House OKs GOP bill to curtail NLRB’s authority

The House passed a Republican measure Thursday that calls for curtailing the National Labor Relations Board’s enforcement power — a move that would undermine a federal complaint against the Boeing Co. for opening a new plant in South Carolina.
The bill would prohibit the NLRB from ordering an employer to shut down plants or relocate work, even if a company is found to have illegally retaliated against unionized employees.
“The Republican bill simply says that forcing a business to close its doors and relocate to another part of the country is an unacceptable remedy for today’s workforce,” said Rep. John Kline, Minnesota Republican and chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
“If the NLRB is allowed to exercise this radical authority, it will have a chilling effect on our economy.”
The House passed the measure largely along party lines by a vote of 238 to 186. Eight Democrats supported the measure, while seven Republicans opposed it. House Assistant Minority Leader James E. Clyburn, the lone Democrat in the South Carolina congressional delegation, voted no.

Boeing employees work in the 787 Dreamliner aft-body-assembly building on Thursday, June 16, 2011, in Charleston, S.C. The building is the size of 10.5 football fields and can house two 787 Dreamliners wingtip to wingtip. Boeing will be able to deliver three airplanes per month. (Jeremy Lock/Special to The Washington Times)

The bill is expected to die in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Republicans and the business community say the NLRB during the Obama administration years have overstepped its bounds by imposing excessive regulations that hurt business. Conservatives are particularly upset over some union-friendly rulings by the board.
The GOP measure was born out of an NLRB complaint in April that accused Boeing of punishing union workers in Washington state by building a new nonunion assembly plant for its 787 airliner in South Carolina, a right-to-work state.
The agency filed the complaint after a yearlong investigation of unfair labor practices brought by the Seattle chapter of the International Association of Machinists. The chapter accused Boeing of locating a second assembly line for the 787 aircraft in South Carolina, rather than in Washington state, as retaliation for a 2008 strike.
Democrats and organized labor said Republicans are using the measure to unfairly target unions and stifle collective-bargaining rights. They added that by weakening the NLRB’s authority, companies would have an easier time relocating jobs overseas.
“This is the outsourcers bill of rights,” said Rep. Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey Democrat. “This is a bill that overreaches. It undercuts the middle class of this country.”
Opponents also complained the bill would interfere with ongoing litigation.
“It is not good legislative policy to legislate on individual cases,” said Rep. Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Democrat.
The NLRB says its complaint doesn’t seek to shut down the Boeing plant, but rather would require the company to move the new 787 airliner production lines back to Washington state.
But Boeing officials, who have denied the charges, say the South Carolina facility that opened in June was built specifically for construction of the aircraft and that the NLRB’s ruling effectively would shutter the plant and force the layoff more than a thousand new workers there.

Free tuition for illegals

California Democrats push taxpayers to subsidize higher ed for aliens

Democrats will do anything to pander for Hispanic votes in 2012. They’re even in favor of amnesty and cash handouts to illegal aliens, if that’s what it takes. The latest scheme from California liberals is a move to force over-burdened taxpayers to foot the bill to put illegals through college.
On Thursday, the California Senate Appropriations Committee passed AB 131, which would allow undocumented pupils to sign up for public financial aid at state schools. At the same time, the Golden State’s dire fiscal straits have forced cutbacks in public-education spending for actual citizens.
This particular bill is one of two measures in the so-called “California Dream Act,” a package designed to call to mind the congressional Dream Act which grants citizenship for illegals who go to college.
California’s version makes illegal immigrants eligible for millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded Cal Grants and other forms of financial assistance. The only limit for applicants is that they must have attended state high schools for three years.
The same legislation has passed before, but former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger terminated the measure. Current Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, however, has said that he would sign the bill.
State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly turned to the Web, appealing to his constituents to call the governor’s office and oppose the idea. The Twin Peaks Republican said in a video that the bill would “take your taxpayer dollars and use them to create an incentive for more people to come to our country illegally because we’re going to pay for their college education. And that just doesn’t make any sense.”
The big spenders in the state Senate don’t have a plan for getting any of the financial aid paid back. The illegals with no Social Security numbers who don’t file taxes have no reason to adhere to a repayment schedule.
Even if they wanted to repay their debt, the state’s unemployment rate of 12 percent makes it difficult even for anyone to find a job after graduation.
California is on the brink of bankruptcy, yet its politicians are more concerned with preserving their own salaries, power and perks of office than doing what it takes to avoid the looming financial collapse. Giveaways to illegals come out of the pockets of hard-working, legal families who have to struggle to pay for college for their own kin.
Mr. Brown should not sign the California Dream Act into law, but if he does, you can bet that illegals all over the country will race to the left coast to get their kids a free college degree.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s the solution for the other 49 states to get the illegals off their dole for schools and hospitals. Send them to California, where they can spend three years in high school and then four years studying fashion design or hotel management - all on the Cali taxpayers’ dime.

