoming first-year students. We have staked out a clear position against the conventional high school curriculum in the sense that we believe high school is not sufficiently rigorous and takes too long."
  
  . . .
  
  
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the early 1970s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• Future of Real Estate, Part 1 - "Anyone who has ever had a beef with a real estate agent should take a look at the website ReallyRottenRealty.com. It’s all in fun, but the name suggests what some buyers and sellers believe to be true — that their agents failed to earn their pay for one reason or another."

A scene from Mr. Hulot's Holiday

• To Err Is Human. And How! And Why. - "Despite their titles, the two books in front of us today -- 'Being Wrong,' by Kathryn Schulz, and 'Wrong,' by David H. Freedman -- are not biographies of Alan Greenspan. They’re not accounts of the search for Saddam Hussein’s W.M.D. They’re not psychological profiles of Nickelback fans or the imbibers of chocolate martinis, either.
  
  Here’s what they are instead: investigations into why, as Ms. Schulz writes, with a Cole Porterish lilt in her voice, 'As bats are batty and slugs are sluggish, our own species is synonymous with screwing up.'
  
  Bookstores will shelve these two volumes side by side, and critics like me will think, bingo!, and set them up for a blind date too. But they could not be more unalike. Ms. Schulz’s book is a funny and philosophical meditation on why error is mostly a humane, courageous and extremely desirable human trait. She flies high in the intellectual skies, leaving beautiful sunlit contrails. God isn’t her co-pilot; Iris Murdoch seems to be.
  
  Mr. Freedman’s book is a somewhat cruder vehicle. It’s a John Stossel-like exposé of the multiple ways that society’s so-called experts (scientists, economists, doctors) let us down, if not outright betray us. It’s a chunk of spicy populist outrage, and it can be a hoot to watch Mr. Freedman’s reading glasses steam up as he, like Big Daddy in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,' sniffs mendacity around the plantation. But Ms. Schulz’s book is the real find here; forgive me if I spend more time with it."
  
  . . .
  
  
• The bright side of wrong - "There are certain things in life that pretty much everyone can be counted on to despise. Bedbugs, say. Back pain. The RMV. Then there’s an experience we find so embarrassing, agonizing, and infuriating that it puts all of those to shame. This is, of course, the experience of being wrong.
  
  Is there anything at once so routine and so loathed as the revelation that we were mistaken? Like the exam that’s returned to us covered in red ink, being wrong makes us cringe and slouch down in our seats. It makes our hearts sink and our dander rise.
  . . .
  If we hope to avoid those outcomes, we need to stop treating errors like the bedbugs of the intellect -- an appalling and embarrassing nuisance we try to pretend out of existence. What’s called for is a new way of thinking about wrongness, one that recognizes that our fallibility is part and parcel of our brilliance. If we can achieve that, we will be better able to avoid our costliest mistakes, own up to those we make, and reduce the conflict in our lives by dealing more openly and generously with both other people’s errors and our own.
  
  To change how we think about wrongness, we must start by understanding how we get things right.
  . . .
  You use inductive reasoning when you hear a strange noise in your house at 3 a.m. and call the cops; when your left arm throbs and you go to the emergency room; when you spot your spouse’s migraine medicine on the table and immediately turn on the coffee, turn off the TV, and hustle your tantrumming toddler out of the house. In situations like these, we don’t hang around trying to compile bulletproof evidence for our beliefs -- because we don’t need to. Thanks to inductive reasoning, we are able to form nearly instantaneous beliefs and take action accordingly."
• The Mother of All Invention: How the Xerox 914 gave rise to the Information age - "The struggles, obstacles, and ultimate triumph of its principal inventor, Chester Carlson-- beginning with his frustrations as a patent analyst in the late 1930s--seem ripped from a Frank Capra film. Few people thought a market existed for the machines, which went on to become ubiquitous. In fact, the 914’s 17-year production run, which ended in 1976, was Methuselahian compared with today’s technology product cycles. No wonder Fortune later called the 914 'the most successful product ever marketed in America measured by return on investment.' Yet David Owen, the author of the well-received 2004 book Copies in Seconds: Chester Carlson and the Birth of the Xerox Machine, was not asked for any interviews to commemorate the anniversary--and both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal ignored the milestone.
  
  Why no champagne? Although Xerox celebrated the 914 in fall 2009, it wants to move on from hardware-manufacturing alone to being what its Web site calls 'a true partner in helping companies better manage information'--that is, a provider of business services, software, and new forms of paperless imaging. The 914 is a classic brand, but not a living one like the Swingline stapler or Bic pen. And although millions still make photocopies, the practice has been in decline."
  
  . . .
  
  

. . . . . . . . .


Continue reading "Assorted Links 6/20/10"

June 20, 2010 04:27 PM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

Glossary of Legislative Terms: "Hopper"

Hopper: Box on the House clerk's desk where members place bills and resolutions to introduce them.

This definition is from the Glossary in our Congressional Deskbook. Perfect reference tool of Congressional jargon and procedural terms. Congressional Deskbook: The Practical and Comprehensive Guide to Congress, by Michael Koempel and Judy Schneider.

TheCapitol.Net offers training and a Certificate in Congressional Operations and Federal Budgeting. We show you how Washington and Congress work. ^TM

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June 18, 2010 08:07 AM   Link    Tips and Terms    Comments (0)

"Persuading Congress: How to Spend Less and Get More from Congress: Candid Advice for Executives"

Persuading Congress

Persuading Congress
How to Spend Less and Get More from Congress: Candid Advice for Executives

By Joseph Gibson

Persuading Congress, by Joseph Gibson, is a a practical book, packed with wisdom and experience. For less than the cost of a cab ride to the airport, you can learn how to stop wasting your time when you visit Washington.

What happens in Congress affects all of our lives and extends into every corner of the economy. Because so much is at stake there, businesses and other interest groups spend billions of dollars each year trying to influence legislation.

Yet, most of these efforts are doomed to futility from the outset. Only a small percentage of the bills introduced in Congress actually become law, and most interested parties do not fully understand why those few bills succeed. More importantly, how to get Congress to do what they want remains a mystery to them.

This book will help you understand Congress. Written from the perspective of one who has helped put a lot of bills on the president's desk and helped stop a lot more, this book explains in everyday terms why Congress behaves as it does. Then it shows you how you can best deploy whatever resources you have to move Congress in your direction.

Because you have limited time, this book sticks to the basics and its chapters are short so that it can be digested rapidly.

2010, 150 pages

Hardbound, $27
ISBN 10: 158733-173-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-173-2

Softcover, $24
ISBN 10: 158733-164-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-164-0

For more information, see PersuadingCongress.com

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June 15, 2010 07:47 AM   Link    Publications    Comments (0)

Drafting Federal Legislation and Amendments, 1-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

Drafting Effective Federal Legislation and Amendments

This course helps anyone draft and revise bills and amendments, with lessons especially useful to those who prepare reports, legislation and other documents. In this course, instructors explain the role of the OMB, examining various formats and exploring ways to choose the most appropriate one for your issue.

You will learn how to:

• Define your audience and broaden your measure's appeal
• Assess existing law and policy objectives before putting pen to paper
• Structure bills and amendments to streamline the drafting process
• Comply with the U.S. Code rules of construction, style, grammar and punctuation guide
• Use drafting styles that work in your favor
• Apply drafting language to your ideas and goals via hands-on exercises

Course materials include the Training Edition of "Legislative Drafter's Deskbook," by Tobias A. Dorsey.

Legislative Drafter's Deskbook, by Tobias A. Dorsey

July 21, 2010, 9:00 am to 4:30 pm

Approved for 0.6 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: Hall of the States, 444 North Capitol Street NW, Washington, DC (1 1/2 blocks from the Union Station Metro stop)

This is an elective course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see DraftingLegislation.com

Continue reading "Drafting Federal Legislation and Amendments, 1-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net"

June 12, 2010 09:17 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 6/11/10

Battleship Island & Other Ruined Urban High-Density Sites

• Wi-Fi Classroom - How to Find, Track, and Monitor Congressional Documents: Going Beyond Thomas, June 24, 2010
• Wi-Fi Classroom - How to Research and Compile Legislative Histories: Searching for Legislative Intent, June 25, 2010
• Drafting Effective Federal Legislation and Amendments, July 21, 2010
• Preparing and Delivering Congressional Testimony, July 22, 2010
• Advanced Federal Budget Process, August 2-3, 2010
• Advanced Legislative Strategies, August 4-6, 2010
• Mark Twain on Copyright - "Remarks of Samuel Langhorne Clemens Before the Congressional Joint Committee on Patents, December, 1906 (Mark Twain on Copyright)"
• Persuading Congress: Candid Advice for Executives - "Persuading Congress, by Joseph Gibson, is a very practical book, packed with wisdom and experience in a deceptively short and simple package.
  
  This book will help you understand Congress. Written from the perspective of one who has helped put a lot of bills on the president's desk and helped stop a lot more, this book explains in everyday terms why Congress behaves as it does. Then it shows you how you can best deploy whatever resources you have to move Congress in your direction."
• Impact of Decennial Census on Unemployment Rate - "My estimate was that the 2010 Census would add 417,000 payroll jobs in May; the actual was 411,000 payroll jobs.
  
  My preliminary estimate is the Census will subtract 200,000 payroll jobs in June - and most of the remaining temporary Census jobs (564,000 total in May) will be unwound by September."
• Baltimore Police Officer Fires 13 Shots, Kills Unarmed Man - "An off-duty Baltimore police officer and a former Marine had a disagreement about the Marine’s advances toward the officer’s girlfriend. The officer ended it with thirteen rounds fired from his service pistol, six hitting the Marine and killing him. Baltimore police have confirmed that the Marine was unarmed. The officer refused a breathalyzer at the scene. (HT Instapundit)
  
  It gets better. The officer was involved in another shooting five years ago, which was determined to have been justified, but the officer was disciplined… for being intoxicated.
  . . .
  Of course, anyone recording the exchange that led to the shooting could be prosecuted for a felony under Maryland’s wiretapping law. Just ask Anthony Graber."
• The education of Peter Beinart - "Perhaps you haven't paid attention that in the last 25 years, since this older generation has faded, you've seen the growth of Islamic extremism on a global scale, much of it aimed at Israel. And they are not so much interested in the territories, as such. They are interested in the very existence of Israel, as they openly state. So I don't see how you can dismiss the sea of hostility. It’s in front of your face every day. It’s not the professors at the Sorbonne and it’s not The New York Review of Books that we're talking about. It’s Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran and Syria and Islamic extremists from one end of the globe to the other.
  
