Posts from the ‘Old Print Archives’ Category

Equality in the Garden State: Litigation and Social Activism in the Struggle for Marriage Equality

by ANDREW BRUCK

The first New York Times wedding announcement to feature a gay couple described how Steven Goldstein and Daniel Gross met. The relationship began with a self-deprecating personal ad in the Washington City Paper, followed by a date at Dupont Circle’s Kramerbooks, a month’s worth of long-distance phone calls and, years later, a civil union ceremony in Vermont.  Although the Times’ decision in August 2002 to include same-sex unions sparked controversy, the wedding announcement itself was as quotidian as it was historic. The piece did not mention the many battles fought over the paper’s wedding section: the impassioned four-page letter Goldstein and Gross wrote to the Times editorial board, or the years of lobbying by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). It simply told a story about two people falling in love.

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And Congress Shall Know the Truth: The Pressing Need for Restructuring Congressional Oversight of Intelligence

by SERGE GROSSMAN and MICHAEL SIMON

On September 11, 2001, the United States witnessed devastating attacks on the nation’s political and financial capitals. Almost immediately, the American people demanded answers as to how their intelligence agencies, with a workforce of almost 100,000 people1 and a budget of over $25 billion, 2 failed to anticipate and prevent a shocking series of attacks by 19 men with a budget of less than $500,000. Although some pin responsibility for failing to prevent these disasters solely on the executive branch, many have argued that Congress directly contributed to the failures by not providing effective oversight of the intelligence community.

While proposals for reform suggest dramatic change is necessary in both the structure of the intelligence community itself as well as in congressional oversight, this piece will focus exclusively on ways to renovate Congress’s structure and rules to provide more effective intelligence oversight. Part I contextualizes intelligence oversight by providing an overview of the subject. Part II identifies two models of congressional oversight. Part III discusses the unique challenges posed by conducting congressional intelligence oversight. Part IV serves as a call to action by offering a series of practical and achievable recommendations on how Congress should enhance and adapt its power to address today’s unique oversight challenges.

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Anchor Babies, Over-Breeders, and the Population Bomb: The Reemergence of Nativism and Population Control in Anti-Immigration Policies

by PRISCILLA HUANG

At the start of 2008, news of a “baby boomlet” made headlines. For the first time in 35 years, the U.S. fertility rate, or average number of children born to each woman, reached 2.1 in 2006, the number statisticians say is needed for a population to replace itself. Demographers pointed to an increase in the number of immigrants as a main reason for the higher birth rate.

Many economists welcomed the surge in population growth as a sign of the country’s likely future prosperity. While most industrialized nations struggle with shrinking populations due to low birth rates, the United States can look forward to a stable tax base and a steady workforce.

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What Katrina Revealed

by WILLIAM P. QUIQLEY

When Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, I was inside a New Orleans hospital with my wife, who is a nurse, and about 2000 other people. Windows in our hospital started exploding and water poured down the elevator shafts. We were soon without electricity, phone service, computers, food, and running water. Bodies started to pile up in the hospital, and we could see more bodies in the water outside. We stayed there, surrounded by eight feet of water, for five days. My wife and I got out in a small fishing boat. After a few weeks living with various family members, we ended up in an apartment in Houston for several months until we could return to New Orleans. Ever since Katrina, my work has focused on advocacy with and for the most vulnerable of the displaced. Through these efforts, as well as living in New Orleans, and my regular work as a teacher, writer, and participant in Loyola University’s clinical program, I have been privileged to hear thousands of people’s stories. Two and a half years later, this Essay relates what Katrina has revealed about justice.

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Progressive Tax Reform in the Era of Globalization: Building Consensus for More Broadly Shared Prosperity

by JASON BORDOFF and JASON FURMAN

It has been more than two decades since lawmakers last achieved meaningful bipartisan tax reform to lower tax rates and broaden the tax base. That reform effort was fueled by deep public dissatisfaction with the tax code’s complexity, loopholes, perceived unfairness, and high statutory tax rates, combined with the government’s desire to raise more revenue. In 1984, for example, an influential report by Robert McIntyre at Citizens for Tax Justice found that 128 out of 250 large and profitable companies paid no federal income taxes in at least one year between 1981 and 1983, and a Treasury Department study the following year showed that about 30,000 taxpayers with earnings exceeding $250,000 paid less than 5% of their income in taxes.1 Such studies provided momentum to close loopholes and enhance equity in the tax code.

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A Way Forward on Climate Change

by TIMOTHY E. WIRTH

When the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius suggested in 1896 that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could warm the surface temperature of the Earth, the industrial revolution was in full swing. Even so, Arrhenius did not foresee the exponential growth in fossil fuel use that would ensue, and in 1908 he predicted that it would take 3000 years to double atmospheric concentrations of CO2.2 He was off by 2800 years. Without intervention, a doubling will occur in this century.
When the American chemist Charles Keeling began measuring atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa in Hawaii in 1958, the concentration had already risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) in pre-industrial times to 315 ppm, an increase of 12.5%. In 2007 that number reached 384 ppm, a third of the way toward Arrhenius’s doubling, and the rate of increase has itself doubled.

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Homeland Security and the Upcoming Transition: What the Next Administration Should Do to Make Us Safe at Home

by P.J. CROWLEY

If history is a guide, there will be a significant terrorist attack against the United States in 2009, or at least an attempted strike associated with the upcoming presidential transition. The first Bush Administration experienced the Pan Am 103 bombing in December 1988, a month before taking office. The 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers occurred within weeks and months after the inaugurals of the Clinton and second Bush presidencies, respectively. If there is currently a plot, and it is as carefully planned as September 11 was, the cell that will try to carry it out could already be in the United States.
Attacks associated with elections have, in fact, become a staple of al Qaeda and its sympathizers, the one terrorist movement that has shown both the interest and the capability to attack the U.S. homeland. The Madrid train bombings in March 2004 came two days before Spanish national elections and contributed to the defeat of the ruling coalition. Two foreign physicians attempted to explode car bombs in central London and subsequently crashed a vehicle carrying propane tanks into a terminal entrance at Glasgow Airport in June 2007, three days after Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as the British Prime Minister. Most recently, the Pakistani government blamed a shadowy figure associated with al Qaeda for the death of Benazir Bhutto as she campaigned to return as Prime Minister.

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The Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice: Planning for the Transition to the Next Administration

by LOIS J. SCHIFFER and RICHARD J. LAZARUS

If, as it is often described, the United States Department of Justice is the “nation’s lawyer,” then the Environment and Natural Resources Division within the Department is the “nation’s environmental lawyer.” The Division is the dominant litigator in the federal courts in cases arising under federal pollution control and natural resource management laws. It represents federal agencies in bringing criminal and civil enforcement actions against parties allegedly in violation of federal environmental laws, as well as in cases alleging that federal governmental actors have themselves violated those laws.

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Restoring Public Confidence in the Fairness of the Department of Justice's Criminal Justice Function

by JAMES K. ROBINSON

A Japanese proverb says: “The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.” Though the recent misconduct within the Department of Justice (the “Department”) occurred over only a few years, the damage to the Department’s reputation will likely not be so limited in duration. It has been painful for those who care deeply about the Department and the success of its mission to witness the testing of one the most significant institutions within the executive branch by a few political appointees with agendas. This testing has exposed vulnerabilities in the Department as an institution, and, in the process, has done a great disservice to the American public and the many dedicated career and non-career lawyers in the Department who decorously have continued to carry out their responsibilities untouched by political influence. It is imperative that the next President of the United States work to restore the Department and its reputation for the nonpartisan enforcement of federal criminal law.

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