Biden’s anti-life policy

Vice President Joe Biden can’t keep his foot out of his mouth. On Sunday, he said he “fully understands” and “is not second-guessing” Beijing’s one-child-per-family policy. The remark came during an unscripted question-and-answer session with students at China’s Sichuan University. An Obama administration spokesman backpedaled, claiming the vice president finds the coercive aspects of the policy - which include forced abortion and sterilization - “repugnant.”
“Repugnant” barely begins to describe Beijing’s population laws. The “one child” rule - codified in the National Population and Family-planning Law - was implemented in 1979 during the heyday of anxiety about supposed global overpopulation. It was over-the-top even by the utilitarian standards of Zero Population Growth fanatics; fertility rates in China peaked in 1967 at almost six children per family and had dropped by over half before the policy was formulated. Nevertheless, the communists imposed the draconian standard, and Beijing now brags that the state since has prevented 400 million births in one way or another.
According to the U.S. State Department’s 2010 Human Rights Report on China, “the country’s birth limitation policies retained harshly coercive elements, in law and practice.” Unauthorized pregnancies could result in forced abortions even up to the moment of birth, which is more properly called infanticide. The policy has been of special concern to radical feminists, usually the champions of unlimited abortion and birth control, because of the prevalence in the People’s Republic of gender-selective abortions favoring male children. Aborting unborn girls is so widespread that Beijing has attempted to ban ultrasounds for pregnant women regardless of their beneficial medical applications.
Parents who expand their families beyond authorized limits face stiff punishment. According to the State Department, “those who violated the child-limit policy by having an unapproved child or helping another do so faced disciplinary measures such as social compensation fees [i.e., massive fines], job loss or demotion, loss of promotion opportunity, expulsion from the party … and other administrative punishments, including in some cases the destruction of private property.” Some parents are allowed to have a second child, but this carries great risks. In 2010, the city of Puning “conducted two campaigns of ‘sterilization of married couples that have two children, ” resulting in over 11,000 such forced procedures. Those who didn’t cooperate with “family-planning” officials were severely punished.
The hedge statement issued by Mr. Biden’s office said that “the Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth-limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The vice president believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable.” This corrected stance isn’t as strong as it seems. The White House was careful only to condemn the coercive aspects of the one-child policy, not its intent or the fact that it has led to the premature end of hundreds of millions of lives. The administration is not taking a stand for life but merely reinforcing its view of the supposed “right to choose.” This anti-life stance is doubly shameful for Mr. Biden, who wears his Catholicism on his sleeve despite being publicly opposed to his church’s moral teachings on life.
Another student questioner in Sichuan prefaced his remarks by calling the vice president an “accomplished public speaker.” If only Mr. Biden would stick to the teleprompter like his boss.

