Newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.
Congress’s Contempt Power and the Enforcement of Congressional Subpoenas: Law, History, Practice, and Procedure, May 8, 2012
The Financial Action Task Force: An Overview, May 9, 2012
Reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank: Issues and Policy Options for Congress, May 7, 2012
The National Nanotechnology Initiative: Overview, Reauthorization, and Appropriations Issues, May 22, 2012
U.S.-EU Cooperation Against Terrorism, May 21, 2012
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.