“Congressional Access to Classified National Security Information” is the subject of a report prepared by Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies on the occasion of a March 30 forum on the subject sponsored by OpenTheGovernment.org and the Center for American Progress.
Government attorneys defended (pdf) their contention that some evidence to be presented to the jury in the upcoming trial of two former AIPAC officials should be withheld from the public, a position criticized by the defense as prejudicial and unconstitutional. See the government brief (first reported April 5 by the New York Sun) here.
Having declassified some eight million pages of historical records relating to Nazi and Japanese Imperial Army war crimes, the largest single-subject declassification program has now come to a close, the National Archives noted in an April 2 news release.
As a public service, the National Archives posts a new daily document of historical interest each day on its web site. Not all of them will be of interest to everyone, but the series as a whole has the potential to serve as an educational stimulus for students and citizens. Today’s (April 5) document is a 1940 photograph of “Leon Trotsky and American admirers.”
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.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.