  So you’re talking about a very deeply threatened country. It’s not threatened because of one policy or another or the personality of Bibi Netanyahu or any other single thing. The pro-Israel organizations -- I worked for one, AIPAC, for 23 years, I ought to know -- see themselves as part of an activist effort to fight against that tidal wave."
• U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe - "Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.
  
  SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.
  
  Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.
  
  He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing 'almost criminal political back dealings.'
  
  'Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,' Manning wrote."
• Ninja Bureaucrats on the Loose - "Quinn Hillyer has an excellent piece at the Washington Times highlighting the simultaneously farcical and frightening use of armed agents in enforcing suspected regulatory violations.
  
  
  ”The government,” wrote 50-year-old Denise Simon, “is too big to fight.” With those words, in a note to her 17-year-old son, Adam, she explained why she was committing suicide (via carbon monoxide) three days after 10 visibly armed IRS agents in bulletproof vests had stormed her home on Nov. 6, 2007, in search of evidence of tax evasion. Her 10-year-old daughter, Rachel, was there with Simon when the agents stormed in.
  
  “I cannot live in terror of being accused of things I did not do,” she wrote to Adam. To the rest of the world, in a separate suicide note, she wrote: “I am currently a danger to my children. I am bringing armed officers into their home. I am compelled to distance myself from them for their safety.”
  
  The IRS is not the lone culprit. The EPA, National Park Service, Small Business Administration and even the Railroad Retirement Board have acquired a taste for tactical enforcement of administrative sanctions."
• ObamaCare's Defenders to the Public: Trust Us, You Really Like This Law! - "Before the Affordable Care Act passed, many of its supporters argued that, despite the law's not-so-great poll numbers, passing it would give the president a popularity boost, and the law would become more popular over time. It was a public policy version of the "try it, you'll like it" argument that parents use to get finnicky kids to eat weird casseroles. But it didn't seem likely at the time, and, sure enough, it turns out there was no bounce for Obama. Similarly, most polls since passage show that the law's popularity has not improved, and slightly more people still dislike it than like it. In fact, Rassmussen (which is an outlier amongst pollsters), says the law has become less popular since passage, though its numbers also show opposition receding slightly in recent weeks.
  . . .
  And at this point, I suspect it will be more difficult to defend the law than before it was passed. Since its passage, bad news has continued to pile up, and many the claims made about it have become increasingly difficult to maintain. We've already seen reports that the total cost will be more than expected, that the administration isn't hitting its deadlines, that it won't bring overall health care spending down, that some health insurance premiums will probably rise, that Medicare benefits for many seniors are scheduled to go on the chopping block, that it will strain emergency rooms, and that employers expect medical costs to rise and are looking at dropping millions from their health care plans--all of which is to say that what the law's advocates sold to the public isn't quite what they delivered. If protecting the public from distortions and misrepresentations is really what these folks hope to do, maybe they ought to start with their own side."
• Report: More than 1,400 former lawmakers, Hill staffers are financial lobbyists - "Even for Washington, the revolving door between government and Wall Street spins at a dizzying pace. More than 1,400 former members of Congress, Capitol Hill staffers or federal employees registered as lobbyists on behalf of the financial services sector since the start of 2009, according to an exhaustive new study issued Thursday.
  
  The analysis by two nonpartisan groups, Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics, found that the "small army" of financial lobbyists included at least 73 former lawmakers and 148 ex-staffers connected to the House or Senate banking committees. More than 40 former Treasury Department employees also ply their trade as lobbyists for Wall Street firms, the study found."
• Verizon Strives to Close iPhone Gap - "'The carrier model is an established model,' Google Android chief Andy Rubin said in an interview. 'Consumers can walk in off the street and put their hands on a device and feel it. When you're choosing among three devices, it's best to use them side by side, and that's something you can't do on the Web.'"
  
  Doh!
  
  
• California: Appellate Decision Strikes Down Red Light Camera Evidence - "Appellate courts in California are becoming increasingly upset at the conduct of cities and photo enforcement vendors. On May 21, a three-judge panel of the California Superior Court, Appellate Division, in Orange County tossed out a red light camera citation in the city of Santa Ana in a way that calls into question the legitimacy of the way red light camera trials are conducted statewide. Previously, a string of brief, unpublished decisions struck at illegal contracts, insufficient notice and other deficiencies. This time, however, the appellate division produced a ten-page ruling and certified it for publication, setting a precedent that applies to the county’s three million residents.
  . . .
  'The photographs contain hearsay evidence concerning the matters depicted in the photograph including the date, time and other information,' the ruling summarized. 'The person who entered that relevant information into the camera-computer system did not testify. The person who entered that information was not subject to being cross-examined on the underlying source of that information. The person or persons who maintain the system did not testify. No one with personal knowledge testified about how often the system is maintained. No one with personal knowledge testified about how often the date and time are verified or corrected. The custodian of records for the company that contracts with the city to maintain, monitor, store and disperse these photographs did not testify. The person with direct knowledge of the workings of the camera-computer system did not testify.'"
  
  
• Repeal the 17th Amendment? - "Quick, what's the 17th Amendment? Good on you if you didn't need a lifeline: It's the one that mandated direct election of senators, instead of having them appointed by state legislatures."
  
  17th Amendment
  
  
• Taliban hang 7-year-old boy accused of being a spy, suicide bomber kills 40 at Afghanistan wedding - "A 7-year-old boy accused of being a spy was hanged by Taliban militants, according to published reports Thursday.
  
  The child was allegedly put on trial by the militant group and later found guilty of working for Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's government, reports the Daily Mail.
  
  Karzai called the act a 'crime against humanity.'
  
  'I don't think there's a crime bigger than that that even the most inhuman forces on earth can commit,' Karzai said.
  
  The child was publicly hanged in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province, a local official told The Associated Press.
  
  'A 7-year-old boy cannot be a spy,' Karzai added. 'A 7-year-old boy cannot be anything but a seven-year-old boy, and therefore hanging or shooting to kill a seven-year-old boy... is a crime against humanity.'"
• Democrats not only party in trough with Blago - "Those foreign correspondents covering the corruption trial of our former Gov. Dead Meat are sending dispatches back East, warning of a big problem for the Democrats.
  
  According to common wisdom, Republicans are ready to hop on Dead Meat's back, whomp him with a stick and ride to power just as fast as you can say Rod Blagojevich.
  
  Except for one thing.
  
  It was that photograph shown to the jury on Wednesday, during the first day of testimony by Lon Monk, the admittedly corrupt former chief of staff to Blagojevich.
  
  The photograph was of a large-headed, middle-aged man half smiling through an open mouth. He's no Democrat.
  
  'That's Bob Kjellander (pronounced $hell-an-der),' said Monk from the witness stand. 'He's a lobbyist and head of the Illinois Republican Party.'
  
  Kjellander was a de facto Illinois Republican boss who'd gone national as treasurer of the Republican National Committee. He's also a buddy of former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove."
  
  

Misconceptions about Israel on the college campus





Jihad on US campuses




16-yr old "Daniel" confronts lion's den of haters to stand for the honor of Israel

• Genetic Evidence Shows Common Origins of Jews - "I don’t think that Zionism, etc., depends on whether Jews really have common genetic origins or not, anymore than Palestinian identity is any more or less real depending on whether, as some claim, a large percentage of “Palestinian Arabs” had immigrated rather recently from other countries in the Middle East. But I do think that manipulating history for ideological purposes is bad..."
• Rabbi Receives Death Threats Over Helen Thomas Video - "The New York rabbi who videotaped veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas telling Jews to 'get the hell out of Palestine' says he has received numerous death threats and thousands of pieces of hate mail in the days since Thomas' abrupt retirement.
  
  Rabbi David Nesenoff said he is facing an 'overload' of threatening e-mails calling for a renewed Holocaust and targeting his family -- a barrage of hate he said he planned to report to the police on Wednesday.
  
  'This ticker tape keeps coming in,' Nesenoff told FoxNews.com. 'We got one specific one saying, 'We're going to kill the Jews; watch your back.''
  
  Nesenoff said he was shocked not only by Thomas' original remarks -- which he called anti-Semitic -- but by the wave of insults and threats he has received since his videotape brought about her public shaming and the end of her 50-year career at the White House.
  
  'This is something that I thought was a couple of people here or there, [but] it's mainstream and it's frightening," the Long Island rabbi said. '[Thomas] is just a little cherry on top of this huge, huge sundae of hate in America.'"
  
  To see a few samples of the email being sent to Rabbi Nesenoff, see his web site at RabbiLive.com. Wonder how many of the death-threat haters are in violation of the terms of service (ToS) of their ISPs and email providers....
  
  
• Hebrew origin of Palestinians theory - "According to [Tsvi] Misinai, unlike the ancestors of the modern day Jews who were city dwellers to a large extent, the Hebrew ancestors of the Palestinians were rural dwellers, and were allowed to remain in the land of Israel to work the land and supply Rome with grain and olive oil. As a result of remaining in the Land of Israel, the Palestinians partially converted to Christianity during the Byzantine era. Later, with the coming of Islam, they were Islamized through a combination of conversions, mostly forced conversions, mainly to avoid dhimmi status and less frequently out of genuine conviction.
  
  Conversion to Islam occurred both in large numbers and progressively throughout the successive periods of foreign elite minority rule over Palestine, starting with the various dynasties of Arabian Muslim rulers from the initial Muslim conquest of Palestine"
• Kaifeng Jews - "According to historical records, a Jewish community lived in Kaifeng from at least the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127) until the late nineteenth century and Kaifeng was Northern Song's capital. It is surmised that the ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews came from Central Asia. It is also reported that in 1163 Ustad Leiwei was given charge of the religion (Ustad means teacher in Persian), and that they built a synagogue surrounded by a study hall, a ritual bath, a communal kitchen, a kosher butchering facility, and a sukkah.
  
  During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), a Ming emperor conferred seven surnames upon the Jews, by which they are identifiable today: Ai, Shi, Gao, Jin, Li, Zhang, and Zhao. Interestingly, two of these: Jin and Shi are the equivalent of common Jewish names in the west: Gold and Stone.
  
