September 18, 2009

The Supreme Court has ruled recently that victims of sexual harassment by student athletes can now sue individuals -- including coaches and athletic directors -- as well as institutions. This ruling and recent court cases are bringing Title IX back into the spotlight. Thirty-seven years after it was first enacted, colleges and universities are reexamining their policies and adapting to recent court rulings. Tim Davis, professor of law at Wake Forest University, is one the country's best known sports law scholars and has written a casebook on sports law. "Title IX continues to evolve and this evolution affects all of those whose interests are impacted by the law," says Davis, who is also a member of the Board of Advisors for the National Sports Law Institute. Full release.

"We must ensure that the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is moral and responsible," a prominent Iraqi lawmaker told the Sub-Committee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Government Oversight of the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday. Dr. Saleh Mutlaq, Secretary General of Iraq's National Dialogue Front, visiting Washington, DC, to meet with officials at the White House, the State Department, and House and Senate members, told the Sub-Committee, "Let us work together to insure that the current withdrawal from Iraq, for which we have continuously called, will go forward with proper planning so as to avoid the previous missteps." "Iraq is my country, and I understand and believe that Iraqis are the ones who should fix and make it a better place. But, unfortunately, Iraq is not a sovereign state where Iraqis can decide their own fate. Even if the U.S. ends its occupation, Iraq's sovereignty is still breached by Iran," cautioned the Iraqi legislator. Full release.

Riki Ellison, President and Chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA) www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org details his thoughts on the new missile defense plan announced yesterday by the Department of Defense. His analysis and comments are as follows: President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a historic announcement yesterday to rescind on previous agreements with the governments of the Czech Republic and Poland to host a missile defense system that would protect the United States and parts of Europe. This decision places the Eastern and Southeastern portions of the U.S. at risk from long-range ballistic missile threats by not protecting those regions as equally as the rest of the country is now currently protected with long-range missile defenses. No realistic solution or alternative was introduced by the President and the Secretary of Defense to replace the long-range protection to our country's Eastern and Southeastern regions provided by those international agreements that are now voided. Full release.

Business Travel Coalition (BTC) and FlyersRights.org today applauded FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt's decision to require FAA staff to cease referring to airlines as customers of the agency, long a concern of travel organizations. The dysfunction caused by this misguided notion of airlines-as-customer is deeply rooted in FAA culture; the Customer Service Initiative was merely one manifestation. Bloomberg News reported yesterday: "FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, who has been in his job for less than four months, said at a news conference today, 'When we say customer, we're talking about the flying public. There has been some confusion in the past.'" BTC and FlyersRights.org believe FAA should completely remove the term "customer" from its lexicon as it will no doubt remain as a trigger for confused behavior as FAA culture still supports the airlines-as-customer construct. FAA needs to be a strong regulator with a mission to protect the flying public, period. Moreover, and importantly, politically favored and powerful airlines should not be overseen any differently than smaller or less politically connected ones. Full release.

The Public Option is still viable as the House is set to pass it -- "It is not 'fading' nor 'waning' (New York Times) nor on 'life support' (ABC News)," says Robert Weiner, former Chief of Staff for the House Aging Committee and its Health subcommittee, and later spokesman for the White House National Drug Policy Office. In a letter published in today's New York Times on what the Times called the "the fading public option," Weiner states: "I believe that the House will pass a bill with a public option, which is strongly supported by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. There will be a big media flurry when it does, so the compromises of triggers and time delays are viable -- in other words, a public option is not dead by any means. Full release.

The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University earlier this week announced New Leaders for New Schools in partnership with the Chicago Public School District as a 2009 Innovations in American Government winner. New Leaders for New Schools is designed to drive up academic achievement by recruiting and training effective school principals. The program is one of six government innovations honored at yesterday's Innovations in American Government Awards ceremony and will receive a grant towards the dissemination of its innovation around the country. The event concluded with the premier of 2009 Visionaries, a PBS-produced documentary highlighting this year's Innovations winners. A full 30 minute episode on New Leaders for New Schools will air this spring. New Leaders for New Schools is built on the premise that any student can succeed under the supervision of supportive school leadership. The program attracts high caliber individuals from both academic and corporate sectors to lead historically underserved and underperforming urban schools. Full release.

The largest U.S. subsidies to fossil fuels are attributed to tax breaks that aid foreign oil production, according to research to be released on Friday by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The study, which reviewed fossil fuel and energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008, reveals that the lion's share of energy subsidies supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases. The research demonstrates that the federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Fossil fuels benefited from approximately $72 billion over the seven-year period, while subsidies for renewable fuels totaled only $29 billion. More than half the subsidies for renewables -- $16.8 billion -- are attributable to corn-based ethanol, the climate effects of which are hotly disputed. Of the fossil fuel subsidies, $70.2 billion went to traditional sources--such as coal and oil -- and $2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. Thus, energy subsidies highly favored energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases over sources that would decrease our climate footprint. Full release.

President Obama recognized IBM (NYSE: IBM) and its Blue Gene family of supercomputers with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the country's most prestigious award given to leading innovators for technological achievement. Full release.

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