Congress must do more to counter Trump administration’s assault on climate science

  Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have threatened to dismantle the federal climate apparatus. Earlier this year, the White House released a budget proposal for fiscal year 2020 that repeats many of the cuts to federal climate science proposed in Trump’s previous fiscal year budgets. At some agencies, proposed cuts to climate science far outstrip proposed reductions to the agency overall; according to Center for American Progress analysis of the FY 2020 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Budget in Brief and the FY 2020 EPA budget justification, for instance, the Trump administration proposed an 11 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Energy’s overall budget but a 47 percent reduction in its climate science-related activities.

Note to White House: You don't get to decide the “rules,” either

  Even as the White House restored the “hard pass” to CNN’s Jim Acosta, permitting him onto White House grounds, it promulgated some new, unrealistic rules for journalists attempting to fly under the flag of “decorum.”

  Let’s start with Rule No. 1 — only one question.

  Rule No. 2 — well, maybe more than one if the president or someone else at the podium decides otherwise.

  But what if the person at the podium tries to evade the first tough question? Horrors, the very idea that politicians might consider such a tactic! Any journalist worth his/her salt will and should want to follow up — that’s in the public’s interest, if not that of the podium prevaricator. So Rule Nos. 1 and 2 won’t work for anyone on the public’s side of the mic.

We should protest proposed restrictions on White House protests

  The White House.

  To the world, it’s the image of the United States.

  To Americans, it’s the “us” in U.S. — and the universally recognized metaphor for the president and the administration behind him.

  And for at least 100 years, it’s been the prime spot for demonstrators focused on many of society’s most important issues — war and peace, abortion and gun rights, health care policies and more.

Gene Policinski: The White House is wrong. A free press is ‘the people’

  An angry U.S. president feels hounded by the news media and is infuriated and discouraged with the intense and personal criticism of his domestic and international policies.

  I would suspect virtually all of you read that opening paragraph and thought of Donald Trump – and not of George Washington.

  But, in fact, it was our first president who felt the pressure of critics who attacked not just his administration but his personal integrity: A leading newspaper criticized him for a 61st birthday party it said was “monarchical” – apparently, a real political body slam in 1792. A critical press was a major reason he declined a third term, scholars say.

Marshall Yates: President Obama's politically selective Constitution

  Inside the Oval Office, President Obama is playing political games with the rule of law in America. While the Supreme Court has declared itself the final arbiter of the Constitution, the Constitution itself requires each branch of our federal government to act in accordance with our nation's highest document. However, President Obama has tried to have his constitutional cake and eat it too.

Gene Policinski: Freezing websites is not a legitimate form of protest

  The Web-based protest group Anonymous is asking the White House to consider endorsing a kind of website attack as protected by the First Amendment.

  The group claims the cyberattack tactic – which effectively freezes targeted Web pages for a time – should be protected as a new-age form of assembly and protest.

  “Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time,” says a line in the posted petition on the White House site, “We the People.”