  The existence of Jews in China was unknown to Europeans until 1605, when Matteo Ricci, then established in Beijing, was visited by a Jew from Kaifeng, who had come to Beijing to take examinations for his jinshi degree."
• My favorite things *Modern Principles* (Cowen and Tabarrok) - "Here are a few of my favorite things Modern Principles:
  
  1. It has the most thorough treatment of the interconnectedness of markets and the importance of the price system; most texts only pay lip service to this.
  
  2. It is the most Hayekian of the texts on micro theory without in any way ignoring the importance of externalities, public goods and other challenges to markets.
  . . .
  10. The financial crisis was written into the core of the book, rather than being absent or treated as an add-on. This means for instance plenty of coverage of financial intermediation and asset price bubbles.
  
  11. The book's blog, a teaching tool with lots of videos, powerpoints and other ideas for keeping teaching exciting, is lots of fun and updated regularly (FYI, this is a great resource for any instructor of economics.)"
• Peter Suderman on Helen Thomas and the FTC's Push to Reinvent Journalism - "Helen Thomas wasn't celebrated as a journalist so much as a monument to journalism's historical legacy. She kept her front-row seat, her column, and her steady stream of awards for no reason other than she always had. And the reverence she inspired had little to do with her work and far more to do with the political media's sense of institutional self-importance. Thomas wasn't a very good writer, but she was a living symbol of a media age past--and the press corps couldn't let her go.
  
  These days, journalists have successfully inculcated a similar sense of sentimental reverence for the media in the federal government. As the media transitions into the digital age and old business models look increasingly shaky, both the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission are investigating how the government can prop up journalistic institutions edging past their prime. And, writes Associate Editor Peter Suderman, the spirit that drove Washington's press corps to endlessly celebrate Helen Thomas despite her thoroughly mediocre output is the same one driving these agencies' efforts."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the early 1970s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• An 800-Pound Gorilla? Google Gets Into Case Law Search - "Even so, I am lulled into complacency by the simple fact that Google does what it does so well. So it is with Google’s entry into case law research with its recent announcement that Google Scholar, http://scholar.google.com, now allows users to search full-text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state appellate and trial courts.
  
  Even before the cases were added, Google Scholar was a useful research tool for lawyers. It allows researchers to search a broad selection of scholarly books and articles, including law journals, drawn from the web and from academic and library collections.
  
  But case law takes Scholar to a whole new level of usefulness. As you would expect from Google, the search interface is simple and familiar. Enter any name, word or phrase and hit 'search.' The default search covers all of Scholar’s collection of federal and state cases and law review articles.
  
  An advanced search page lets you tailor your search more precisely. You can specify words and phrases to include and exclude and set a date range. You can choose to search just federal cases, just a single state’s cases or across multiple states. Searching multiple states requires you to check a box for each state, so if you want to search a significant number of states, you’ll have a lot of checking to do."

Crazy underwater base jump
In Dean's Blue Hole

• Phone 4 vs. the smartphone elite: EVO 4G, N8, Pre Plus, and HD2 - "You might be surprised by some of the results -- and sorry, RIM, you don't get to play until you bring some fresh, media-heavy hardware to the table."
• Should I Buy an iPhone 4? - "The one question Apple never answers at keynotes—their opinion is implicit—is always the most pertinent: Should I buy this new thing? Here's a simple guide:
  
  Steve Jobs lobbed a few surprises today, but the majority of iPhone 4's new features were established back when we published it in April, and when Apple showed the world OS 4 (now known as iOS). Now as it was then, it's an impressive piece of hardware—but is it worth your money?
  . . .
  So, Who Should Buy an iPhone 4?
  The answer is actually pretty simple: If you're eligible for the advertised prices of $199 and $299, don't mind signing up for another two years with AT&T, and don't have any anxiety about Android's rate of progress leaving your iPhone 4 feeling behind the curve, it's a recommended buy, especially if you're currently using a 3G.
  
  But it's hard to swallow at higher prices, and compared the the 3GS, the upgrades feel kind of marginal. For the 3GS user trapped in limbo, waiting for his contract to come to an end, take comfort at just how fast the world (read: Android) is moving and that you're not losing out on too much by waiting."
• Five Best Web-Based Conferencing Tools - "Increasingly sophisticated but inexpensive webcams, microphones, and speedier broadband make web-based conferencing more economical and attractive than ever. Here's a look at five excellent solutions for web-based conferencing."
• The Step-by-Step Guide to Digitizing Your Life - "Your increasingly digital lifestyle has left your analog media collecting dust. Save it from obsolescence and digitize your life.
  
  This guide covers many different kinds of media, so feel free to skip to the section(s) that interest you the most:
  
  
  1. Paper
  
  2. Images
  
  3. Audio
  
  4. Video
  
  5. Storage and Organization
  
  "
• Microsoft, Apple Ship Big Security Updates - "In its largest patch push so far this year, Microsoft today released 10 security updates to fix at least 34 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating system and software designed to run on top of it. Separately, Apple has shipped another version of Safari for both Mac and Windows PCs that plugs some four dozen security holes in the Web browser.
  
  Microsoft assigned three of the updates covering seven vulnerabilities a 'critical' rating, meaning they can be exploited to help attackers break into vulnerable systems with no help from users. At least 14 of the flaws fixed in this month’s patch batch are in Microsoft Excel, and another eight relate to Windows and Internet Explorer."
• How Does Office Web Apps Compare to Google Docs? - "Microsoft rolled out its free Office Web Apps earlier this week, introducing a free, basic Office suite for the web. How does it compare to Google's own Docs offering? Here's a rundown of each webapp's strengths and weaknesses."

. . . . . . . . .


Continue reading "Assorted Links 6/11/10"

June 11, 2010 08:07 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

"Some Tips for Kagan’s Hearings -- Be Prepared"

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to commence its confirmation hearing on June 28 to consider the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace Associate Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. As many experts predict, Ms. Kagan may pass the Senate test with flying colors en route to confirmation.

Leaving the substance and content of her testimony to her White House handlers, and ideology and judicial philosophy aside for a moment, I would focus Ms. Kagan’s attention on the two major roles and responsibilities of a hearing witness: to present effective and compelling oral testimony that makes the case for her confirmation and to be responsive in answering questions posed to her by the committee.

The Senate hearing will be Ms. Kagan’s chance to make the record, correct misperceptions, refute inaccuracies, and frame and advance the merits of her nomination in terms she chooses. If she follows a few well-tested and time-honored cardinal rules as a hearing witness, she stands a good chance of “wowing” the committee, and eventually the full Senate, with the delivery of substantive and skillfully presented testimony and answers to questions and an engaging demeanor as a witness. Here is a list of top-tier tips for consideration:

Some Tips for Kagan’s Hearings — Be Prepared, by Bill LaForge, Roll Call, June 10, 2010

Coming this summer:

Testifying Before Congress: A Practical Guide to Preparing and Delivering Testimony before Congress and Congressional Hearings for Agencies, Associations, Corporations, Military, NGOs, and State and Local Officials

Testifying Before Congress

Testifying Before Congress
A Practical Guide to Preparing and Delivering Testimony before Congress and Congressional Hearings for Agencies, Associations, Corporations, Military, NGOs, and State and Local Officials

By William N. LaForge

As a practical guide to assist witnesses and their organizations in preparing and delivering Congressional testimony, this book is designed for use by anyone or any organization called upon to testify before a committee of the United States Congress, and for those who are providing assistance in preparing the testimony and the witness. This book can serve as a guide through the unique maze of the Congressional hearings process for virtually any witness or organization, including especially federal departments and agencies, the federal judiciary, members and staff of the legislative branch itself, associations, corporations, the military service branches, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private and voluntary organizations (PVOs), public interest entities, state and local governmental officials and institutions, and individuals who are chosen to appear as a witness before Congress for any reason on any topic.

2010, 475-plus pages

Hardbound, $77
ISBN 10: 158733-172-1
ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-172-5

Softcover, $67
ISBN 10: 158733-163-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-163-3

For more information, see TestifyingBeforeCongress.com

Also see

Supreme Court Nominations


For more information, see SCOTUSNominations.com

Continue reading ""Some Tips for Kagan’s Hearings -- Be Prepared""

June 10, 2010 12:37 PM   Link    Congressional Hearings    Comments (0)

Glossary of Legislative Terms: "Fast-Track Procedures"

Fast-Track Procedures: Procedures that circumvent or speed up all or part of the legislative process. Some rule-making statutes prescribe expedited procedures for certain measures, such as trade agreements.

This definition is from the Glossary in our Congressional Deskbook. Perfect reference tool of Congressional jargon and procedural terms. Congressional Deskbook: The Practical and Comprehensive Guide to Congress, by Michael Koempel and Judy Schneider.

TheCapitol.Net offers training and a Certificate in Congressional Operations and Federal Budgeting. We show you how Washington and Congress work. ^TM

Continue reading "Glossary of Legislative Terms: "Fast-Track Procedures""

June 9, 2010 07:37 AM   Link    Tips and Terms    Comments (0)

Research Tools and Techniques: Refining Your Online and Offline Searches, 1-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

Research Tools and Techniques: Refining Your Online and Offline Searches

What to do when you're told, "Find out about this!"

This course helps anyone responsible for research at any Washington-area organization, whether an agency, association, business, elected official or nonprofit. It is designed for anyone who wants to improve their online and offline searches.

Are you among the 80 percent who haven’t received research skills training? Our faculty offer a minimum of 10 years' experience in performing research in Washington.

You'll gain:

• An overview of online searching, telephone and email research
  
• A review of legislative, judicial, regulatory, factual and international research
  
• A review of public and private information sources

Research is a fundamental job requirement of many jobs in Washington, DC, and our research skills courses can help you perform this work more efficiently and more effectively, contributing to better job reviews and promotion possibilities.

Course materials include the Training Edition of Real World Research Skills, by Peggy Garvin.

Real World Research Skills, by Peggy Garvin

You will have a "hands-on" opportunity to follow our faculty and navigate the Internet with one of our laptop computers (first 20 registrants to sign in at program). Or, bring your own Wi-Fi equipped laptop and take advantage of our Portable Wi-Fi Classroom^TM to enhance your learning.