FEULNER: Fueling higher gas prices

Paying less for gasoline these days? If only. Most Americans are paying more. Why? After all, when President Obama ordered the release of 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) on June 24, White House spokesman Jay Carney pointed out that demand usually rises in the summer. The hope, clearly, was that releasing the extra oil would cause prices to drop or at least level off.
How administration officials thought that might happen is a mystery. The amount released from the SPR totaled less than two days’ worth of domestic oil consumption. It was little more than a blip. Even if there had been an actual emergency that justified tapping the SPR - and there wasn’t - it proved to be weak political theater, not smart energy policy.
If the Obama administration were serious about lowering gasoline prices, it would immediately lift the moratorium it placed on deep-water drilling. It’s been more than a year since that order went into effect, and since then, 10 oil rigs have left the Gulf of Mexico. Where did they go? They’re off helping other countries - including Egypt, Congo, French Guiana, Liberia, Nigeria and Brazil - find oil.
Meanwhile, Americans are stuck paying a national average gas price of $3.67. A year ago, that average was $2.77 - nearly a dollar cheaper.
Retrieving those rigs won’t be easy. “It’s going to be difficult to move them back once they are drilling in, say, Nigeria or Brazil,” Heritage Foundation research fellow David Kreutzer points out. “The oil companies must have confidence they can move forward with their drilling plans and to know these plans won’t be revoked. Only certainty will bring them back.”
The moratorium also kept eight other rigs that would have been located in the Gulf from coming there in the first place. Goodbye to all the jobs we might have had - which would have been very helpful at a time when the unemployment rate exceeds 9 percent.
Speaking of jobs, the moratorium has been especially harmful to Louisiana’s economy. Not only big companies are affected, either. “There are small businesses that do a lot of services for the rigs, and they have been set back,” said Renee Baker, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business. “We just want to see people get back to work.” That won’t happen, though, under a pro-moratorium policy.
Untapped oil isn’t found only in the Gulf. There are vast reserves in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) - between 5.7 billion and 16 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That means ANWR could provide an average of nearly a million barrels a day, every day, for several decades.
But current law places that oil off-limits. An administration that claims it’s concerned about gas prices hasn’t lifted a finger to change it.
Critics tell us that extracting the oil in this area could spoil huge tracts of natural wilderness. In fact, we’d be drilling on a mere 2,000 acres out of the 19 million that make up ANWR. And today’s advanced equipment makes a light environmental “footprint,” as we can see from the plentiful herds of caribou that live by the drilling in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay.
It’s not just oil. About 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is located beneath our waters. Yet this valuable energy, too, is senselessly being kept out of reach. Why?
Some energy policy: Americans are being forced to pay high prices at the pump and an administration is deliberately withholding vast amounts of oil from them. Who’s in the driver’s seat, anyway?

Poll: Weakened Obama would lose vote today

A Democratic polling firm said President Obama's already weak job-approval numbers are "worse than they appear" and he likely would lose the election if it were held today.
For the first time in a year, Mr. Obama does not lead former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Public Policy Polling's monthly national poll on the 2012 presidential race. They are tied at 45 percent, and Mr. Obama is losing among independent voters by a margin of 49 percent to 44 percent.
Worse for Mr. Obama, PPP said, the "vast majority" of undecideds disapprove of the president's performance. The survey of registered voters was conducted July 15-17.
"There's a very good chance Barack Obama would lose if he had to stand for re-election today," said Dean Debnam, president of PPP. "This is his worst poll standing in a long time, and he really needs the economy to start turning around."
In an interview this week with a Kansas City, Mo., TV station, Mr. Obama said the election will be more about his record than the platform of the eventual Republican nominee.
"Americans understand that we didn't get into this problem overnight," Mr. Obama told KMBC-TV, one of three interviews he gave to regional TV outlets at the White House on Wednesday. "If next November they feel like I've ... been working as hard as I can and have been getting some things done to move us in the right direction, then I'll win. If they don't, then I'll lose."

