The Administration

Since he delivered the State of the Union address in January, President Obama has often spoken about “fairness” and how “everyone should play by the same rules.”

Those buzzwords have become a mantra of his policies and his re-election campaign.

But on Friday, President Obama unilaterally changed the rules regarding amnesty for at least 800,000 illegal aliens – though some estimates put the number of those affected in the millions –and he discarded any pretense of acting fairly.

In a few weeks, children as young as 12 will start leaving schools in south Texas to work in the summer harvest, taking on the difficult and sometimes even dangerous work of picking fruits and vegetables. Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of kids this year will cut the roots off onions, hoe cotton, climb tall ladders to pick oranges and apples, and drive tractors. If the past is a guide, some will be injured, some will be maimed, and some will die.

It could have been different in 2012, with a proposed set of safety regulations aimed at minimizing harm to children hired to work in the fields. But in a heartbreaking about-face, the Department of Labor April 26 withdrew new rules that would have updated the decades-old list of tasks considered hazardous and therefore off limits for hired farmworkers under age 16.

The revelation that the General Services Administration (GSA) spent $823,000 on a conference in Las Vegas exposed waste on a grand scale – the colossal waste of time by members of Congress rushing to investigate what’s already been investigated and punish those already punished.

We all know what happened at the conference. Government employees hired a clown. They hired a mentalist (albeit not a very good one, since he apparently failed to predict the media and congressional frenzy that would follow). They produced videos gloating about their own extravagance.

But even if one assumes that there should have been no conference at all, and every penny was wasted, surely there are far better uses for Congress’ time than “investigating” $823,000 in waste, an amount aptly characterized by NPR’s On the Media as “less than a rounding error in the budget of the executive branch.”

Education Secretary Arne Duncan will testify this Wednesday before the House Education and Workforce Committee on his department’s budget. He spoke to The Hill’s comment editor, Emmanuel Touhey, about his priorities and his political future. Here’s an edited excerpt of that interview.

Q: “We can’t wait” has become a mantra with this administration. How did it get to this point as it relates to education?

Well, unfortunately, when you have a Congress that isn’t working well together you either just sort of stay on the sidelines and stop working or you just keep trying to get things done. And No Child Left Behind has been broken for a long time, and we desperately wanted Congress to fix it and to fix it in a bipartisan way … but that didn’t happen, so we had the flexibility to go out and partner directly with states. When we were thinking about this I called 45, 46 governors from across the political spectrum. Every single one said go forward, every single one said “thank goodness someone in Washington is paying attention,” and we’ve provided relief flexibility to 11 states already. We have 27 who we’re reviewing this week.

It’s official. America’s insatiable thirst for reality television has made its way into the halls of the U.S. Congress.

If a few of my colleagues have their way, the U.S. Supreme Court chambers could become the latest reality TV mess. As three straight days of oral arguments about the constitutionality of the Affordable Care law start Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court, chants by those who want cameras in the courtroom have grown louder.

On Dec. 6, 2011, Rep. Gerry Connolly introduced H.R. 3572: the Cameras in the Courtroom Act of 2011, which would alter a long-standing rule and permit television coverage of all open sessions of the U.S. Supreme Court unless the justices determine television coverage would violate a litigant’s due process rights.

Supporters of the bill argue that television coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court proceedings will provide the American public with greater transparency and access to the Court. In contrast, opponents contend the rule should stay in place in the interest of maintaining the integrity and decorum that should be afforded to the highest court in the land.

This week, when the Supreme Court hears an historic six hours of oral arguments about the constitutionality of the health insurance reform law, only a few dozen citizens at a time will be allowed into the chamber to watch and listen.
 
The Court’s decisions on the Affordable Care Act will decide whether the people’s elected representatives have the authority to regulate the nation’s health insurance market to make health care more affordable, to hold insurers accountable and to rein in runaway and unsustainable medical costs -- issues with profound pocketbook and personal health implications for every American family, and for the wellbeing of the nation.
 
Yet citizens will have to “earn” their right to see their highest court in action by standing in line, outside, overnight.  To so stringently limit access to such an important public proceeding makes no sense, especially in an age of such abundant and extraordinary communications tools.

Today marks the anniversary of President Obama’s National Export Initiative (NEI), an unprecedented effort to aid the nation’s economic recovery by doubling U.S. exports by the end of 2014 and supporting millions of American jobs. I am proud to announce that in 2011 alone, nearly 6,000 American companies – including 3,000 small and medium-sized enterprises – were able to export for the first time or increase their exports to new markets.

These successes should not come as a surprise. We operate in a global marketplace, where approximately 95 percent of the world’s consumers live beyond America’s borders. During the next five years, the International Monetary Fund estimates that 85 percent of world economic growth will take place outside of the United States. There is a growing global need for products and services that U.S. businesses can fill.

As the NEI enters its third year, the U.S. Department of Commerce is focused on helping more U.S. businesses surmount the barriers of international trade and experience its benefits. Read more...

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).

As I listened to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, I found myself thinking of the movie Groundhog Day. In the film, Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, awakes each morning to find himself reliving the same day again and again. As each day passes exactly as the one before, Phil becomes increasingly despondent and frustrated. As the President’s State of the Union address unfolded, I couldn’t help feeling the same way.

The State of the Union flowed like dozens of campaign speeches that then-candidate Obama gave in 2008. It was heavy on rhetoric, class warfare and divisiveness, and straw men. At one point, he invoked the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush, to tout his own record on federal regulations.

To his credit, there were aspects of the President’s speech I was glad to hear. To recognize and honor our brave men and women in uniform, while encouraging the American people and our Congress to be more like those selfless men and women who serve our nation, is most appropriate. And, to give credit where credit is due, this is indeed the first time in two decades that Osama bin Laden has not been a threat to America.

In 1780, to protect against tyranny, John Adams enshrined in the Massachusetts Constitution the principle of separation of powers, so that, as he wrote, “it may be a government of laws and not of men.”

This foundation, of course, also underlies the United States Constitution. President Obama understands this. At a fundraiser in 2007 then-Senator Obama said, “I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution.”

President Obama’s knowledge of the Constitution makes his blatant disregard for it -- from his recent ‘recess’ appointments to the individual mandate at the center of ObamaCare to employing the regulatory apparatus to bypass the legislative process -- all the more troubling.