June 25, 2010, 9 am - 4 pm

Approved for 0.6 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: DC Bar Conference Center, 1101 K Street NW, Suite 200 (12th and K Streets NW) (McPherson Square station)

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see WashingtonResearchSkills.com

Continue reading "Research Tools and Techniques: Refining Your Online and Offline Searches, 1-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net"

June 8, 2010 08:17 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 6/7/10

Richard Feynman on Bigger is Electricity!, from the BBC TV series 'Fun to Imagine' (1983)

• Capitol Hill Workshop, June 9-11, 2010
• Wi-Fi Classroom - How to Find, Track, and Monitor Congressional Documents: Going Beyond Thomas, June 24, 2010
• Wi-Fi Classroom - How to Research and Compile Legislative Histories: Searching for Legislative Intent, June 25, 2010
• Drafting Effective Federal Legislation and Amendments, July 21, 2010
• Preparing and Delivering Congressional Testimony, July 22, 2010
• Advanced Federal Budget Process, August 2-3, 2010
• Advanced Legislative Strategies, August 4-6, 2010
• Mark Twain on Copyright - "Remarks of Samuel Langhorne Clemens Before the Congressional Joint Committee on Patents, December, 1906 (Mark Twain on Copyright)"
• Persuading Congress: Candid Advice for Executives - "Persuading Congress, by Joseph Gibson, is a very practical book, packed with wisdom and experience in a deceptively short and simple package.
  
  This book will help you understand Congress. Written from the perspective of one who has helped put a lot of bills on the president's desk and helped stop a lot more, this book explains in everyday terms why Congress behaves as it does. Then it shows you how you can best deploy whatever resources you have to move Congress in your direction."
• The Hard Truth About Residential Real Estate - "Anyone who believes that housing is on the rebound, and that now is the time to buy, should take a very hard look at the numbers I dredged up for my spring lecture and luncheon tour.
  
  There are 140 million personal residences in the US. Today, there are 19 million homes either directly or indirectly for sale. According to a survey by Zillow.com, a real estate appraisal website, 5 million homeowners plan to sell on any improvement in prices. Add to that 4 million existing homes now on the market, 1 million new homes flogged by companies like Lennar (LEN) and Pulte Homes (PHM), and 1 million bank owned properties. Another 8 million mortgage owners are late on their payments and are on the verge of foreclosure, bringing the total overhang to 19 million homes.
  
  Now, let’s look at the buy side. There are 35 million who are underwater on their mortgages and aren’t buying homes anytime soon, nor are the 35 million unemployed and underemployed. That knocks out 50% of the potential buyers.
  
  Here is where it gets really interesting. There are 80 million baby boomers retiring at the rate of 10,000 a day. Assuming that they downsize over time from an average 2,500 sq ft. home to a 1,000 sq. ft. condo, and eventually to a 100 sq. ft. assisted living facility, the total shrinkage in demand is 4.3 billion sq.ft. per year, or 1.7 million average sized homes. That amounts to a shrinkage of aggregate demand for a city the size of San Francisco, every year. You can argue that the following Gen-Xer’s are going to take up the slack, but there are only 65 million of them with a much lower standard of living than their parents."
• Buy Vs. Rent - "Rent in Manhattan: Home prices there are way too high, says Trulia. (Ditto San Francisco.)
  
  Buy in Miami. And Phoenix. And Las Vegas. And most of the other places that have been flattened by the crash. Homes there are cheap compared to rents.
  
  The cross-over point is about 15 times annual rent, the company believes. In other words, as a rough rule of thumb, homes are probably fairly valued in a city when they cost about 15 times a year’s rent. So, for example, if you’re paying $10,000 a year to rent a place, think twice about buying a home that costs more than $150,000. Dean Baker, economist at the Washington, D.C. think-tank The Center for Economic and Policy Research, came to a similar conclusion in research on the subject in recent years. Fifteen times is the historic average, he said."
• DOD’s Guns Versus Butter Debate - "The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment’s Todd Harrison has a new paper out warning that DOD is fast approaching a difficult choice: either fund the people or the weapons they operate, it will soon reach the point where it can’t do both.
  
  Harrison has been warning anybody who will listen about the labor cost challenges at DOD for some time now. Last fall, he wrote a piece warning that DOD potentially faces a GM sized fixed labor cost problem, necessitating a massive increase in federal dollars, a 'bailout' in essence.
  
  His latest paper lays out what he calls DOD’s internal 'guns versus butter' debate. The butter includes pay and benefit increases that have what economists call 'stickiness': they are almost impossible to rollback. The increase in pay and benefits that congress allots DOD each year will crowd out investment in research and new weapons.
  
  First a sense of the scale of the problem: with some 2,250,000 people on the payroll, DOD is the single biggest employer in the U.S., public or private sector. In fact, DOD has more people on its payroll than Wal-Mart (1.1 million) and the Post Office (600,000) combined. The size of the payroll means any changes, even seemingly minor year-to-year increases in pay or benefits, have an outsized effect on the defense budget because of the compounding and cumulative effects of pay hikes.
  
  Since 2000, the cost to pay and care for one active-duty serviceman has increased 73 percent in real terms: from $73,300 to $126,800 today."
• Law entrepreneurs - "My presentation will continue my speculation, begun in Death of Big Law, on the 'legal information industry' that could develop in the aftermath of the demise of current models of delivering legal services. Consistent with the theme of the mini-conference, I focus on opportunities for entrepreneurship in this new industry. So the project might be especially intriguing for those, including the law school class of 2010, who might appreciate alternative employment opportunities.
  
  The paper begins by discussing the forces that are giving birth to the new industry: globalization, new information technologies, clients’ demand for cheaper law, and deregulation of legal services.
  
  I then examine some possible ways to tweak the existing industry model based on customized advice to clients. We can expect to see new ways to connect lawyers and clients, and ways such as outsourcing to substitute contracts for firms. Also expect new kinds of firms that can be sold to the capital markets and that combine law with other disciplines.
  
  Then I look beyond legal advice to refashioning legal information into products. Entrepreneurs might develop new ways to sell legal ideas, uses for contract templates, ways to standardize contract drafting, private development of new business associations, mechanized contract review and investments in legal think tanks that engage in research and development.
  
  The r & d idea could be of particular interest to law professors. I consider the potential for a law version of “Bell Labs” that could privatize some of the research now happening in academia. Good thing, too, because I’m not sure how much room will be left in the brave new world of legal information for research subsidized by law school tuition based on big law jobs that no longer exist."
• Our 1979: The Year That Was - "It has been sort of a topos to evoke the specter of 1979. I’ve done it repeatedly, as have other observers.
  
  Aside from the growing stagflation in the U.S. (I remember farming that year at the ending of an inflation-driven boom), that was the year that China invaded Vietnam. Muslims assassinated the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Russia later invaded Afghanistan. The world seemed to have become unhinged. And there was more still.
  
  The shah was abandoned and soon fell, amid American proclamations of support for him on Monday, and then denunciation of his dynasty by Tuesday, and yet more leaked reports on Wednesday of reaching out to Khomeini in Paris. Soon in his death throes he would jet the globe looking for a home and a doctor, as the U.S. let the phone ring when he called.
  
  Soon Ayatollah Khomeini arrived in Teheran from Paris and proclaimed an Islamic revolution. Iranian students (Ahmadinejad probably among them) stormed our embassy and took hostages. In no time Ramsey Clark was denouncing America on Iran’s behalf, and rumors abounded of Carter’s backdoor deal-making to get them home at any cost before the 1980 election. (In 1980 a humiliating and disastrous rescue mission would see imams desecrating American dead on worldwide television. I recall an odious Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhal, the hanging judge who sent thousands to the gallows, zipping open the body-bags to poke and probe the charred American corpses.)
  
  The Sandinistas also took over Nicaragua. Radical Islamists torched the U.S. embassy in Pakistan. I could go on, but you get the picture. In all these cases, a baffled Mr. Carter sermonized a lot, blamed a lot -- and in the end retired to the Rose Garden or fought rabbits from a canoe. He seemed petulant that he had come into the world in divine fashion to save us, and we flawed mortals were unwilling to be saved by him. The so-called “malaise speech” summed up his disappointment in the rest of us.
  
  And after such a wonderful beginning…
  
  So 1979 followed two years of Carteresque utopian proclamations. Do we remember them all still? There was Cy Vance, in perfect aristocratic style, and in perpetual atonement for his earlier support of the Vietnam War, with his creased brow and sermonizing tone, bringing in the kinder, gentler order. He resigned over the failed hostage rescue, replaced by a stoic Ed Muskie. And there was Andrew Young at the UN trying to be a sort of proto-Barack Obama, reaching out to the radical Palestinians, and so on.
  
  Remember the commandments? No more inordinate fear of communism; human rights governing U.S. foreign policy; no more nuclear weapons housed in South Korea which was to be free of U.S. troops; outreach to the terrorist/rebel/reformer Mugabe, and so on.
  
  In other words, it took a flawed world about 24 months to size up the new idealistic administration, and to determine that it either could not or would not continue U.S. foreign policy of the previous three decades. Soon the more daring then decided to make 'regional adjustments.' Finally a panicked Carter was attempting everything from boycotting the Olympics and arming Islamists in Afghanistan to threatening to use nuclear weapons in the Middle East and restoring draft registration to reclaim lost U.S. deterrence."
• How Free Explains Israel’s Flotilla FAIL - "The organizers of the “Free Gaza” flotilla spent almost nothing on their campaign. The government of Israel poured millions into its botched raid on the ships -- and now is in a worse position than when the flotilla launched. How did it happen? Part of the problem is that the Israeli government never bothered to read Wired.
  
  Israeli commandos may not have known that members of the Free Gaza flotilla were carrying knives, guns and metal bars. But they should have known that many in the incoming flotilla were armed with cameras, cellphones, blogs and Twitter accounts. For a country so technologically advanced, and with such acute public diplomacy challenges, to fail so miserably at preparing a communications offensive over new media is a failure of strategic proportions.
  
  And it was all so utterly predictable. In his book Free, Wired editor Chris Anderson lays out a new media model that foreshadowed the flotilla meltdown.
  
  It’s now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned. Storage (unlimited email storage) now joins bandwidth (YouTube: free) and processing power (Google: free) in the race to the bottom. There’s never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing.
  
  How much money did it cost the organizers of the Free Gaza flotilla to get their message out across the world?
  
  Answer: Almost nothing. Turkish TV placed a camera on one of the flotilla ships and kept it on all the time to livestream events on the boat, while constantly placing activists in front of the camera to speak about their cause. The costs of a camera, some other technical equipment, and hosting of a website are negligible."
• Are Cameras the New Guns? - "In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.
  
  Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.
  
  The legal justification for arresting the 'shooter' rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.
  . . .
  When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop.
  