Regulatory reform restart

As the country emerges from one of the most serious economic downturns in recent history, the last thing we need are more regulations that impose heavy burdens on job creators. One way to get Americans back to work is by removing excessive and costly regulations that make it harder for businesses to grow.
It appears in the early going that the Obama administration’s executive order requiring a review of existing regulations “that are out of date, unnecessary, excessively burdensome, or in conflict with other rules” has encouraged some regulatory agencies to make recommendations that will save businesses time, money, headaches and resources. But more must be done.
That’s because the order exempts from review the huge flow of regulations in the pipeline generated by the health care and financial reform laws as well as the large number of major rules generated by the Environmental Protection Agency in the past two years.
This enormous onslaught of new regulations could well cost hundreds of billions of dollars, hamper our recovery, undermine our competitiveness and cost jobs. The regulations are being promulgated under the same system that generated the ones the administration found necessary to review. The “look back” plans do not appear to fix this problem.
If we don’t take the necessary steps now, our competitiveness and the success of America’s small businesses - the job engines of our economy - are at risk. Businesses with fewer than 20 employees incur regulatory costs 42 percent higher than companies with up to 500 employees. The average regulatory cost for each employee of a small business exceeds $10,000 per year. The Small Business Administration priced the total cost of federal regulation compliance at $1.75 trillion in 2008 - amounting to $15,000 for each U.S. household.
Consider the case of Ronald Myers, the former owner of Hot Shot Equipment Co. in Prescott, Ariz. Mr. Myers was forced to shut down his iron gate manufacturing shop because overly burdensome workplace safety and health regulations prevented metalworking from being done by hand. Unable to compete against foreign suppliers, he had no other choice than to let his workers go and close his business.
Make no mistake, we need some regulations. Businesses require certainty and “rules of the road,” and we need adequate protections for health and public safety. But when regulations suck the vitality out of our economy, it’s time we take a hard look at restoring balance and accountability to the process.
First, Congress should wrestle back the unprecedented power that it has yielded to bureaucratic agencies in the past few decades.
Today, nearly all major regulations go into effect without the people’s representatives in Congress ever voting on them. Congress needs to play a larger role by exercising more vigorous oversight regarding the implementation of the sweeping laws that it passes.
A good place to start would be to pass legislation pending in Congress to guarantee an up-or-down vote, with no Senate filibuster, on regulations with an economic impact of more than $100 million.
Second, we need more rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Major rule proposals should require independent verification and public disclosure of economic and employment impact studies. Existing rules should be reviewed periodically by independent parties, and those deemed ineffective or unnecessary should be phased out.
Finally, citizens should have the judicial access and tools they need to hold federal agencies accountable for limiting regulatory burdens and for using sound science to support proposed rules. With appropriate access to courts, citizens help enforce transparency, check bureaucratic power and hold government decision-makers accountable.
We need to restore balance, restraint and common sense to the regulatory process. It’s time to open America for business again.

States challenge feds on guns

Eight states have thrown down the gauntlet and denied the federal government's authority to regulate firearms that never cross state lines. In 2009, Montana became the first to enact a law declaring any gun manufactured and kept within the state’s borders was subject only to state rules. It’s now up to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether Montana - and by extension Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming - must yield to the whims of Uncle Sam.
Gary S. Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, wants to manufacture a .22 caliber bolt-action rifle for youth, exclusively for Treasure State residents. Mr. Marbut currently runs a small business that manufacturers equipment for shooting ranges. He has sourced all the material needed to make the “Montana Buckaroo” rifle, including prototype parts. If he assembles just one rifle to fill any of the 500 preliminary orders he has received for the product, he’ll face federal charges. “It was my intention to set up this lawsuit to challenge federal Commerce Clause power and to breathe some life back into the 10th Amendment,” Mr. Marbut told The Washington Times.
On Monday, Montana’s attorney general filed an amicus brief arguing the 9th and 10th Amendments give states authority over matters not explicitly federal. Under the Constitution, Congress has no power over intrastate commerce. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) doesn’t care. In a September 2009 letter, the agency insisted Mr. Marbut would be thrown in jail if he made a Montana-only rifle without first filling out federal paperwork, paying fees and receiving a blessing from Washington. “Any unlicensed manufacture of any (National Firearms Act) weapons, including sound suppressors, without proper registration and payment of tax, is a violation of Federal law and could lead to the forfeiture of such items and potential criminal prosecution,” ATF special agent in charge Richard E. Chase wrote.
The Justice Department wants Mr. Marbut’s lawsuit thrown out and Montana’s firearms-freedom statute nullified. A district court judge agreed to dismiss the case, essentially saying nobody could challenge federal gun laws without expending the significant capital needed to start the new manufacturing enterprise, making a gun and being tossed in the slammer.
This case will inevitably land in the lap of the Supreme Court, which needs to reconsider its Commerce Clause jurisprudence. The consequences of the Montana case extend far beyond guns. It’s about whether this nation should continue to cede unlimited power to unelected, distant bureaucrats to dictate what kind of automobiles, health care, toilets, shower heads, washing machines and light bulbs the public is allowed to buy. More states should join with Montana in saying enough is enough.

