Domestic Terrorism Again a Priority at DOJ, and More from CRS
The threat of domestic terrorism is receiving greater attention at the Department of Justice with the reestablishment in June of the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, the Congressional Research Service noted last week.
“The reestablishment suggests that officials are raising the profile of domestic terrorism as an issue within DOJ after more than a decade of heightened focus on both foreign terrorist organizations and homegrown individuals inspired by violent jihadist groups based abroad,” CRS wrote. See Domestic Terrorism Appears to Be Reemerging as a Priority at the Department of Justice, CRS Insights, August 15, 2014.
Other new or updated CRS products include the following.
Latin America: Terrorism Issues, updated August 15, 2014:
Cuba: U.S. Restrictions on Travel and Remittances, updated August 19, 2014:
Preparing for Disasters: FEMA’s New National Preparedness Report Released, CRS Insights, August 12, 2014
Export-Import Bank Reauthorization Debate, CRS Insights, August 18, 2014:
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Appropriations for FY2014 in P.L. 113-76, August 15, 2014:
Senate Unanimous Consent Agreements: Potential Effects on the Amendment Process, updated August 15, 2014
Synthetic Drugs: Overview and Issues for Congress, updated August 15, 2014
Using the NIST as an example, the Radiation Physics Building (still without the funding to complete its renovation) is crucial to national security and the medical community. If it were to go down (or away), every medical device in the United States that uses radiation would be decertified within 6 months, creating a significant single point of failure that cannot be quickly mitigated.
The federal government can support more proactive, efficient, and cost-effective resiliency planning by certifying predictive models to validate and publicly indicate their quality.
We need a new agency that specializes in uncovering funding opportunities that were overlooked elsewhere. Judging from the history of scientific breakthroughs, the benefits could be quite substantial.
The cost of inaction is not merely economic; it is measured in preventable illness, deaths and diminished livelihoods.