Free Republic

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Lawyers advancing an effort to charge oil companies with homicide over climate-related deaths are ramping up their campaign to hold fossil fuel producers criminally accountable for contributing to climate change. The authors of “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Death” embarked on a road trip of college campuses this spring, making the case for bringingcriminal charges against oil and gas companies. The push by David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program, and Donald Braman, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School, aims to bolster support for the theory through presentations at law schools....

Today, U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio (OR-04) introduced the Wall Street Tax Act, legislation to create a new tax on financial transactions that would generate billions in revenue, while reducing speculative trading and volatility in the market. “High-frequency traders front-run the market and drive up prices for individuals, pension funds and other value investors,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio. “Some days high-frequency traders trade billions of shares that they sometimes hold for only seconds or less. They reap enormous financial benefits for themselves and their privileged elite investors but add no value to our economy. Congress needs to rein in excessive speculative...

Sure, the economy is causing a crisis, but what about anthrax? How about smallpox? In a little noticed move, federal officials this month have declared a series of public health emergencies relating to potential weapons of biological terror. On Oct. 1, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt declared an anthrax public health emergency. On Oct. 10, he declared health emergencies for smallpox, radiation sickness from the detonation of a nuclear device and poisoning from botulinum toxins, the active ingredient of Botox. There’s no clear evidence that terrorists have managed to weaponize anthrax or stolen large caches of Botox from...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday announced the first director of a new office within the House to establish best practices for lawmakers to receive confidential information from whistleblowers about government wrongdoing. The office was established as part of the House rules package adopted in January of last year at the start of the current session of Congress. But the appointment of its first director comes after the conclusion of the process launched by House Democrats to impeach President Trump. Pelosi said that she has appointed Shanna Devine, who most recently worked at the progressive watchdog Public Citizen, to lead...

Tens of thousands of people across the country marched in support of impeachment Tuesday evening, from a demonstration through a rainy Times Square to handfuls of activists standing vigil in small towns around the country. Liberal groups organized more than 600 events from Alaska to Florida, following a familiar model of mass protest that has come to define the left during the Trump administration. For all the passion among activists, the gatherings were notably smaller than many of the other recent mass protests that began with the millions-strong Women's Marches the day after Trump's inaugural and have ranged over subjects...

A conservative watchdog group is asking the Office of Congressional Ethics on Thursday to review whether 14 Democratic lawmakers and one Republican inappropriately used their office to try to coerce a Las Vegas casino mogul into allowing his employees to unionize. In May, Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan and 13 other Democrats wrote a letter to Frank Fertitta III, the CEO of the Las Vegas-based casino management company Red Rock Resorts Inc., urging him to “respect the rights of employees” at the company “to form a union and collectively bargain.” Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania sent Fertitta a similar letter...

In order to do anything they can to stop President Trump from winning in 2020, Democrats in the Nevada Senate approved a National Popular Vote bill on a party-line vote, which will get rid of the Electoral College. From the Washington Times: Assembly Bill 186, which passed the Senate on a 12-8 vote, would bring Nevada into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement between participating states to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote. If signed as expected by Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, Nevada would become the 16th jurisdiction to join the compact, along...

The Nevada Senate approved Tuesday a National Popular Vote bill on a party-line vote, sending the legislation aimed at upending the Electoral College to the governor. Assembly Bill 186, which passed the Senate on a 12-8 vote, would bring Nevada into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement between participating states to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote. If signed as expected by Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, Nevada would become the 16th jurisdiction to join the compact, along with 14 states and the District of Columbia. The compact would take effect after states totaling...

Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a group that says it champions citizen interests, is a lead organizer of Democracy Awakening. Weissman told Breitbart News in an interview on Tuesday that the Awakening movement’s specific plans for “direct action” are not yet finalized, but he said it will include civil disobedience and activists risking arrest. This Presidential election will be the first in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. States with the worst histories of discrimination are pushing for new barriers to block the young, the poor, the elderly and minority voters from the ballot...

In April, 2010, I posted a story pointing out a curious paradox. Inasmuch as healthcare—Obamacare—was such a hot topic, no one seemed to care about how poorly physicians were being treated by the system. Indeed, for all of its billions in spending, Obamacare does almost nothing to improve the lot of doctors, even as its rollout underscores the problems they face. Nor does it do much to alleviate their shortage. It is hardly a revelation that government bureaucrats are the enemies of practicing physicians. Heck, this goes back 50 years to Medicare. But it is only recently that academic medicine,...