Boehner gives Obama Friday deadline on Libya

Stepping up a simmering constitutional conflict, House Speaker John A. Boehner warned President Obama on Tuesday that unless he gets authorization from Congress for his military deployment in Libya, he will be in violation of the War Powers Resolution.

In a letter sent Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Boehner, the top Republican in the constitutional chain of succession, said Mr. Obama must provide a clear justification by Friday for committing troops to Libya.

Sunday marks the 90th day since the president notified Congress that U.S. troops had been committed to help enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, which is designed to protect the rebels fighting Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s government.

“The Constitution requires the president to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’ and one of those laws is the War Powers Resolution, which requires an approving action by Congress or withdrawal within 90 days from the notification of a military operation,” Mr. Boehner said in the letter.

The White House has repeatedly said it has complied with the law by alerting Congress to the initial deployment, and by testifying at more than 10 hearings and providing 30 follow-up briefings about the pace and extent of U.S. troops’ commitment.

But the administration has never sought approval from Congress.

“We are in the final stages of preparing extensive information for the House and Senate that will address a whole host of issues about our ongoing efforts in Libya,” White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said Tuesday evening, adding that the administration also will present its legal analysis of the War Powers Resolution.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, but makes the president commander-in-chief. Those dual roles have caused tension throughout the nation’s history.

Two weeks ago, the House passed a nonbinding resolution that urged Mr. Obama to provide detailed information on the deployment. Mr. Boehner at the time signaled that Congress might cut off funding for the deployment in Libya if the administration didn’t comply.

That resolution gave Mr. Obama 14 days to comply, and the time runs out on Friday.

White House press secretary Jay Carney called the resolution “unhelpful,” but later said the administration will try to provide information the lawmakers are seeking.

The House turned back an even more strident resolution offered by Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Democrat, that would have demanded troop withdrawal. But between the two resolutions, roughly three-quarters of the House [-] including nearly half of all Democrats [-] went on record challenging Mr. Obama’s handling of the war.

House lawmakers are getting itchy fingers as they look for ways to rein in the president.

On Monday, they voted 248-163 to amend a veterans funding bill to stop any of the money in that measure from going to Libya operations. A similar amendment on the homeland security spending bill failed two weeks ago.

U.S. forces initially took the lead in establishing the no-fly zone, with Mr. Obama saying he felt compelled to act because Col. Gadhafi had threatened to show “no mercy” on his own citizens who were rebelling.

American forces eventually changed over to a support role, and NATO is now running the operation.

U.S. voters hold conflicted views on the military operation.

A Fox News poll taken last week found Americans opposing the mission by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, and substantial majorities said Mr. Obama has not articulated a cogent reason for U.S. involvement.

Still, other polls show voters are comfortable with the extent of U.S. military involvement now, yet want to see the coalition specifically target Col. Gadhafi.

In Libya, NATO warplanes struck at Tripoli, the capital, late Tuesday, while the rebels’ diplomatic successes continued.

Canada officially recognized the rebel National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya, becoming the 14th country to do so. The U.S. has not taken that step, though it has suspended diplomatic relations with Col. Gadhafi’s government.

While the House is moving toward a showdown with Mr. Obama, a bipartisan group of senators is seeking to bolster the president’s military mission by granting him official approval.

Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, is working on a resolution with Sens. John McCain, Arizona Republican, and Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, that also would require more extensive reporting and consultation with Capitol Hill.

Mr. McCain warned against undercutting Mr. Obama at what could be a critical time in the push to oust Col. Gadhafi.

“Let’s be very careful that the Congress does not say something unintentionally that would encourage Gadhafi to believe that somehow we have lost our commitment to him leaving office,” he said.

The resolution is due to be considered in the Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday.

