Court Will Quash Key Voting Act Provision—Next Time

They say judge strayed too far from legislature's vision

(NEWSER) - The Supreme Court threw out a federal court's draft of a Texas electoral map, saying it strayed too far from the one drawn by the state's Republican legislature. The decision, which was issued by the court as a whole, rather than signed by an individual justice, is a near-term win for Republicans, likely guaranteeing them a friendly 2012 map, Politico reports. More»

Only 0.2% of his bills have become law

(NEWSER) - Ron Paul has sponsored 620 measures in his 11-and-a-half terms in Congress, but only one of them has become a law—a bill allowing the sale of a Galveston customhouse to a historical society. That tells you much of what you need to know about Paul’s congressional record, which according to the Washington Post “stands out for its futility.” Of the 47 bills Paul has proposed this year, 32 have failed to attract a single cosponsor. More»

Here's two: Let's vote on weekends and stop making pennies

(NEWSER) - Ezra Klein uses his Washington Post column to give a push to what he sees as logical bills languishing for lack of "partisan passion." Among his first No-Brainer Awards:

• Weekend voting: A bill from Rep. Steve Israel and outgoing Sen. Herb Kohl would end the outdated silliness of forcing people to vote on a Tuesday and make Election Day the first full weekend of November. "Two days when most Americans don’t have to work, drop their kids off at school or rush home to prepare dinner."

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»

If Congress had debated recent wars, we'd have saved trillions: Walter Rodgers

(NEWSER) - Congressional Republicans have been hard at work cutting a few million in funding from NPR; but if they’d just played by the rules a decade ago, they could have saved at least $4 trillion, writes Walter Rodgers in the Christian Science Monitor . That's one estimate of how much the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost us, "wars that Congress putatively authorized but never formally declared." The Constitution's Article I, Section 8 makes it clear that only Congress “shall have the Power ... to declare war”—but over the past half-century, we’ve been sending our troops to battle with hardly a thought for the legislature, he writes. "And now it’s happening again, as the US began bombing Libya without a congressional declaration—or even a single hearing or debate." More»