  Happily, even as the practice of arresting 'shooters' expands, there are signs of effective backlash. At least one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed the right to video in public places. As part of a settlement with ACLU attorneys who represented an arrested 'shooter,' the police in Spring City and East Vincent Township adopted a written policy allowing the recording of on-duty policemen.
  
  As journalist Radley Balko declares, 'State legislatures should consider passing laws explicitly making it legal to record on-duty law enforcement officials.'"
• The BP Oil Spill and at Least One Lesson Unlearned from Katrina - "Of course, we want this fixed now, stat. Nobody questions that. However, I don't think you need to be a libertarian zealot to think that BP is in a much better position to plug this more quickly than the government. Just what information or ideas does the White House or Congress have to fixing this problem that they are withholding from BP? Just what relevant resources are owned and operated by the federal government that BP does not have? Frankly, I find Bill Nelson's hubris disgusting at a time like this."
• One of the most touching ‘ads’ you will ever see - "One doesn’t think of emotion when watching ads regardless of how much spin advertisers might like to to wrap their usual dreck in. Nor does one think of seeing a homeless man as the center piece of an ad unless of course it is for some goodie two shoes charity.
  
  While Momentos might not be considered an ad in the typical sense it is one of those new style of ads that we are seeing in a growing number on the web. The only indication that it might even be an ad is that the televisions used are all LG’s but even then it is really a muted appearance.
  
  In truth this is a beautiful human moment that regardless of the fact that it is an extended advertisement for LG is touching and lets you forget that you are being advertised to. Nicely done."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the early 1970s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."

DVP Remote App Keyboard works with New Roku Netflix App

• Forget Noisy Blimps, Say Hello To the Airfish - "The next time you're at a music festival and see a giant rainbow trout swishing around in the sky, there's just a chance you might not be intoxicated. It might be scientists testing an airship that moves like a fish.
  
  The materials scientists from Switzerland call it the Airfish.
  
  The 8-metre-long helium-filled prototype glides through air as a fish swims through water – by swishing its body and tail from side to side. As well as moving more gracefully than a conventional blimp, the Airfish is also much quieter and cleaner because it doesn't require the fume-belching engines and noisy propellers normally used for mid-air manoeuvres. As such, TV broadcasters might favour it for capturing aerial footage of music and sports events, the team suggests."

. . . . . . . . .


Continue reading "Assorted Links 6/7/10"

June 7, 2010 08:07 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

Capitol Hill Workshop, live workshop in Washington, DC

Capitol Hill Workshop: Politics, Policy, and Process

Intensive 3-day congressional operations workshop

Congressional decision-making is driven by politics, policy and process. In this engaging workshop, Washington-based experts discuss these 3 P's and help you understand the complete policy-making process.

You’ll get a solid understanding of:

• Congressional operations and the legislative process
  
• How public and foreign policy become law
  
• Congressional politics and leadership
  
• Congressional budgeting today
  
• The role of OMB in the legislative process
  
• Effective communication with Congress
  
• How the media covers the Hill
  
• Current campaign and election trends
  
• How members of Congress advance their legislative, public policy and political agendas
  
• How personal and committee staff work
  
• How you can build win/win relationships with staffers

Attend a congressional hearing and see the process in action.

June 9-11, 2010, 8:30 am - 4 pm all three days.

Approved for 1.7 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: In Washington, DC

This is a required course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations and for the Certificate in Communication and Advocacy.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see CapitolHillWorkshop.com

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June 5, 2010 09:37 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Statutory Construction and Interpretation: General Principles and Recent Trends; Statutory Structure and Legislative Drafting Conventions; Drafting Federal Grants Statutes; and Tracking Current Federal Legislation and Regulations

Statutory Construction and Interpretation

Statutory Construction and Interpretation
General Principles and Recent Trends; Statutory Structure and Legislative Drafting Conventions; Drafting Federal Grants Statutes; and Tracking Current Federal Legislation and Regulations

Compiled by TheCapitol.Net

The exercise of judicial power often requires that courts construe statutes in applying them in particular cases. Judicial interpretation of the meaning of a statute is authoritative in the matter before the court. However, the methodologies and approaches taken by the courts in discerning meaning can help guide legislative drafters, legislators, agencies, and private parties.

This book reviews the primary rules courts apply to discern a statute’s meaning. However, each matter of interpretation before a court presents unique challenges, and there is no unified approach used in all cases—but all approaches start with the language and structure of the statute itself.

Still, the meaning of statutory language is not always evident. To help clarify uncertainty, judges have developed various interpretive tools in the form of canons of construction.

When drafting federal law, the most important audience is the federal courts--in particular, the Supreme Court. Fortunately, it is not difficult to get inside the mind of the Court and understand how it thinks. The Court makes this process public in its published opinions; collectively, the process is known as statutory interpretation; it is also known as statutory construction.

Also included is a chapter on drafting federal grants statutes. Several rules of drafting have special relevance to statutes in the field of federal assistance (grants), and those are set forth.

Legislation can be drafted without paying attention to statutory interpretation. But rules of interpretation are like rules of the road: Drive on the right; stop on red; signal before turning; etc. If you don't know all the rules, sooner or later you will park in front of a fire hydrant or go the wrong way down a one-way street.

2010, 318 pages
ISBN: 1587331926 ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-192-3
Softcover book: $25

For more information, see TCNSI.com

97-589, 97589, RS20991, RL33895, 90-1

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June 5, 2010 09:17 AM   Link    Publications    Comments (0)

Glossary of Legislative Terms: "Executive Document"

Executive Document: A document, usually a treaty, sent by the president to the Senate for its consideration and approval.

This definition is from the Glossary in our Congressional Deskbook. Perfect reference tool of Congressional jargon and procedural terms. Congressional Deskbook: The Practical and Comprehensive Guide to Congress, by Michael Koempel and Judy Schneider.

TheCapitol.Net offers training and a Certificate in Congressional Operations and Federal Budgeting. We show you how Washington and Congress work. ^TM

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June 4, 2010 08:17 AM   Link    Tips and Terms    Comments (0)

Assorted Links 6/3/10

89 Dead In The NHTSA Complaint Database? It’s A Sham

Immigration Law -- Up Close
The vehicle is not stopped on a warrant, probable cause, or reasonable suspicion. As far as I can tell, all the cars are being stopped. The police ask about his immigration status and the driver declines to answer. The man in the car knows the law well and quickly makes it crystal clear that he’s not interested in a “voluntary” encounter with the police -- he wants to be on his way. The police repeatedly evade his attempt to clarify the situation. That is, if the police are detaining him, the driver does not want to flee or resist the officers (that’s a crime) -- but if the police are not detaining him, the driver does not wish to hang out with them and talk -- he wants to be on his way. Watch the police lie and/or illegally threaten that he will be detained -- until he answers their questions. Watch the police threaten to arrest the man for causing a “safety” hazard, or for “impeding” or obstructing their "work." Given those police actions, most people will come to the conclusion that they have no choice in the matter -- answer the questions and produce the ID papers. These are the situations that the courts rarely see. The citizen who was understandably intimidated by the threats may get mad, but it is not worth it to sue. If an illegal is discovered, he would be deported in a matter of hours. This video is thus a real public service announcement -- whatever your view is on the immigration matter, do understand clearly how the police will be are interacting with people.

• Congress in a Nutshell: Understanding Congress, June 3, 2010
• Congressional Dynamics and the Legislative Process, June 4, 2010
• Capitol Hill Workshop, June 9-11, 2010
• Wi-Fi Classroom - How to Find, Track, and Monitor Congressional Documents: Going Beyond Thomas, June 24, 2010
• Wi-Fi Classroom - How to Research and Compile Legislative Histories: Searching for Legislative Intent, June 25, 2010
• Mark Twain on Copyright - "Remarks of Samuel Langhorne Clemens Before the Congressional Joint Committee on Patents, December, 1906 (Mark Twain on Copyright)"
• Persuading Congress: Candid Advice for Executives - "Persuading Congress, by Joseph Gibson, is a very practical book, packed with wisdom and experience in a deceptively short and simple package.
  
  This book will help you understand Congress. Written from the perspective of one who has helped put a lot of bills on the president's desk and helped stop a lot more, this book explains in everyday terms why Congress behaves as it does. Then it shows you how you can best deploy whatever resources you have to move Congress in your direction."
• Guest Post: Slouching Toward Despotism - "And the question we keep pondering is, 'Are we there yet?' Are we merely slouching toward despotism, or have we arrived? Are we already so corrupt so as to need despotic government, what with Vampire Squids and corporate/union-bought elections and Congressional bystanders and regulatory capture and Systemically Important Too Big To Fail and Gulf of Mexico oil well disasters?
  
  (Despotism, by the way, describes a form of government by which a single entity rules with absolute and unlimited power, and may be expressed by an individual as an autocracy or through a group as an oligarchy according to Wikipedia, the world's leading source of made-up information, which is good enough for us.)
  
  In previous posts we have observed the growing and discernible disconnect between several types of government-reported economic data such as Retail Sales and actual state sales tax collections, and the Employment Situation and withholding tax collections. Others also have made solid cases for these disconnects between statistical theory and economic reality and it occurs to me that, far from being isolated or random events, they are evidence of much more disconcerting forces at work.
  
  Fudging on unemployment numbers or 'rounding up' retail sales reports may seem like minor infractions, and many of these government data reports have been manipulated for years, maybe half a century, but they represent a pattern of conscious, calculated design of 'don't worry, be happy, the government's in charge, nothing to see here, so move along.'
  
  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), for example, estimates who is working and who is not, but conveniently excludes millions of people from its composition of the unemployment rate who are not working but neither deeming them 'unemployed' because they are 'marginally attached' to the workforce or are “discouraged” by a lack of job prospects and no longer are looking for employment (2.3 million as of March 2010 plus another 3.4 million 'persons who currently want a job,' who also aren’t counted as unemployed).
  
  Side note: You are well aware, of course, the Social Security Administration probably could tell us monthly almost exactly how many people really are working, not working, working part time, self-employed, and so on based on its receipts of tax withholdings from employers. It is beyond the pale to imagine SSA could not furnish a version of the monthly Employment Situation that would be far more reliable by orders of magnitude than the guesses of the BLS."
• Sestak Case Casts Light On Murky Political Boundaries - "When the White House enlisted former President Bill Clinton to see if Representative Joe Sestak would accept a presidential appointment to drop out of a Senate race, there is no question it was committing politics. But was it committing a crime?
  