Second Amendment injustice

 In June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm “and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” Quoting the famous British jurist William Blackstone, the court held that “the right of self-preservation” permits a citizen to “repe[l] force by force” when “the intervention of society in his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury.” This grandiose language must ring awfully hollow to Orville Lee Wollard who, two years ago tomorrow was sentenced to two decades in a Florida prison for protecting his family with a firearm.
On a spring morning in 2008, Wollard got a panicked call from his wife. The teenage boyfriend who had been beating up his 15-year old daughter was back at their house causing trouble. Wollard rushed home and found the boy on the porch and his daughter with a black eye. Wollard told the boy to leave, but instead, the boy attacked him, ripping out stitches from Wollard’s recent surgery, and then ran off with Wollard’s daughter. When the two returned several hours later, the boyfriend began shoving Orville’s daughter around the Wollards’ home. Wollard’s wife and eldest daughter screamed for him to do something.
Wollard was frightened for his daughter’s and his family’s safety. He grabbed his legally registered pistol and confronted the boy, again asking him to leave. The boy stopped assaulting Wollard’s daughter. He smiled, punched a hole in the wall, and began moving toward Wollard. Wollard, who had had firearms training as a former member of the auxiliary police force, aimed a bullet into the wall next to the boyfriend to scare him. No one was hurt, and the boy finally left.
That is where this story should have ended, but it didn’t. Several weeks later, the abusive boy called the police to report Wollard for aggravated assault, and Wollard was arrested.
Orville Wollard did not think he had committed a crime by protecting his family. He rejected a plea deal that would have given him probation and a felony record and instead took his case to court. Prosecutors charged Wollard with various crimes, including shooting into a dwelling (his own house), child abuse (because the boy was under 18) and aggravated assault with a weapon. A jury convicted Wollard of possessing and discharging a firearm, which triggered Florida’s mandatory minimum sentence for aggravated assault with a weapon. Wollard was sentenced to the mandatory prison term of 20 years without parole. At sentencing, the judge said, “This [sentence] is obviously excessive … if it weren’t for the mandatory minimum … I would use my discretion and impose some separate sentence, having taken into consideration the circumstances of the event.” For his part, Wollard told the court, “I’m amazed. I’m stunned. I have spent my life pursuing education [and] helped the community. [T]hen one day this person breaks into my house … he continues to do this, he assaults my daughter, he threatens me, I protect myself. [N]o one is injured in this whole thing, and I’m going to prison. … And again, with all respect to [the court], I would expect this from the former Soviet Union, not the United States.”
Wollard is right. If what he did was so clearly illegal, what did the Supreme Court’s ruling mean? If not to protect one’s young child within the home, what are guns for?
Wollard is right. If what he did was so clearly illegal, what did the Supreme Court’s ruling mean? If not to protect one’s young child within the home, what are guns for?
To be clear, a jury found Wollard guilty. Jurors apparently did not believe he acted in self-defense. They might have voted differently if Wollard’s attorneys had been permitted to tell them about the boy’s previous violent attacks.
Whether this jury reached the correct conclusion is open to debate. Whether prosecutors should have charged a crime that carried such a harsh mandatory minimum sentence bears scrutiny. What is beyond debate is that when judges are prevented from applying sentences that are appropriate to the unique circumstances of each case, injustice is inevitable. And when the constitutional right to bear arms is at stake, violations of the bedrock tenet of American justice - that the punishment should fit the crime and the offender - are all the more intolerable.

