Judicial

The judicial appointment process has been broken for two decades. Through the first two centuries of our republic, the Senate was renowned as the world’s greatest deliberative body, the home of lawmakers and statespeople who understood not only the impact of soaring rhetoric but also the value of collaboration and compromise. Senators assiduously exercised their authority to provide advice and consent on judicial nominations. The judicial appointment process was divisive at times, but presidents and senators have historically recognized that stonewalling judicial nominees undermines the independence of the judiciary as a coequal branch of government. With 86 (one in 10) vacancies on our federal bench and with 37 vacant judgeships qualifying as judicial emergencies, the time for collaboration and compromise is now.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, America’s gun control movement was momentarily reenergized. Many reasoned voices sought solutions for such events, which unimpassioned analysis showed to mainly be a mental health issue. Gun control groups also concurred on the mental health aspect, then squandered that brief moment of collaboration by tossing their dusty legislative wish list into the political maelstrom. Knowing that their more extreme measures had little or no chance of passage – such as Dianne Feinstein’s now stalled “assault weapons” ban – they include seemingly benign and popular measures including “universal” background checks.

As with assault weapons, the public self-educated on the topic, and is now rejecting the plan. And for good reasons.

At the end of March Robert Listenbee Jr. quietly started work as the administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the Department of Justice, filling a post left vacant by the Obama administration for the past four years. There are many important issues that Listenbee, a respected public defender, must tackle, but he could have no better first accomplishment than successfully championing a federal ban on solitary confinement for children in federal custody.

The House of Representatives will vote this week on Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act (H.R. 1120), a bill which stops the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from continuing to issue decisions in defiance of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit holding that the board is without lawful authority to do so. The bill deserves bi-partisan support.
 
The bill serves three purposes: first, it eliminates the uncertainty that has arisen in the labor-management community that is being exacerbated by the three-member board continuing to issue decisions; second, it sends a message that Congress intends to protect the U.S. Senate’s role in the political appointment process; and third, it provides an example to other executive branch agencies who may think that the line has been crossed and that impertinent behavior toward a federal circuit court is now in vogue and can be copied.

Now that senators have returned from their recess, they must act swiftly to pass Senator Reid’s omnibus gun violence prevention bill (S.649), which requires that all gun buyers pass background checks — whether they purchase their firearms from licensed dealers or else in so-called “private” sales, such as online and at gun shows. And the bill must take the same record-keeping requirement that already applies to dealers and extend it to such private sellers. Failure to do so will deny police the critical tools we need to solve crimes. As law enforcement officers, we have spent decades watching our insufficient laws give criminals easy access to guns, with tragic results.

The dire human and economic consequences of maintaining a massive immigration detention system are clear. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has recently come under fire both for holding immigrants in solitary confinement, and for releasing hundreds of immigrants from detention in advance of sequestration. The system is out of control, and it’s time for the government to engage with communities to figure out a better way.
 
Through the Interfaith Committee for Detained Immigrants, we provide pastoral care to people in custody and rapid-response support upon their release. We’ve seen the reality that immigrants face in both situations. ICE detained more than 420,000 people last year in more than 150 prisons and jails, at a cost of more than $2 billion. About 85 percent of those men and women faced deportation proceedings without legal counsel. Untold numbers were cut off from medical and mental health care and family support networks.

Thanks to Hollywood movies and nightly television crime programs like CSI, Criminal Minds and Law and Order, most people think that all it takes to find criminals in this country is the stroke of a computer key. There persists a common misconception that a universal national database, containing complete criminal information for every suspect in America, already exists and is readily accessible.

Small businesses expect direct decisions and actions from Congress this year. We expect Congress to carry out the people’s business in an orderly fashion. On the surface this seems peripheral to business, and that specific bills or budgets should be the order of the day; however, those bills that come up to Congress that seem to be socially weighted dramatically effect small businesses. Should the government act on banning assault rifles? Maybe, but there is more than the gun industry that is affected by this decision. Many school districts are scrambling to find budgets for additional private security, and one issue facing them is imminent need, and with the assault rifle being viewed as a direct threat, you can bet local authorities are developing budgets and asking for federal assistance to hire companies.

On April 23 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments for a case in which the unspoken issue will be: Do the justices kick to Congress what would quickly become a bitterly divisive and intractable headache?

With unprecedented peacetime deficits, massively underfunded entitlements, issues of war, peace and national security, Congress’s plate of big issues is full. But another giant helping of trouble may be coming after the high court hears Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann, a case that will determine the future of interstate water rights.

A number of competing gun-control proposals are being prepared in the Senate. While there are a few sensible provisions on the table, we should not be too optimistic any of the bills will do much to prevent tragedies like Newtown, nor lower the rate of gun violence in America. Any serious proposal for reducing gun violence must focus on the people who commit gun crimes and why, rather than on the guns used in the crimes.
 
Supporters of common-sense controls should continue to resist, and even filibuster, pointless and counterproductive proposals such as the so-called assault weapons ban, high-capacity magazine bans, and universal background checks. Proposals to beef-up penalties for straw purchasers and provide more mental health information in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) have merit. But school safety measures should be left to the states, as a matter of both good representative government and of constitutionality.