New legislation would require the Attorney General to report to Congress whenever the Department of Justice issues a legal opinion indicating that the executive branch is not bound by an existing legal statute.
The bill, introduced September 16 in the Senate by Senators Russ Feingold and Dianne Feinstein, responds to the Bush Administration’s use of secret opinions from the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to circumvent binding legal restrictions on domestic surveillance, torture and other practices.
“The Bush Administration has relied heavily on secret OLC opinions in a broad range of matters involving core constitutional rights and civil liberties,” said Senator Feingold.
“The administration’s policies on interrogation of detainees were justified by OLC opinions that were withheld from Congress and the public for several years. The President’s warrantless wiretapping program was justified by OLC opinions that, to this day, have been seen only by a select few Members of Congress. And, when it was finally made public this year, the March 2003 memorandum on torture written by John Yoo was filled with references to other OLC memos that Congress and the public have never seen–on subjects ranging from the Government’s ability to detain U.S. citizens without congressional authorization to the Government’s ability to operate outside the Fourth Amendment in domestic military operations.”
“When OLC concludes that a statute passed by Congress does not bind the executive branch, Congress has a right to know that the executive branch is not operating under that statute, and to be apprised of the law under which the executive branch is operating. The bill I am introducing with Senator Feinstein codifies that right,” Senator Feingold said.
See the introduction of the “OLC Reporting Act of 2008,” September 16.
The bootcamp brought more than two dozen next-generation open-source practitioners from across the United States to Washington DC, where they participated in interactive modules, group discussions, and hands-on sleuthing.
Fourteen teams from ten U.S. states have been selected as the Stage 2 awardees in the Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC), a national competition that helps communities turn emerging research into ready-to-implement solutions.
The Fix Our Forests Act provides an opportunity to speed up the planning and implementation of wildfire risk reduction projects on federal lands while expanding collaborative tools to bring more partners into this vital work.
Public health insurance programs, especially Medicaid, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), are more likely to cover populations at increased risk from extreme heat, including low-income individuals, people with chronic illnesses, older adults, disabled adults, and children.