Signs of tyranny

If the government can dictate what you can put in your own window, there’s no limit to what it can do. The Institute for Justice was forced last week to end its constitutional challenge to a Dallas city ordinance that prohibited small businesses from displaying large window signs advertising specials or even specifying the store’s hours of operation. To prevent the case from going to trial, Dallas bureaucrats threatened a mom-and-pop vacuum store, travel agency, uniform store and dry cleaner each with $300,000 in fines.
The ordinance specifies that no sign may appear in the upper two-thirds portion of any window or glass door. In the space that remains, signage may not take up more than 15 percent of the available window space. The ordinance carefully carves out an exemption for artistic and political speech. So a gigantic “Vote Obama” sign is acceptable, but one that states “20 percent off on Wednesdays” is not. “To claim that the citizens of Dallas were harmed to the tune of $300,000 per business is just ludicrous,” Institute for Justice attorney Matt Miller told The Washington Times.
Typical big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy have plenty of money to advertise specials and mail out flyers that inform customers about upcoming sales. For the little guy, a notice in the window is often the only cost-effective way to entice passersby to try out their products or services. That’s why the small shops in the case only asked for $1 in damages. Their only goal was overturning an ordinance they believe violates the First Amendment. Rather than allowing the case to go to a jury, the city unleashed code-enforcement officers who levied $1,000 in “nuisance” fines for each of the 300 days the businesses were in violation of the ordinance during the litigation.
It’s hard to imagine who is harmed or offended by a large “open” or “sale” sign, but the city actually asserted the sign ordinance “promotes safety by preventing signs from obstructing firefighting or police surveillance or creating traffic hazards.” That absurd claim was sufficient for a federal judge to refuse to issue a preliminary injunction while the case was pending. “It’s surreal to have a conversation about this,” Mr. Miller said. “The last thing this city needs to be doing is harassing small businesses. They have been here for 10, 20, 30 years. They’re good businesses, they’re good public citizens.”
The cumulative effect of countless - and pointless - petty rules imposed by busybodies at the federal and state level on down to cities and towns takes a massive toll on the people who are trying to fulfill the American Dream. While the 7.7 percent unemployment rate in Dallas is below the national average, it ought to be much lower. It makes no sense to maintain a regulation whose sole effect is to cut off business opportunities for the types of firms most vulnerable in a weak economy. It makes even less sense to use vindictive, mob-style tactics to gain advantage in a constitutional disagreement.
Instead of wasting time looking for new ways to micromanage the use of private property, Dallas ought to look for ways to make the city a more welcoming place for entrepreneurs to come and set up shop. Repealing this ordinance would be a sign of progress.

Top counterterrorism chief stepping down

The director of the nation’s top counterterrorism agency is stepping down after a nearly four-year tenure that spanned the reorganization of the National Counterterrorism Center in the wake of the failed 2009 Christmas Day attempted airline bombing to the successful raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.
The White House said Thursday that NCTC Director Michael Leiter, a Bush administration holdover who has guided the agency since 2007, made the decision to resign from his post at the government’s hub for analyzing potential terrorist threats.
“Mike led the National Counterterrorism Center with dedication and unwavering determination during challenging and demanding times, and our nation is grateful for his many contributions to our safety and security,” President Obama said in a statement. “I am confident that Mike will be leaving the National Counterterrorism Center, the counterterrorism community, and the nation in a significantly stronger position to confront the terrorist threats we face.”
Created in response to the intelligence failures that preceded the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the NCTC serves as the main clearinghouse tasked with analyzing and integrating various terrorism-related intelligence.
The agency faced criticism after the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009, when counterterrorism officials failed to “connect the dots” between various bits of intelligence and detect a plot by a Nigerian national to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit. Mr. Leiter in particular faced fire for being on a ski vacation, and the episode led him to reorganize the NCTC.
By leaving in July, Mr. Leiter departs on a positive note, having helped see through the special-forces operation on bin Laden’s compound, killing the Sept. 11 mastermind after a long manhunt.
Mr. Leiter’s resignation was noted by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who praised his tenure at the agency.
“I have been consistently impressed by Director Leiter’s responsiveness, vision and dedication,” said Sen. Susan M. Collins of Maine, the senior Republican on the chamber’s homeland security panel. “On a personal note, I have never been more pleased to hear from a government official than when Director Leiter called me with the welcome news of the successful operation against Osama bin Laden.”
Mr. Leiter’s departure comes amid a broad shakeup of Mr. Obama’s national security team. In late April, the commander in chief nominated current CIA Director Leon E. Panetta to succeed outgoing Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, tapping Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to take over for Mr. Panetta.
The White House has yet to name a successor to Mr. Leiter. His deputy, Andy Liepman, will serve as acting director until Mr. Obama nominates a replacement, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.