I so envy Elizabeth Warren, and other law professors feel that way too.
 
It’s not that I want to run for the Senate, or get in the crosshairs of the big banks, or have the Treasury Secretary promise the banks that I will never head a federal agency (though it would be nice if he knew my name).
 
No, it’s that in the span of just a few years, she came up with a great idea, fought for it, and changed the country.
 
A lot of us law professors have ideas for what Congress should do. We put them in articles, but most are ignored. One study found that 40% of all law review articles don’t get cited even once. There’s still time to be the first person to read some of mine (though you better hurry; I’m sure my mother will get to them any year now).

On Tuesday, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce will hold a hearing on the President’s recess appointments to the NLRB – the latest of
a series of wasteful, politically motivated hearings attacking the board since the GOP assumed control of the House in January 2011.

Even in these days of hyper partisanship, it is rare for a party to engage in such rank hypocrisy as has the GOP on the NLRB. Republican criticism of the board falls into three categories: the legitimacy of Obama’s recess appointments, the supposedly biased nature of his nominees, and the NLRB’s “activist agenda” that has enraged the right-wing.

Was that President Obama sitting behind the wheel of a new Honda Civic Natural Gas vehicle at this week’s DC auto show, marveling over the only such passenger car made in America?  Nope. Did I see him take a gander at a Volkswagen that rolled off the line at the company’s Chattanooga plant in Tennessee? No, it wasn’t him. The President did make a surprise visit to the event, but he did not pay much mind to the Kia made in Georgia or the Mercedes manufactured in Alabama either.

Instead, the president focused his attention and remarks solely on traditionally defined “American” cars – the Big 3.  And in doing so, missed an opportunity to brag about attracting global companies to the United States. The story of global investment in the United States is part of America’s success story in the auto sector and one that politicians should crow about – especially during an election year.

The U.S. manufacturing operations of global auto companies account for 40 percent of all vehicles made in America.  And the good news is these firms have been increasing their U.S. footprint by growing American employment, investing in U.S. technology and exporting from their U.S. operations. At a time when we are looking to create good–paying jobs here, we should not overlook the very companies who are doing so simply because they are not homegrown.

Last week, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (BRC) released its final report to the Secretary of Energy detailing how the country should dispose of its nuclear waste. This week, the co-chairs, former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft made the rounds to both the Senate and House for hearings on the issue.

This commission was tasked by President Obama in January 2010 with conducting a comprehensive review of America’s nuclear waste problem. The reason for creating this commission was that President had just fulfilled a campaign promise to close the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository in Nevada. But, closing Yucca Mountain would not address the problem of what to do with America’s nuclear waste.

The federal government possesses cybersecurity threat information and technical capabilities that private enterprises simply do not have. But what is the proper role of the government in the cyber realm? Should it provide cybersecurity for the private sector, or should the government require that the private sector secure its own networks to a particular standard? These topics are currently under great debate in both the House and Senate.

The Internet is a complex system, made up of a growing number of networks and digital devices. It would be exceedingly difficult for any one body or organization to manage and ensure the integrity (viability) of the Internet and all devices that connect to it without massive resources and sweeping authorities, including the standardization of security practices. Such standardization could restrict and slow the innovation that has sparked the global technology industry; could limit the flexibility, and thereby the value, a network provides to its owner; and, in the long run, could actually make networks more vulnerable, especially in instances of state-sponsored hacking. At a time when we’re still struggling with the impact of the economic downturn, new standards and regulations would be poorly received.  

When it comes to Latino voters and how we feel about abortion, “conventional wisdom” should be thrown out the window. Traditional thinking—at least among many elected officials and political operatives—goes something like this: Latinos are socially conservative, strongly Catholic, and therefore they must be opposed to legal abortion. The reality is that Latino opinion on reproductive health and decision-making is much more complex and nuanced. To clear things up, let me provide five possibly surprising facts that should help debunk some of the myths that exist about our community:

Ronald Reagan did not believe that Washington could do much to solve our nation’s most pressing social problems. Except, it seems, when it came to education. The Great Gipper was among the first to understand the scope of our nation’s education crisis, and his administration pushed for the federal government to take a bigger role in making sure that all students achieved at high levels. And if today’s GOP really wants to improve our public education system, they should take note.
 
To be sure, when Reagan first ran for office in 1980, he sounded a lot like today’s Republican party on education issues. Reagan promised to roll back the federal role in education and abolish the Department of Education, calling the agency “President Carter’s new bureaucratic boondoggle.”
 
But soon after coming into office, Reagan almost completely switched his position. The reason was simple: In 1984, a federal commission released “A Nation at Risk,” a scathing report that documented the failure of our education system.

Once in a great while, a major piece of legislation comes along that can significantly change things for the better. The American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act is one of them.

Nearly seven years have passed since Congress last passed a ground surface transportation bill, so the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee made the most of the opportunities provided by this new legislation.  The American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act revolutionizes transportation policy by reforming and streamlining programs, cutting red tape in the project approval process, increasing states’ flexibility to fund their most critical needs and encouraging private sector participation in financing and building projects.

Here’s just one example: this bill takes more than 100 existing programs and, by consolidating redundancies and getting rid of those that only add to government bureaucracy, has whittled them down to nearly 30.

There’s no denying that marriage is on the march forward. Across the nation, from New Jersey to Washington State, the freedom to marry is being discussed at dinner tables and in state legislatures. In November, we’ll be fighting for marriage at the ballot in Maine and trying to fend off an anti-marriage constitutional amendment in Minnesota. And here in the nation’s capital, the conversation continues to dominate the 2012 political narrative.
 
We’ve all heard about presidential candidates taking pledges to “protect marriage” from loving, committed gay and lesbian couples, but today Freedom to Marry has taken an important step forward in truly protecting marriage and restoring the tradition of respecting all marriages legally entered into in the U.S.