Administrative state
September 22, 2022 — Scott Johnson
We have learned in recent weeks that there is such a thing as an Archivist of the United States at the head of the National Archives and Records Administration and that the position is not unimportant. President Biden has nominated one Colleen Shogan to fill the position and she appeared for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security Committee yesterday. C-SPAN has posted video of the hearing here. ABC
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August 23, 2022 — Scott Johnson
At age 81, the fallacious Dr. Anthony Fauci is living proof that self-love can’t kill you. If self-love could kill you, Dr. Fauci would be pushing up daisies instead of basking in the glow of his bottomless self-regard. His official motto — “La Science, c’est moi” — is fit for a king. Students of ancient history may recall that only last month Fauci contemplated leading the NIAID and advising President
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August 12, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Moviegoers may recall the scene late in Return of the Jedi where the rebel fleet transmits a stolen security code to get through the defensive perimeter surrounding the new death star, and the communications officer on the imperial battle cruiser says, “It’s an old code, but it checks out.” This line came back to mind with the news this morning that one of the items supposedly sought in the Mar-a-Lago
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June 30, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Can the left amp up the hysteria past 11 to 12 or 13? The Supreme Court ruled against the EPA this morning in a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice Roberts. The case is West Virginia v. EPA. Politico offers this brief summary: The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to President Joe Biden’s climate strategy, ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency has only limited authority to regulate carbon dioxide
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June 28, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I tuned in for quite a bit of today’s January 6 committee hearing with “surprise” witness Cassidy Hutchinson, and it was gripping viewing indeed. Many of the things she related in her videotaped deposition (excerpted liberally in her committee room appearance) sounded plausible, such as alleged statements by Trump on January 6. And Hutchinson seemed a credible witness. But second thoughts ought to grow in the aftermath of her appearance.
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June 22, 2022 — Steven Hayward
As the COVID pandemic unfolded in 2020, I predicted that before it was over, we’d surely hear calls for a cabinet level “Department of Pandemic Planning” or some other equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security that we set up in the aftermath of 9/11 to “coordinate” government agency activity at all levels of government. That prediction has moved a step closer to fulfillment. From the New York Times today:
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June 14, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Neil Young’s “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” is the seventh track on his 1970 album After the Gold Rush. It begins: “Old man lying by the side of the road…” Since my road trip to Madison over the weekend, Young’s tune has been going through my mind with the slightly altered lyric: “Dead deer lying by the side of the road…” It could be Wisconsin’s state song. The dead
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May 19, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Well, duh—the obvious answer is YES. But that hasn’t been a winning argument in the Supreme Court since 1935 unfortunately. In the aftermath of the leaked Dobbs opinion, the left has been in a panic about what other “rights” the Supreme Court might take away, like the right to same sex marriage, inter-racial marriage, contraception, and watching European soccer in the middle of the night. The left lacks imagination, and apparently
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May 17, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Abbott has announced that it has agreed to to a consent decree under which it would be allowed to reopen its Michigan baby formula plant if all goes according to plan. Former FDA Associate Commissioner Peter Pitts supports the propriety of the FDA’s actions in the Abbott case. He sets forth his views in a New York Post column here. Mr. Pitts is the president of the Center for Medicine
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May 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Two stories about the National Institutes of Health hit the news today. The first arose from testimony by acting NIH director Lawrence Tabak before a House Appropriations subcommittee. Tabak admitted that NIH hid genetic information about the covid-19 virus that could have shed light on its origin, at the behest of the Chinese Communists: National Institutes of Health acting director Lawrence Tabak confirmed to lawmakers Wednesday that US health officials
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May 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Two years ago it was toilet paper, now it is baby formula–a much more serious shortage. I am tuned in to it in part because one of my daughters is the mother of eight-month-old twins and has had a hard time finding formula. What is going on here? My colleague John Phelan looks at the issue and concludes that the culprits are shutdowns and the FDA: What is going on?
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April 20, 2022 — Scott Johnson
It was only last week that the CDC extended its absurd transportation mask mandate another 15 days, until May 3. The AP somehow omits this interesting fact from its story on the administration’s deliberations over whether to appeal Judge Mizelle’s ruling on the illegality of the mandate. The AP story reports: “The Justice Department said Tuesday it will not appeal a federal district judge’s ruling that ended the nation’s federal
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April 18, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Florida federal district judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle has ruled that the travel mask mandate is illegal. Axios has a brief story here along with a link to the decision as posted online here. I have barely had time to review the story and won’t comment on the merits of the decision until I can read it. I can only say that the mandate is obnoxious and absurd regardless of the
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March 14, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Trump—remember him?—is out with a proposal to repeal the Pendleton Act and other legal foundations of the civil service in the federal government. “We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States. The deep state must and will be brought to heel,” Trump said over the weekend. Cooler heads have rushed to say this is a really really bad idea. They
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February 19, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The State of the Union speech, which is usually delivered around the time the president submits his next annual budget proposal to Congress, is typically scheduled for January or early February. The lateness of President Biden’s first State of the Union speech on March 1 has provoked a lot of speculation that the date was picked in hopes that the Omicron variant would have peaked and very nearly disappeared completely, and
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January 8, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Two of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates came before the Supreme Court for oral argument yesterday, one arising under OSHA and the other arising under the auspices of HHS. I thought the first of these cases raised the question of administrative law regarding the lawful scope of agency authority in an unusually pure form. Listening to the oral argument in NFIB v. OSHA, however, I have been disabused of the
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December 23, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Supreme Court has set a special session to hear oral argument in vaccine mandate cases on January 7. The cases to be heard involve the OSHA vaccine mandate that I wrote about last week here (decided by the Sixth Circuit in a 2-1 opinion) and the CMS mandate promulgated as to health care workers (essentially stayed in the Fifth Circuit and the Eighth Circuit; the Faegre Drinker firm at
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