Newly published congressional reports and hearing volumes that caught our eye include the following (mostly pdf).
“Misleading Information from the Battlefield: The Tillman and Lynch Episodes,” Report of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, September 16, 2008.
“Restoring the Rule of Law,” hearing before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Senate Judiciary Committee, September 16, 2008 (a second volume is to follow).
“An Amendment and Three Protocols to the 1980 Conventional Weapons Convention,” Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, September 11, 2008.
“Argentina: Rudderless,” Report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, September 9, 2008:
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.