  The dispute surrounding the White House effort to nudge Mr. Sestak out of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary has once again cast a harsh light on the murky boundaries that govern American political life. When does ordinary horse-trading cross a line? When does behavior that may violate sensibilities actually violate federal law?
  
  The law does ban promising any position to influence an election and Republican lawmakers have called for a special prosecutor or the F.B.I. to investigate whether Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, or his colleagues made an illegal quid pro quo proposal. So far, the Justice Department has rebuffed such calls and, as of a few days ago, officials said neither the department nor the Office of Special Counsel, which looks at politicking by federal employees, was investigating.
  . . .
  At the same time, it can depend on just how subtle or explicit the offers are. Political deals offered in a particularly raw way have gotten officeholders in trouble before. In 2004, the House ethics committee admonished Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, then the Republican House majority leader, for offering to support the Congressional campaign of a fellow lawmaker’s son in exchange for a critical vote on a Medicare bill. And in 2008, the authorities arrested Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, a Democrat, accusing him of trying to sell the appointment to fill the vacated Senate seat of President Obama. Mr. Blagojevich is scheduled to go on trial on corruption charges this week."
• “Woman sues strip club after her 16-year-old daughter is hired as dancer” - "The girl, described as a chronic runaway, got herself a job at the Emperors Gentleman’s Club in Tampa, and now mom wants damages."
• Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it - "Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. "We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots," said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. "This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."
  
  That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.
  
  In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.
  
  That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today."
  
  Which reminds us of this old joke:
  
  
  A drunk loses the keys to his house and is looking for them under a lamppost. A policeman comes over and asks what he’s doing.
  
  “I’m looking for my keys” he says. “I lost them over there”.
  
  The policeman looks puzzled. “Then why are you looking for them all the way over here?”
  
  “Because the light is so much better”.
  
  We all look for things where the light is better, rather than where we’re more likely to find them. In words of Anais Nin, “we don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are”.
  
  
  As well as Rudyard Kipling's poem, "White Man's Burden".
  
  
• If you like the BP spill, you’ll love cyberwar - "Rather, the BP crisis is giving me a sense of what cyberwar will be like. If it happens, and I think that’s likely, it will be pretty ugly. As I say in Skating on Stilts,
  
  “It’s not just that you could lose your life savings. Your country could lose its next war. And not just the way we’re used to losing – where we get tired of being unpopular in some third-world country and go home. I mean losing losing: Attacked at home and forced to give up cherished principles or loyal allies to save ourselves.”
  
  Hostile nations are probably already seeding our privately owned infrastructure with logic bombs and malware designed to shut down critical services -- power, telecom, Internet, banks, water and sewage. Each private company has a private, and unique, network design. Each private company has a private, and unique, set of defenses and recovery plans.
  
  So when an attack occurs, if it’s successful, some of those defenses will fail. Some citizens will spend days, weeks, maybe months, without power or phones or water or access to their bank. We’ll be at war, under attack, hurting. We’ll look to the Commander in Chief.
  
  And he’ll look pretty much the way President Obama does today.
  
  Helpless.
  
  He won’t be able to send troops to protect, say, Verizon’s network. His troops mostly don’t have the skills, and if they do have the skills, they don’t know the network. Even if a company has screwed up badly, failing to adopt basic backup and malware protections, he’ll have to defer to the idiots who got us into the mess until they find a way to get us out.
  
  Of course, by the time they do, the war may be more or less over.
  
  So, if we expect a replay of the BP experience in the event of cyberwar, can we learn something from the current experience? Maybe. Here are a few ideas that occur to me. First, it’s often the case that private companies can quite confidently get us into trouble that they then can’t fix; when that’s true, we ought to be very dubious about their confident assertions that regulation is excessive or unneeded."
  
  From the comments:
  
  As a cybersecurity expert, I’d have to disagree with this post.
  
  It is based on fear of the unknown. The less people understand hackers, the more they are afraid of them. The idea that hostile nations are seeding our private networks with viruses to cause a black out is a fictional scenario you see in movies, and far different from the reality.
  
  There are reasons why government regulation is unwelcome, and it’s not because it’s “excessive” or “unneeded”.
  
  The first is that government regulators don’t understand the problem. Regulators end up favoring the politically connected rather than addressing the problem. Government networks are far less secure than corporate networks -- there are few in government with any meaningful cybersecurity expertise.
  
  The second is that government places ideology above reason. Phrases like “you can never be too secure” make a fine speech, but it’s wrong. You can be too secure. When the marginal costs of additional security exceed the marginal benefits, then you are too secure. Moreover, ideologues exaggerate the benefits of security, and ignore the costs -- they will gladly take away human rights and crush innovation in the of the Almighty Security. Government ideologues are a greater danger to the Internet than Islamic ideologues.
  
  
• I’m dumb and I’m proud! - "It’s not easy being dumb. It never has been. We’re made fun of in school. We’re the butt of jokes. Prejudice has barred us from many vocations.
  
  We in the Dumb Community have always desperately needed role models; people who, despite their unquestionably low intellectual wattage, have still managed to achieve great success. Of course, the Hollywood community has always been an inspiration to us, its members never failing to let their dumb flag fly. But you have to more than dumb to be a movie actor. You have to be good looking, too. So, for a long time now, we’ve hoped for someone who could blaze new trails; who could go where no dummy has gone before. Finally, that role model has mounted the national stage, front and center. I speak, of course, of Attorney General Eric Holder."
• ‘Do Something, Superpresident!’ - "Amid the din of James Carville’s screeching, you may have missed a couple of reasonable voices taking issue with the 'do something, Superpresident!' approach that’s dominating the discussion of the Gulf Spill. (They both mention Cato work, which is a bonus).
  
  In the Daily Beast, Tunku Varadarajan writes that this isn’t
  
  
  “Obama’s oil spill,” if by saying so we mean to ascribe culpability to the president. He didn’t run the rigs, or oversee the plans, or grant the licenses to drill, or write the rules that govern the granting of those licenses. He was just president when the bloody thing happened."
  
  
  Neither Varadarajan nor Greenwald is particularly ready to feel sorry for a president who’s done everything he can to stoke irrational public expectations for presidential salvation in virtually every public policy area. Nor am I. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, as they say.
  . . .
  But it’s not entirely clear what Carville, Palin et al actually want done. A government takeover of the spill site? That’s a stupid idea. Better regulation (retroactively?)? There’s plenty of blame to go around, but color me unsurprised that incompetence and regulatory capture characterize the Minerals Management Service, and that a president who sits atop an 2-million-employee executive branch, pretending to run it, didn’t 'fix' those problems beforehand.
  . . .
  When the public views the president as the man responsible for curing everything that ails us--from bad weather, to private-sector negligence--presidents are going to seek powers to match those superheroic responsibilities. With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power (to torture one superhero slogan)."
• BP oil spill: Who's your daddy? - "'Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?' 11-year-old Malia demanded Thursday morning while the president was shaving. Poor President Obama: even his kids won't give him a break about the Gulf oil spill.
  
  Tough. It's hard to feel sorry for the 'Yes We Can' candidate, who got the job by stoking the juvenile expectation that there's a presidential solution to everything from natural disasters to spiritual malaise.
  
  But the adults among us ought to worry about a political culture that reacts to every difficulty by screaming 'Save us, Superpresident!'
  . . .
  When Hurricane Katrina hit, liberals who had spent years calling President Bush a tyrant suddenly decided he wasn't authoritarian enough when he hesitated to declare himself generalissimo of New Orleans and muster the troops for a federal War on Hurricanes.
  
  Now the party of 'drill, baby, drill' -- the folks who warn that Obama's a socialist -- is screaming bloody murder because he's letting the private sector take the lead in the well-capping operation. It's almost enough to make a guy cynical about politics.
  . . .
  Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal may have a legitimate gripe about the feds delaying permission to build protective sand barriers. But most of the complaints dominating the airwaves aren't nearly that specific. They smack of a quasi-religious conception of the presidency. If only Obama would manifest himself at the afflicted area, shed his aura of cool reserve, and exercise the magical powers of presidential concern, perhaps the slick would recede.
  . . .
  BP will pay dearly for its apparent negligence, ending up poorer and smaller as a result of the spill. Not so with the federal government: disasters are the health of the state."
• Wake Me Up When They Actually Put Any Income at Risk - "From the AZ Republic:
  
  
  Zack de la Rocha has issued a statement on behalf of an organization called the Sound Strike urging music fans and fellow artists to boycott Arizona “to stop SB 1070,” which he labels an “odious” law.
  
  Among those artists joining de la Rocha’s boycott are Conor Oberst, Kanye West, Rage Against the Machine, Rise Against, Cypress Hill, Serj Tankian, Joe Satriani, Sonic Youth, Tenacious D, Street Sweeper Social Club and Michael Moore.
  
  
  So it turns out that at the local Best Buy here in Phoenix, Arizona, I find many examples of these folks’ work still for sale. Moore’s videos, for example, still seem to be available for purchase. Possibly their requests to have their merchandise removed from store shelves in Arizona have not reached the sales floor yet, but my guess is that these guys have absolutely no intention of actually pulling their product from Arizona stores. My guess (and please tell me if I am being unfair) is that most of these folks, at best, are committing to cancel tour dates that for most of these bands are not even scheduled yet. This is about as much of a sacrifice as me promising to cancel my next date with Gisele Bündchen. This kind of statement is the moral equivalent of Hollywood stars who decry global warming from the steps for their private jet."
• Power lunch, alive and well - "The 'steak, oysters on the half shell, asparagus with hollandaise and old men' meal, as former 'Top Chef' contestant and owner of Alchemy Caterers Carla Hall characterized a typical power lunch, has gone the way of the dodo. Indeed, 'the three-martini lunch has not been popular since the ‘90s,' said Adam Williamowsky, general manager of BLT Steak. 'People are eating sandwiches and salads now. You have a mix of guys and girls in golf shirts and khakis having Arnold Palmers and salads.'
  . . .
  Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) is the lead cosponsor on legislation that Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) introduced last summer that would offer a tax boost to business lunchers. H.R. 3333 would increase the business meal tax deduction from 50 percent to 80 percent -- a move that the National Restaurant Association’s Maureen Ryan says could boost business meal sales by $6 billion nationwide.
  
  For a city that thrives on doing business while noshing, it makes sense.
  
  Business 'definitely improves some when there’s legislation -- you’re going to get a lot more diners,' said Monocle owner John Valanos.
  
