On the surface, Presidents Bush and Obama have shown little interest in exercising their extraordinary presidential authority to issue pardons and commute sentences.  Many of us who support a robust exercise of executive clemency have been disappointed and disturbed by this inaction. But thanks to Monday’s Washington Post-ProPublica story, we now know that a significant part of the problem stems from a grossly inept Office of Pardon Attorney (OPA) at the U.S. Justice Department. Congress must investigate this vitally important taxpayer-funded office immediately.
 
According to the Post-ProPublica story, the Bush administration was interested in finding deserving candidates for pardons or sentence commutations. Bush had campaigned as a “compassionate conservative” and questioned the practice of sending nonviolent drug offenders to prison for long terms. Clarence Aaron seemed the perfect candidate for a second chance, having been sentenced to life in prison for his first offense, a non-violent drug charge. The missing pieces holding back Aaron’s plea for mercy fell into place when the U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted him and the judge who sentenced him both told the Pardon Attorney’s office that they supported Aaron’s request for a reduced sentence.

The majority of the world's current crises take place within a 7-hour flight from Brussels. From the Balkans to North Africa and the Middle East, the world faces wide-ranging challenges that require different nuanced responses in each situation. The European Union has taken the lead in responding to many of these "hot zones" through a mix of civilian and military crisis management and conflict prevention operations as part of our Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP).

Thousands of EU personnel are currently staffing 13 active peace-keeping missions around the world in fragile states. Civilian missions help train police in Afghanistan, establish the rule of law in Iraq, and contribute to Kosovo’s efforts to develop an independent and multi-ethnic justice system and police and customs services. Military operations have helped stabilize conflict zones in the Western Balkans and parts of Africa. Our most important naval operation to date—EUNAVFOR Atalanta—helps deter, prevent, and repress acts of piracy and armed robbery on the high seas and protects vulnerable vessels cruising off the Somali coast.

What do Somali pirates, polar bears and the Chinese government have in common? Aside from reasons to resent the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, not a whole lot.

The treaty, also known as UNCLOS, forms the legal foundation under which Somali pirates are prosecuted, regulates activity in the polar bear’s habitat as it melts, and undercuts the territorial claims behind the Chinese government’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea. And with the heads of the Defense and State Departments, along with the U.S.’s highest-ranking military officer, lobbying the Senate on Wednesday to take up the treaty, this week marked the beginning of the Obama Administration’s official push to ratify the treaty once and for all.

A group of House Democrats has introduced a remarkably misnamed “People’s Rights Amendment” that, if adopted, would undercut the rights of Americans and transform our society beyond recognition, and deliver an unprecedented body blow to the American economy. This ill-considered proposal would limit application of constitutional rights to “natural persons,” eliminating such rights for all corporate entities. It reveals a stunning disrespect for the established constitutional architecture that has served this country well for over 200 years.

Corporations are, of course, the bugbear of the left wing and a target of the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Poor economic performance is blamed on corporate greed — rather than the business cycle and deleterious impacts of ever more onerous federal regulations — and tax incentives offered to companies as inducements to investment are “corporate welfare.”

The truth is that corporations, large and small, are the foundation of our economy and the building blocks of our society. Before the law recognized, around 400 years ago, business corporations as entities with rights separate and apart from their owners or managers, anyone going into business risked everything. A failure could mean personal ruin, with creditors seizing not merely “business” property but anything the entrepreneur owned, and even imprisonment for debt.

It’s not a good time to be a Baby Boomer. The generation is on the cusp of becoming the largest population of retirees in U.S. history and there has never been a worse time to plan for retirement.   
 
The goal for any retiring Boomer is straightforward: design a portfolio that generates enough income to sustain a certain lifestyle, post-retirement. This has traditionally meant finding securities that offer capital preservation and income—basically, bonds. In the current environment, however, the conventional balance between risk and return has been disrupted.
 
With yields at historical lows that are barely keeping pace with inflation, the risk-return tradeoff could not put retirees in a worse position.  If an investor buys a 10-year U.S. Treasury note, today, the payoff would be 1.72% before tax. Accounting for inflation (expected at 2.3%), the investor actually loses purchasing power the longer the bond is held.

Unprecedented obstruction in the U.S. Senate remains the largest factor in our inability to overcome the influence of corporate money in politics. It is impossible for progressive legislation to proceed if Republicans are able to harness Senate rules to do the bidding of corporate America. Thankfully, several recent developments have drawn attention to Republican obstructionism at the behest of extreme ideological interests. For all of these reasons, it is again time to take up the cause of rules reform in the U.S. Senate.  
 
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) infamously declared that his “single most important” goal was to make President Obama a “one-term president.” His playbook from the start of the Obama Administration was simple – to convince his caucus to obstruct anything and everything. As a result, 60 votes became the needed threshold for nearly every order of Senate business. And the Senate Republicans bullied our democracy with the 60 vote club. They derailed energy and climate legislation, halted the DREAM Act, which passed the House while receiving 55 votes in the Senate, and blocked any debate on the Employee Free Choice Act, which passed the House with an overwhelming majority and garnered 59 votes in the Senate. Senator McConnell succeeded beyond belief in stopping our democracy from governing.  In fact, never before in American history had the U.S. Senate seen such levels of obstruction.

I’ve skimmed some informed discussions at economics blogs about how JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) lost $2 billion and counting on their “synthetic credit portfolio.” But educated guesses are still guesses, the next big problem in the financial system will be entirely different, and to be honest, it all gives me a headache.

My imperfect understanding puts me in good company.

“Paul Volcker by his own admission has said he doesn’t understand capital markets,” Jamie Dimon told Fox Business News earlier this year. “He has proven that to me.” Dimon reportedly was asked at a dinner for investors about Volcker’s criticisms and the arguments by Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, that “too big to fail” banks should be broken up. Dimon said he had only two words for Volcker and Fisher: “infantile” and “non-factual.”

The future of U.S. nuclear weapons is being hotly contested in bitter Congressional debates over the budget. The result is serious uncertainty in defense planning, and that comes with a cost. When nuclear policy is left to be blown about by erratic political winds, there are frequent and sharp changes in direction—changes that are expensive for the American taxpayer, reduce the effectiveness of what we procure, confuse allies, and risk unnecessarily exacerbating tensions with potential foes.
 
We are two nuclear experts who disagree on a lot, including whether the United States should pursue the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons. In spite of these differences, however, we both agree the U.S. nuclear enterprise must be modernized and additional arms control measures should be pursued. And what we can agree on, if implemented consistently, would provide some much needed stability in the U.S. approach to the weighty issues of nuclear weapons.

As a state legislator, it has never been more frustrating to watch Washington, DC than it is right now. At a time when record numbers of Americans are struggling with hunger and we desperately need economic stimulus, Washington seems to be pursuing the political equivalent of a crash starvation diet. Nowhere is this more evident than in the treatment food stamps are receiving in Congress.

Common sense tells us this is not the time to cut the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), known to most Americans as food stamps. The proposed cuts are job-killers, and working families have rarely needed this program more than right now.