Obama's Policy Agenda aimed to create social innovations and opportunities (Unit 5)

Technology enhances have altered social and economic problems by widening inequality. President Obama's agenda is directed to broaden Americans opportunities along with health care reform, education investments and an increase of the minimum wage.This may be reinforced  developing cost-effective government programs. In order to address social challenges of inadequate federal financing, they established the Social Innovation Fund.

The Obama administration proposed more than 80 million in its fiscal 2015 federal budget for programs. This money is to encourage policy innovations for work things like work force development, educational achievement and juvenile justice. There are funds that are being established for the improvement of social equality in states. The part of Obama's' Policy agenda is aimed to resolve some of the public policies that other technology has changed.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/equal-opportunity-and-social-innovation-obamas-policy-agenda/

Filibuster Suit (Unit 4)

The District Court dismissed a case on senate filibustering. The U.S. Court of appeals for the D.C. circuit affirmed that the standing decision. This was a result from the senate not being able to pass acts such as the
Dream Act and Disclose Act. The court lacked jurisdiction because the Senate was the one who established filibustering and was not able to make a decision on this case. This decision was also based with constitutional rights stated in the Speech and Debate Clause. The senate is going against their own decision of  allowing filibustering in the senate because there is not mention of filibustering in the constitution.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/04/15/futile-suit-against-filibuster-dismissed/

CIA in Trouble (Unit 4)

With Senator Dianna Feinstein on the panel to declassify pages of executive summaries, the CIA is under a lot of heat after suspicions of spying on congress. While using computers used by senate staffers, Senator Feinstein held the CIA for spying. The CIA is an independent regulatory agency, which the Department of Justice approved of such tactics in legal memos. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FIOA), congress is permitted to obtain legal documents and they discovered they had more valuable intelligence than they believed they had obtained.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/03/politics/senate-cia-report/index.html