  Especially when that legislation is designed to encourage lunching."
• Walk Aways, NYT Version - "I would like to read one person make the honest statement:
  
  
  'I’ve done the math, and it doesn’t make sense to pay the mortgage. I can rent the same house a block over for half of what I am paying. I am so far underwater that if I stay here, struggle, and make all the payments, in 10 years, I will merely be back to break even. Why bother?
  
  Like all the big banks have all done, I’ve made the calculation that it is financially beneficial to default on the loan -- so that is what I am doing. As Sonny was told in the Godfather, 'This is business, not personal…'”
  
  I suspect this will be an ongoing story for the next 5 years . . ."
• Housing Bust and Labor Immobility - "Here is a theme we've been discussing for a few years - when a homeowner is underwater, it is difficult to make a career move ...
  . . .
  Negative equity is impacting one of the historic strengths of the U.S. labor market - the ability of households to easily move from one region to another for a better employment opportunity."
• Visualizing the BP Oil Spill - "Centered on DC"
• 89 Dead In The NHTSA Complaint Database? It’s A Sham - "This week, NHTSA came out and said that after a recount of their complaints database, they found 89 dead bodies in their computers, allegedly killed by evil runaway Toyotas. The MSM ate it up. If it bleeds, it leads. Even if it smells. In this article, we will show you the secrets of the incredible killing machine at NHTSA."
• Buffett Expects ‘Terrible Problem’ for Municipal Debt - "Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has been trimming its investment in municipal debt, predicted a 'terrible problem' for the bonds in coming years.
  
  'There will be a terrible problem and then the question becomes will the federal government help,' Buffett, 79, said today at a hearing of the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in New York. 'I don’t know how I would rate them myself. It’s a bet on how the federal government will act over time.'
  . . .
  Buffett said last month that the U.S. may feel compelled to rescue a state facing default after the government committed $700 billion to bail out financial firms and automakers.
  
  'It would be hard in the end for the federal government to turn away a state having extreme financial difficulty when they’ve gone to General Motors and other entities and saved them,' Buffett told shareholders in Omaha, Nebraska, at Berkshire’s May 1 annual meeting. 'I don’t know how you would tell a state you’re going to stiff-arm them with all the bailouts of corporations.'
  
  A report by the Pew Center on the States in February estimated that by the end of the 2008 budget years, states had $1 trillion less than needed to pay for future pensions and medical benefits, a gap the center said was likely compounded by losses suffered in the second half of 2008."
• Journey of Mankind: the Peopling of the World - "a virtual global journey of modern man over the last 160,000 years."

Witnessing the heart as it cracks

• Another NYU Graduate with Six-Figure Debt. Quelle Suprise! - "Students and their parents invest $100k for a degree from an elite institution because they believe it will land them a job that pays enough to pay off those loans in a reasonable amount of time. No one plans to default or flee the country when they sign up for a student loan. You get a degree from an Ivy League or top tier college and you expect to get a decent paying white collar job. I can't speak for third tier graduates, but back in the good ol' days, the majority of graduates from my college and law school found jobs that paid more than factory line workers. That is why people, and especially working class people with academically gifted children, believe higher education is a good investment - perhaps the only investment - that will allow their children to enter a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle."
• Cyber Thieves Rob Treasury Credit Union - "Organized cyber thieves stole more than $100,000 from a small credit union in Salt Lake City last week, in a brazen online robbery that involved dozens of co-conspirators, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.
  
  In most of the e-banking robberies I’ve written about to date, the victims have been small to mid-sized businesses that had their online bank accounts cleaned out after cyber thieves compromised the organization’s computers. This incident is notable because the entity that was both compromised and robbed was a bank."
• Judge convicts mother in Facebook flap with son - "ARKADELPHIA, Ark. -- A woman who locked her son out of his Facebook account and posted vulgarities and other items on it was convicted Thursday of misdemeanor harassment and ordered not to have contact with the teenager.
  
  Judge Randy Hill ordered Denise New to pay a $435 fine and complete anger management and parenting classes. He said he would consider allowing her to see her 17-year-old son, Lane, who lives with his grandmother, if New takes the two courses."
• Wheat Ridge High School Class of 1970 - "The reonion committee is working away planning the 40th reunion the weekend of August 13-15, 2010. Wheat Ridge, Colorado WRHS1970.com"
• Common Market Food Co-op - "Common Market Food Co-op was a 'new wave food co-op' located at 1329 California Street in Denver, Colorado, from 1975 - 1980. It started as a buying club at the University of Denver in the early 1970s, and for a few years prior to moving to the old Safeway at 13th and California Streets, Common Market operated out of a small storefront on Champa Street."
• Italian priests' secret mistresses ask pope to scrap celibacy rule: Forty women send unprecedented letter to pontiff saying priests need to 'experience feelings, love and be loved' - "Dozens of Italian women who have had relationships with Roman Catholic priests or lay monks have endorsed an open letter to the pope that calls for the abolition of the celibacy rule. The letter, thought by one signatory to be unprecedented, argues that a priest 'needs to live with his fellow human beings, experience feelings, love and be loved'.
  
  It also pleads for understanding of those who 'live out in secrecy those few moments the priest manages to grant [us] and experience on a daily basis the doubts, fears and insecurities of our men'.
  
  The issue was put back on the Vatican's agenda in March when one of Pope Benedict's senior advisers, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of Vienna, said the abolition of the celibacy rule might curb sex abuse by priests, a suggestion he hastily withdrew after Benedict spoke up for 'the principle of holy celibacy'.
  
  The authors of the letter said they decided to come into the open after hearing his retort, which they said was an affirmation of 'the holiness of something that is not holy' but a man-made rule. There are many instances of married priests in the early centuries of Christianity. Today, priests who follow the eastern Catholic rites can be married, as can those who married before converting to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism."
• College grads unprepared for workforce - "Many college graduates aren’t prepared for the workforce, concludes a York College study. So the Pennsylvania school is trying to teach professionalism as well as liberal arts, reports NPR.
  
  Business leaders and human resources managers told researchers what qualities they look for in new college graduates.
  . . .
  Half of college degrees are useless, writes Flypaper’s Mickey Muldoon, citing a New York Times’ story on a slight improvement in job prospects for new grads:"
• D.C. drivers among least knowledgeable - "Drivers with District of Columbia licenses rank among the least knowledgeable about the rules of the road in the nation, according to a study by GMAC Insurance.
  
  The insurance company surveyed licensed American drivers from across the country by administering 20 questions taken from Department of Motor Vehicles written exams. DC drivers averaged 71.9 percent on the tests, the third-worst showing in the nation. New York and New Jersey drivers scored the lowest.
  
  Nationwide, GMAC says nearly 20 percent of drivers, or about 38 million Americans, would not pass a written exam."

Lane Bryant, Victoria’s Secret, and arbitrary moral lines

• Mark Twain's Autobiography - "Mark Twain's will stipulated that his autobiography remain unpublished for 100 years after his death, the 100th anniversary of which was April 21st. In November, the University of California Press will release the first volume of what's anticipated to be a rip roaring good time."
• Devious New Phishing Tactic Targets Tabs - "Most Internet users know to watch for the telltale signs of a traditional phishing attack: An e-mail that asks you to click on a link and enter your e-mail or banking credentials at the resulting Web site. But a new phishing concept that exploits user inattention and trust in browser tabs is likely to fool even the most security-conscious Web surfers.
  . . .
  Google Apps user Matt Jacob explains his frustrations with the Google (Apps) account dichotomy. I love how he refers to Google Apps accounts (lowercase a) versus Google Accounts (uppercase A). Clearly FREE vanilla Google Accounts get more preference than potentially-paid Google Apps accounts, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
• Google, Gmail, and Google Apps Accounts Explained - "If you've taken the leap and hosted your domain email with Google Apps, no doubt you've noticed that you miss out on services that regular Gmail accounts get: like Google Reader, Voice, Wave, Analytics, and right now, Buzz.
  
  After complaining about the disparities on a recent episode of This Week in Google, a helpful Googler unofficially got in touch to clarify and confirm the problem. Let's call her/him 'Helpful McGoogler.' Here's what HM said.
  
  To the user, it may appear that there are three types of Google accounts: Gmail accounts, Google accounts, and Google Apps (for your domain) accounts. In truth, there's only one kind of account: a Google Account."
• America's Most Wired Lunch Trucks: Thanks to Twitter, the culinary star system is hitting the streets. The result: some very unusual treats. - "A plethora of food trucks serving hip and exotic cuisines are rolling into cities and towns across the country, and they're using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook to advertise their gastronomic offerings and provide up-to-the-minute location information."
• The World Cup 2010 is coming - Watch in Washington, DC - "June 11 - July 11, 2010"
• NerdWallet Picks Your Best Match from Hundreds of Credit Cards - "The best credit card isn't the one your bank offers--it's the one that pays back the most and costs the least. NerdWallet, a credit card search and filter app, pulls from over 600 cards to find the best candidate.
  
  NerdWallet's certainly not the first site in this space. BillShrink, a previously covered competitor, comes to mind. Where NerdWallet differs is in its larger database of card offerings--some seriously obscure cards and banks came up in our testing, for sure--and its claim to not limit its database to cards offering affiliate sign-up rewards. "
• New Dyson bladeless fan set to make a cool fortune in summer as sales increase by 300% - "Instead of using rotors to chop the air, which causes an uneven airflow and buffeting, the DAM blows out cooling air as a constant smooth stream.
  
  And with the absence of blades, you can safely put your hand through it.
  
  Air is sucked in through the base by a 40 watt electric motor, and then pushed out at high speed through a lip which runs around the inside of its circular head.
  
  As this is forced out, other air is drawn into the airflow, resulting in the epulsion of 405 litres every second.
  
  The fan also has a dimmer-type switch, which means the powerful current can be easily controlled.
  
  Without blades, curious children will not catch their hands in it, and the simple design makes it easy to clean."
  
  $300 for a table fan. Uh huh.
  
  
• Five Best Computer Diagnostic Tools - "Below, we've rounded up the top five answers, and now we're back to highlight the most popular computer diagnostic tools among Lifehacker readers.
  
