• Government shutdown stymies U.S. science agencies

    A U.S. Government furloughs affecting virtually all National Science Foundation (NSF) employees and three-fourths of those at the National Institutes of Health could impact American competitiveness, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) warned. “If the government shutdown continues for a week or more, it is going to make the United States less desirable as an international research collaborator,” said an AAAS representative. “When funding is no longer reliable, many of our research partners may be unable to continue collaborating with us. That could eventually have longer-term impacts on American innovation and competitiveness.”

  • Shots exchanged near Capitol Hill, suspect – a woman -- hit

    Shots were exchanged around 2:15 p.m. this afternoon outside the Hart Senate Building on Capitol Hill between police officers and a lone gunmen. Congressional buildings on both the Senate and the House side were placed under lock-down for about an hour. The lock-down was lifted at 3:00p.m. Police said the fire was exchanged between police officers and a woman in a black car, who had earlier was driving suspiciously near the White House. She sped away from the White House when police approached her, and sped toward Capitol Hill.

  • Serious IT consequences if shutdown lasts

    The shutdown of the federal government, if it lasts no more than a week or so, will not seriously damage government IT operations, experts and industry insiders say. A longer shutdown, which would lead to extended furloughs for non-essential employees, will have more serious effects, as it will further depress the federal technology workforce and will deter top graduates from applying for government jobs. If Congress refuses to allow payment to furloughed employees for the time they were idled, the effect will be even more pernicious, these experts said.

  • Border communities decry Washington’s misguided emphasis on border security

    Billions of dollars have been spent in an effort to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. Many border communities see investment in cross-border commerce, rather than spending money on fences and patrol agents, as a better way to reduce crime and illegal immigration. “We don’t need more Border Patrol agents — we need more customs agents,” says El Paso mayor John Cook.

  • Congress urged to support broad legislative agenda for science

    With the U.S. Senate poised to revisit S. 1392, the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013, the American Chemical Society (ACS) announced its support for the bill as part of a larger, legislative science agenda for 2013.

  • New report highlights unfulfilled recommendation by 9/11 Commission

    New report says that failure to enact one of the key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission – consolidated congressional oversight of DHS – poses a risk to U.S. national security. “While the failure to reform DHS oversight may be invisible to the public, it is not without consequence or risk. Fragmented jurisdiction impedes DHS’ ability to deal with three major vulnerabilities: the threats posed by small aircraft and boats; cyberattacks; and biological weapons,” one of the report’s authors says.

  • White House seeks broad Syria mandate

    President Barack Obama and top administration officials described the proposed military strike against Syria as limited in scope, intended to send a signal to Syria that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated rather than change the balance of forces in the Syrian civil war. The language of the proposed authorization of force, however, for which the White House is seeking congressional support, appears to be asking for a much broader authority.

  • Lawmakers mull oversight of U.S. cyberattack capabilities and operations

    There has not yet been a public discussion of U.S. offensive cyberattack capabilities — and of actual U.S. cyberattacks — and the subject had been classified until a few years ago. Even after the subject came more into the open, only the fact that the United States had the capability to initiate offensive cyberattacks was acknowledged. With the growing attention to cyber operations – both defensive and offensive — the question of oversight is set to follow.

  • What you haven’t heard about immigration reform and border security

    The Senate and House must find a way to resolve our current immigration dilemmas. We owe a fairer, more just system of laws to all our immigrants, both illegal and legal. And, yes, we must find ways to address issues of national security as well. It’s not going to be easy to shape such legislation, but we should demand no less from both Democrats and the Republicans.

  • Immigration reform bill would add 13,992 jobs per congressional district

    The Senate’s immigration bill would add, on average, 13,992 new jobs in each congressional district in the United States over the next decade. This is one of the findings of an analysis offered by the conservative American Action Network (AAN). The group supports the reform of the U.S. immigration law and is active in the effort to persuade GOP House members to support the Senate immigration reform bill.

  • Senate panel signs off on cybersecurity bill

    The Senate Commerce Committee has approved a cybersecurity bill aiming to bolster protection of U.S. critical infrastructure. The full Senate will vote on the bill by the end of the year. The bill codifies parts of of President Obama’s February 2013 cybersecurity executive order. Among other things, the executive order instructs the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) to draft a set of cybersecurity practices and standards.

  • Senate panel to vote this week on cybersecurity bill

    The Senate Commerce Committee will this week vote on an industry-backed cybersecurity bill before Congress takes an August recess. Last year the Senate twice tried, and failed, to pass a cybersecurity bill because of GOP opposition to it. GOP lawmakers objected to a bill imposing mandatory cybersecurity standards on industry, and instead called for a bill which would make the adoption of cybersecurity standards voluntary. The bill now being considered in the Commerce Committee calls for industry and NIST to develop a cybersecurity framework for industry (something NIST is already doing following a presidential executive order), and for industry voluntarily to adopt it.

  • Deeply divided House rejects effort to curb NSA data collection program

    In an exceedingly close vote — 205-to-217 — a bitterly divided House of Representative on Wednesday rejected legislation proposed to block the National Security Agency (NSA) from continuing its metadata collection programs. The debate over the balance between security and privacy – and whether, indeed, the NSA surveillance programs threatened privacy — saw the formation of an unusual coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian and tea party Republicans calling for curbing the NSA surveillance power.

  • Lawmakers, citing shortcomings, threaten funding for chemical plant safety program

    Heads of three congressional panels urge DHS secretary Janet Napolitano to take to correct shortcomings in the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. “As the authorizers and appropriators of this program, we write to you to express serious reservations about continuing to extend CFATS funding without evidence of substantial programmatic improvement,” the three chairmen write in their letter to Napolitano. The lawmakers pointed to flaws in the program’s risk evaluation system, compliance hurdles, implementation delays, and the failure of the program to identify vulnerable facilities.

  • McCain will put a hold on Dempsey’s nomination for second term over Syria policy

    Senator John McCain said yesterday (Thursday) that he will place a hold on the renomination of the nation’s top soldier, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after he and Dempsey engaged in rather heated exchange over the administration’s policies toward the Syrian civil war. McCain bluntly said that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was at least partly responsible for the administration’s “lackluster response” to the Assad regime’s aggression.