Obama Overrules the Overruling of State Laws

A look back at the retiring defense secretary's career

(NEWSER) - With Robert Gates, who has served eight presidents over four decades, about to retire, the Washington Post looks back at how Gates operated in the Pentagon. He’s been “careful, conservative, and consensus-oriented,” writes Greg Jaffe, and he’s “earned a reputation as the most ruthlessly efficient defense secretary in decades.” So what can we learn from his tenure?

• Buy time. Defense Department reviews following troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan gave Presidents Bush and Obama a sense of the military’s trajectory—and they bought time against critics calling for quick drawdowns.

Case questions birth country of Jerusalem-born American

(NEWSER) - The Supreme Court is about to take on a case that tangles Israeli politics with questions of congressional and executive power. It will hear an appeal from the parents of an American born in Jerusalem—a city the US doesn’t recognize as belonging to Israel—who wants Israel listed as his birthplace on his US passport instead of "Jerusalem," as is currently the policy. State department officials have denied the request of Menachem Zivotofsky’s US-born parents, who moved to Israel in 2000; both the district court and an appeals court ruled that it had no authority to consider the claim. More»

Federal funding can now be used for human embryonic cell research

(NEWSER) - A federal appeals court overturned the ban on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research today in a 2-1 ruling. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that such funding did not violate a 1996 law forbidding the use of federal money for research in which an embryo is destroyed, according to the Wall Street Journal . It’s a significant victory for President Obama, who made lifting George W. Bush’s restrictions on stem cell research funding one of his first acts as president. More»

And they oppose any path to legal status for illegals

(NEWSER) - Republicans are pressing President Obama to resume the large-scale workplace immigration raids that were a hallmark of the George W. Bush administration. Though deportations have soared under Obama, his administration has focused its crackdown efforts on employers who knowingly employ illegal immigrants; arrests from worksite raids for immigration-related offenses have dropped by 70%, the LA Times reports. More»

BP, DuPont escape environmental rules

(NEWSER) - The White House has handed wads of stimulus cash to the biggest US polluters and given them "sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight," finds a Center for Public Integrity investigation. Coal burners like Westar Energy and chemical maker DuPont have been among the beneficiaries of some 179,000 “categorical exclusions” related to clean energy stimulus projects, meaning those projects won't be reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act. More»