Senator-elect Mike Lee has tapped one of Utah’s most prominent lobbyists to lead his Washington staff and coordinate his transition from candidate to senator. Spencer Stokes doesn’t officially become a Senate staffer until Jan. 5, but he plans to bounce between Utah and Washington in the coming weeks as he tries to hire staff, set up the Senate office and ramp down his lobbying activities. “It will be an exciting time to be back in D.C.,” said Stokes, who believes American voters used November’s election to protest government overreach. He said Republicans are now positioned to make an impact on...

Get a bunch of lefties together, mix liberally with wine, and the bombs start exploding. Public Citizen, the consumer group founded by Ralph Nader, gave its first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award to Phil Donahue on Thursday night at the National Press Club. There were plenty of tributes for the talk show host, but it was impossible for the room full of pumped-up progressives to get through the evening without finding plenty of people to criticize -- including Barack Obama. "We have a president that many of us, particularly here on the left, we really want to cheer," investigative journalist Seymour Hersh...

Hatched over the last few weeks by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) with backing from House Democratic leaders and the White House, it was a legislative maneuver rich with the kind of irony that often goes unremarked in Washington — a classic backroom special interest deal to help pass a bill that would require heightened disclosure of special interest spending on campaign ads. The idea was to neutralize opposition to tough new campaign spending rules from one particularly powerful special interest group, the National Rifle Association, by exempting it as well as the left-leaning Sierra Club and the ecumenical Humane...

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG   Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 12:10 pm "Words and Deeds" Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, drops by to talk about progress on ethics and transparency since the President was sworn in. The President promised across-the-board change in Washington and all of us in the White House have been pleased to help deliver. In the ethics and government reform arena, we have worked hard to help the President impose strict new ethics rules for all employees; foster a culture of compliance and respect for the law; promote greater transparency (including...

Texas Legislature could be going 'green'Priorities in upcoming session may include renewable energy, environmental jobs By MATTHEW TRESAUGUE Houston Chronicle Dec. 29, 2008, 3:03AM Global warming might be critical to the future of the planet, but inside the Texas Capitol, it's never been much of a match for taxes and tuition. The upcoming legislative session, however, could be different, with lawmakers from both parties already talking about renewable energy, energy efficiency and so-called "green jobs" as priorities. "The climate has changed, atmospherically and politically," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, executive director of the Texas office for Public Citizen, a consumer and...

Some are now suggesting that perhaps arbitration isn’t the success story it appears to be, and they want to take it away. Last fall, for example, the pro-lawsuit special interest group Public Citizen released a paper purporting to show that arbitrations find against the consumer the majority of the time. Unfortunately, Public Citizen tortures the statistics to try to make their case.

A federal appeals court considered Tuesday whether the Bush administration can go ahead with a pilot program that allows a small number of Mexican trucks to travel freely on U.S. highways, despite a new law by Congress against it. Members of the Teamsters Union and their supporters packed a courtroom at 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where an apparently divided three-judge panel heard arguments in the case, which may boil down to the meaning of "establish." Several tractor trailers also were parked outside the courthouse and union members and their supporters carried signs opposing the program, which allows participating...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration can proceed with a plan to open the U.S. border to long haul Mexican trucks as early as next week after an appeals court rejected a bid by labor, consumer and environmental interests to block the initiative. ADVERTISEMENT The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco late on Friday denied an emergency petition sought by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and consumer group Public Citizen to halt the start of a one-year pilot program that was approved by Congress after years of legal and political wrangling. The Transportation Department welcomed the decision...

A central plank of congressional ethics reform appeared in danger of collapse yesterday when government watchdog groups balked at disclosing their donors. A provision of the proposed reform would force watchdogs to reveal their donors if they file ethics complaints. But the watchdogs, which have long called for openness in government, voiced strong opposition to openness on their own part. The donor disclosure rule is part of a proposal to create an independent ethics panel to police behavior in the House.   Groups such as Public Citizen, Common Cause and Democracy 21 have made the creation of such an office...

OF COURSE LAWMAKERS OUGHT TO PAY INCOME TAX ON GIFTED TRIPS Everybody knows that for years and years and years, lawmakers have taken their spouses along on their little junkets. The travel, meals and hotel rooms have fair market value that the rest of us little people would find ourselves taxed on. So why should the lawmakers think they're so much different from the rest of us. Who really needs to go to Peru anyway? Just to look at an Incan mountaintop? How could that possibly have anything to do with the official business of running the U.S. Senate? And...