When the internal history of the Manhattan Project was written in 1944, officials still believed — mistakenly — that the atom bomb program had evaded the threat of foreign espionage. “Espionage attempts were detected but it is felt that prompt action and intensified investigative activity in each case prevented the passing of any substantial amount […]
It is entirely proper for a court to conduct in camera review of documents and testimony that the government asserts are subject to the state secrets privilege, said the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the “no fly” list. The Justice Department had argued that judicial review of privileged documents was “inappropriate” and […]
The so-called Take Care Clause in the U.S. Constitution (requiring that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….”) “would appear to stand for two, at times diametrically opposed propositions–one imposing a ‘duty’ upon the President and the other viewing the Clause as a source of Presidential ‘power’,” according to a new […]
NASA’s orbiting James Webb Space Telescope will be “the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide, and studying every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to […]
As Congress plumbs new depths of futility and irrelevance, analysts at the Congressional Research Service continue to churn out policy-relevant studies that are informative and free of partisan embellishment. How long can it be until they are punished? The latest CRS products that Congress has withheld from online public access include the following. Pakistan Political […]
The current outbreak of Ebola virus disease in West Africa has infected and killed more people than all previous outbreaks combined. A new report from the Congressional Research Service provides detailed background on the spread of the disease, the weaknesses of the health care infrastructure in the affected countries, and related policy issues for congressional […]
It is “not appropriate” for a court to conduct its own independent review of evidence that the government asserts is protected by the state secrets privilege, attorneys for the government argued last week. They were objecting to an order that was issued in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the “no fly” list in the […]
New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. Climate Change and Existing Law: A Survey of Legal Issues Past, Present, and Future, updated August 20, 2014 The “Militarization” of Law Enforcement and the Department of Defense’s “1033 Program”, CRS Insights, August 20, 2014 […]
“One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true,” wrote Barbara Tuchman in The Guns of August.1 Today, the United States and other nuclear-armed states are not addressing the harder alternative […]
In the wake of the extraordinary media focus on the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and on the search to define his legacy, a significant element was overlooked: the story of a young congressman joining in a legislative initiative to advance no less than the solution to the problem of war. It […]
Introduction Edward Friedman and Roger Lewis’s essay “A Scenario for Jihadist Nuclear Revenge,” published in the Spring 2014 edition of the Public Interest Report, is a sobering reminder of both the possibility of a terrorist nuclear attack based on stolen highly-enriched uranium and the depressing level of public ignorance of such threats. Articles exploring the issue of […]
Today, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or “drones”), are an ever-present entity in both political discourse and the skies above countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unmanned aerial vehicles can be used for a wide variety of missions. While intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and target acquisition are missions that frequently fall under the purview of […]