  If things haven't gotten bad enough that you're forced to take refuge with a Live CD, SIW is a Windows-based diagnostic tool that can help you get to the bottom of things.
  . . .
  Hiren's BootCD is an impressive toolkit rolled into one packed DOS-based Live CD. Sporting over a hundred separate diagnostic and repair tools, Hiren's BootCD can help you do everything from diagnose a memory problem to clone a disk to speed test your video card. If you can't find out what is wrong with your computer after running through all the tools on Hiren's BootCD the diagnostic answer you may end up at is 'Time to buy a new computer.'
  . . .
  Your first reaction to the phrase "computer diagnostic tool" might not be 'Google!', but every computer diagnosis begins with the user wondering what the error code or chain of events leading up to the error means.
  . . .
  You'll find no shortage of Live CDs for Linux distributions, but Ubuntu has a particularly user-friendly Live CD and many people have experience with Ubuntu outside of diagnostic work, both make an Ubuntu Live CD extra appealing.
  . . .
  Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4Win) (Live CD, Free)"

. . . . . . . . .


Continue reading "Assorted Links 6/3/10"

June 3, 2010 08:17 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

Inside the congressional hearings process: Not sexy perhaps, but necessary

At this time of the year, Congress and its committees are in the midst of, or concluding, hearings on numerous topics, bills, and budget considerations. Authorization, budget, appropriations and oversight hearings abound on every conceivable subject. Later this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings to consider the President's nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

On the other side of the witness table, company executives, association leaders, heads of non-profits, government officials, and presidential nominees alike are preparing for the experience of testifying before a congressional committee, an exercise likened by some to having a root canal. Recently we've seen automobile executives, energy company officials, financial industry representatives, and even White House party crashers take their turn to testify in front of congressional committees, with very mixed results and reactions. One need only consult policy periodicals or committee web sites for a schedule of the seemingly never-ending stream of congressional hearings that typically commence in February each year and run heavily through early summer.
. . .
For those engaged in preparation for a hearing, you might want to consider a handy checklist of the essential elements of an effective and successful congressional hearing, and of effective testimony, from the perspectives of both a congressional committee and a witness:...

"Inside the congressional hearings process: Not sexy perhaps, but necessary," by Bill LaForge, The Hill's Congress Blog, June 2, 2010

See also

Testifying Before Congress

Testifying Before Congress
A Practical Guide to Preparing and Delivering Testimony before Congress and Congressional Hearings for Agencies, Associations, Corporations, Military, NGOs, and State and Local Officials

By William N. LaForge

As a practical guide to assist witnesses and their organizations in preparing and delivering Congressional testimony, this book is designed for use by anyone or any organization called upon to testify before a committee of the United States Congress, and for those who are providing assistance in preparing the testimony and the witness. This book can serve as a guide through the unique maze of the Congressional hearings process for virtually any witness or organization, including especially federal departments and agencies, the federal judiciary, members and staff of the legislative branch itself, associations, corporations, the military service branches, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private and voluntary organizations (PVOs), public interest entities, state and local governmental officials and institutions, and individuals who are chosen to appear as a witness before Congress for any reason on any topic.

Forthcoming Summer 2010
2010, 475-plus pages

Hardbound, $77
ISBN 10: 158733-172-1
ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-172-5

Softcover, $67
ISBN 10: 158733-163-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-163-3

For more information, see TestifyingBeforeCongress.com

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June 2, 2010 05:37 PM   Link    Congressional Hearings    Comments (0)

June - August 2010 Legislative, Communication, and Media Training from TheCapitol.Net

Our latest email update:
http://www.thecapitol.net/PublicPrograms/email2010/email_2010_June1.html

If you don't have time to attend our live training, see our Capitol Learning Audio Courses.

2010 Catalog Legislative, Communication, and Media Training and Publications From TheCapitol.Net   Download Download TheCapitol.Net's 2010 Catalog(68-pages, 2.5 MB PDF )   By Mail To have a free copy of our current catalog of courses and publications mailed to you: Call us: 703-739-3790 Send us a fax: 703-739-1195 Complete our online request form: www.thecapitolnetcapitollearning.com

TheCapitol.Net, Inc.
>> We help you understand Washington and Congress TM
>> Non-partisan training and publications that show how Washington works. ^TM

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June 2, 2010 06:57 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)

Visualizing the BP Oil Spill

Fascinating little Google Maps mash up allows you to place the BP Oil spill over any city. I tried a few, but San Francisco and NYC drove the size home the most impressively.

Visualizing the BP Oil Spill

Here it is centered on DC:

Also see

Energy: Natural Gas

Energy: Natural Gas
The Production and Use of Natural Gas, Natural Gas Imports and Exports, EPAct Project, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Import Terminals and Infrastructure Security, Underground Working Gas Storage, Fischer-Tropsch Fuels from Coal, Natural Gas, and Biomass, Gas Hydrates, Gas Shales, Hydraulic Fracturing, Alaska Natural Gas Pipelines

Compiled by TheCapitol.Net
Authors: Gene Whitney, Carl E. Behrens, Carol Glover, William F. Hederman, Anthony Andrews, Peter Folger, Marc Humphries, Claudia Copeland, Mary Tiemann, Robert Meltz, Cynthia Brougher, Jeffrey Logan, Henry A. Waxman, Edward J. Markey, Stephen Cooney, Robert Pirog, Paul W. Parfomak, Adam Vann, Salvatore Lazzari, Brent D. Yacobucci, and Stan Mark Kaplan

The main ingredient in natural gas is methane, a gas (or compound) composed of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. Millions of years ago, the remains of plants and animals (diatoms) decayed and built up in thick layers. This decayed matter from plants and animals is called organic material — it was once alive. Over time, the sand and silt changed to rock, covered the organic material, and trapped it beneath the rock. Pressure and heat changed some of this organic material into coal, some into oil (petroleum), and some into natural gas — tiny bubbles of odorless gas.

Discussions of U.S. and global energy supply refer to oil, natural gas, and coal using several terms that may be unfamiliar to some. The terms used to describe different types of fossil fuels have technically precise definitions, and misunderstanding or misuse of these terms may lead to errors and confusion in estimating energy available or making comparisons among fuels, regions, or nations.

For oil and natural gas, a major distinction in measuring quantities of energy commodities is made between proved reserves and undiscovered resources.

Proved reserves are those amounts of oil, natural gas, or coal that have been discovered and defined, typically by drilling wells or other exploratory measures, and which can be economically recovered. In the United States, proved reserves are typically measured by private companies, who report their findings to the Securities and Exchange Commission because they are considered capital assets.

In addition to the volumes of proved reserves are deposits of oil and gas that have not yet been discovered, and those are called undiscovered resources. The term has a specific meaning: undiscovered resources are amounts of oil and gas estimated to exist in unexplored areas. If they are considered to be recoverable using existing production technologies, they are referred to as undiscovered technically recoverable resources (UTRR). In-place resources are intended to represent all of the oil, natural gas, or coal contained in a formation or basin without regard to technical or economic recoverability.

Natural gas provided about 22% of U.S. energy requirements in 2007. It will continue to be a major element of the overall U.S. energy market for the foreseeable future. Given its environmental advantages, it will likely maintain an important market share in the growing electricity generation applications, along with other clean power sources.

In 2008, the United States natural gas market experienced a tumultuous year, and market forces appeared to guide consumers, producers and investors through rapidly changing circumstances. Natural gas continues to be a major fuel supply for the United States, supplying about 24% of total energy in 2008.

In the past, the oil and gas industry considered gas locked in tight, impermeable shale uneconomical to produce. However, advances in directional well drilling and reservoir stimulation have dramatically increased gas production from unconventional shales. The United States Geological Survey estimates that 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas may be technically recoverable from these shales. Recent high natural gas prices have also stimulated interest in developing gas shales. Although natural gas prices fell dramatically in 2009, there is an expectation that the demand for natural gas will increase. Developing these shales comes with some controversy, though.

The hydraulic fracturing treatments used to stimulate gas production from shale have stirred environmental concerns over excessive water consumption, drinking water well contamination, and surface water contamination from both drilling activities and fracturing fluid disposal.

Solid gas hydrates are a potentially huge resource of natural gas for the United States. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that there are about 85 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of technically recoverable gas hydrates in northern Alaska. The Minerals Management Service estimated a mean value of 21,000 TCF of in-place gas hydrates in the Gulf of Mexico. By comparison, total U.S. natural gas consumption is about 23 TCF annually.

As the price of crude oil sets a record high, liquid transportation fuels synthesized from coal, natural gas, and biomass are proposed as one solution to reducing dependency on imported petroleum and strained refinery capacity. The technology to do so developed from processes that directly and indirectly convert coal into liquid fuel.

As Congress seeks to address energy security issues, the increasing importation of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is also a matter deserving careful attention. In 2007, LNG imports reached a record high and plans are to increase this fuel source.

2010, 628 pages
ISBN: 1587331896 ISBN 13: 978-1-58733-189-3
Softcover book: $27.95

For more information, see TCNNG.com

R40872, R40487, RL34508, R40894, RS22990, R41027, RS22971, RL34133, RS22567, RL33763, RL32205, RL32073, RL33716, RL33212, RL34671

Continue reading "Visualizing the BP Oil Spill"

June 1, 2010 07:07 AM   Link    Caught Our Eye    Comments (0)

How to Find, Track, and Monitor Congressional Documents, 1/2-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net

How to Find, Track, and Monitor Congressional Documents

Going Beyond Thomas

Are you responsible for finding committee reports or searching for legislation and amendments? Do you know which online resources are most useful for your particular task? Do you need to know alternative methods for monitoring legislative changes and ways to better utilize your resources (saving time in the process)?

You’ll learn different types and versions of bills, committee and conference reports, and leadership documents. Students also find out about The Congressional Record, Congress' official activity account. Learn about legislation tracking, monitoring and the complexities of how a bill becomes a law.

You will have a "hands-on" opportunity to follow our faculty and navigate the Internet with one of our laptop computers (first 20 registrants to sign in at program). Or, bring your own Wi-Fi equipped laptop and take advantage of our Portable Wi-Fi Classroom^TM to enhance your learning.

June 24, 2010, 9 am - 1 pm

Approved for 0.4 CEUs from George Mason University.

Where: DC Bar Conference Center, 1101 K Street NW, Suite 200 (12th and K Streets NW) in Washington, DC

This is an elective course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations.

For more information, including agenda and secure online registration, see TrackingLegislation.com

Continue reading "How to Find, Track, and Monitor Congressional Documents, 1/2-day course in Washington, DC, from TheCapitol.Net"

June 1, 2010 06:37 AM   Link    Training    Comments (0)