Author: Norman Leahy

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Moore v. Harper decision got headlines for torpedoing a fringe legal theory that state legislatures could act without oversight or check on their power to laws regulating elections. But it also upheld a more fundamental concept: that ours is a system of checks and balances which no creative reading of the Constitution can undo. (RELATED: California Governor Proposes Constitutional Amendment To Curb Gun Rights) As SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe writes, the so-called “independent state legislature theory” would have allowed state legislators to act on election matters free of any court oversight: [North Carolina Republican] legislators came to…

Supreme Court justices are among the most powerful figures in the country. Appointed for what amount to lifetime terms, justices are at the center of, if not the prime motivator behind, the biggest social and political issues of our day. This makes it all the more troubling that some justices have such a cavalier attitude toward mundane issues like personal ethics. The recent revelations of apparent ethical lapses, coupled with controversial decisions including overturning Roe v. Wade has hurt the court’s public standing. According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll: Nearly 7 in 10 Americans (68 percent) think that the…

The astonishing scenes and breathless reporting over the (apparently) short-lived mutiny of Wagner Group mercenaries and their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in Russia has the foreign policy apparatus in the West and elsewhere wondering what happens next. A great deal of that depends on what the real situation is on the ground. And those who are honest about the situation all say the same thing: no one knows for sure. Which likely includes many people in and around Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, including various oligarchs, courtiers and hangers-on. Of the many takes on what might be happening, historian and author Stephen…

The deal brokered between congressional GOP leaders and the Biden administration to avoid a debt ceiling debacle included a few headline issues that were intended to make that deal look good. Among them: spending caps that would – temporarily – bend the arc of federal spending down, before ticking up again. The whole idea of spending caps is a popular one in some quarters of official Washington. It offers the appearance of fiscal restraint without actually delivering it. Such is the case with the current “caps,” which lawmakers have already said they intend to breach. But absent the legal corset…

Talk about good timing. With Congress at work on the next federal budget, and some members looking for new ways to cut spending, the Government Accountability Office is out with its most recent annual report. Inside are a series of recommendations – complete with GAO research – on the many ways Uncle Sam can work smarter and save money. The report’s potential savings are of the old fashioned sort: less duplication, more accountability. And of course, less waste. Among the recommendations: The Office of Personnel Management could save hundreds of millions of dollars or more annually by implementing a monitoring…

Governments thrive on crises. From natural disasters to wars and many, many things in-between, when a crisis or emergency is at hand, the state leaps into action. And often along with that action comes a sweeping array of special powers that allow officials to circumnavigate many of the usual strictures on their power. Naturally, some officials are loathe to surrender such powers once they are in place. And that’s particularly true at the federal level, where there are currently 41 national emergency declarations in effect. The oldest of those dates back to the Carter administration. It’s been renewed continually since…

California has long been a source of political trends that can reshape how other states, and the nation as a whole, practice politics and government. That doesn’t mean they’ve been very good ideas, and a case in point is a recent requirement that the rich pay more for…energy use. On the surface, it makes sense…if one believes the rich are simply individuals to be milked for cash. And that the cash haul will be enormous. And it will flow, seamlessly, to the poor, the needy, and a handful of favored middlemen. Oh, and the blithe assumption that the tax policy…

The Chicago Booth School’s Dee Gill once wrote that the U.S. tax code is a “master class in convolution.” That’s being generous with the code, which is very long, extremely complex, and almost constantly changing. Every few years, a few members of Congress (the source and reason for all that “convolution) propose ways to simplify the code so it’s less of a drag on productive economic activity and fairer and more transparent to taxpayers. As Gill noted, such efforts almost always fail, and more complexity always wins. But the worthies keep trying to get simplicity over the finish line. A…

Several states are either considering or have implemented tax cuts and reforms this yearpicking up where they left off in 2021 and 2022, when federal COVID stimulus money flooded state coffers, allowing many to cut taxes. According to the Tax Foundation: Eight states adopted individual income tax rate reductions: Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia. Additionally, Michigan triggered a potentially temporary rate reduction, while previously scheduled or triggered reductions also took effect in 2023 in Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, New Hampshire (interest and dividend income tax), and North Carolina. All well and good for residents…

The spending and debt fight of a few weeks ago is not over, and that’s because the hard work of creating, debating, and then voting on a new federal budget is still months away from completion.That means the handful of Republican House members who refused to back the McCarthy-Biden debt deal, and then used parliamentary tactics to stall House business a few days ago, still want cuts.And they intend to get them in the new budget. Fair enough. So long as they include various sacred budgetary cattle like entitlement spending and defense, we might have a meaningful debate over the…