AEI welcomes Kenneth Green as a visiting fellow. Green will research environmental and energy policy with AEI colleagues Steven F. Hayward, Samuel Thernstrom, and Joel Schwartz. Mr. Green has spent the majority of his professional career writing about environmental policy from a free-market perspective, including eight years as director of the environmental studies program at the Reason Foundation.
In a recent article in the Washington Post (March 7), Norman J. Ornstein expresses doubt about Congress’s ability to tackle the country’s largest problems when it is rarely in session: “A part-time Congress in a country with a $13 trillion economy and federal budget near $3 trillion . . . is itself a danger to the checks and balances built into American democracy, and to high-quality, careful policymaking and oversight. It’s not too much to ask Congress to commit to spending at least half the year--26 weeks--working full-time, five days a week, thus providing at least a measure of the deliberation and attention to detail that are so lacking now.”
In collaboration with the AEI Liability Project, AEI has added a new publication, Liability Outlook, to its popular Outlook series. In the inaugural Liability Outlook, Ted Frank discusses Congressional attempts at asbestos liability reform and its long-term effects.
Peter J. Wallison discusses the revelations of the Rudman report about Fannie Mae and offers advice on how to safeguard the economy in a Wall Street Journal article (March 7): “As reform legislation languishes in the Senate, Congress should consider the lessons of Enron, Fannie and Freddie: Despite our best efforts, error and fraud will occur. That’s why it’s important to make sure--by reducing the size of Fannie and Freddie’s portfolios--that no future management failure at either company will threaten the stability of the economy.”
On February 9, Dan Blumenthal was appointed by Senate majority leader Bill Frist to a two-year term on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Blumenthal is a resident fellow at AEI whose research interests include East Asia and U.S.-China relations. He is also a contributor to AEI’s Asian Outlook series.
Francis H. Buckley delivered a speech on March 13 entitled, “Commercial Virtue, Romantic Ecstasy,” as part of AEI’s Bradley Lecture Series. Buckley argued that in today’s free-market economy, we have lost the power to appreciate beauty and the bonds of solidarity which unite human beings. Buckley is an associate dean at the George Mason School of Law and executive director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center.
On March 22, AEI and the Heritage Foundation hosted Taipei mayor and chairman of the Kuomintang Ma Ying-jeou, who discussed pressing issues regarding Taiwan’s future. Among the topics he addressed were governmental reform and defense spending in Taiwan, a U.S.-Taiwan partnership to ensure the island’s safety, and obstacles to achieving an even more prosperous economy and vibrant society.
On March 6, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, upheld the constitutionality of the 1996 Solomon Amendment, which allows the secretary of defense to deny federal grants to colleges and universities that prevent or refuse ROTC or military recruitment on campus. Christina Hoff Sommers addressed this issue long before it made headlines, in a prescient article published in AEI’s On the Issues (August 1, 2001): “Privately funded institutions can make their own rules of course. But most receive substantial funds from the federal government, and the government is under no moral or legal obligation to continue subsidizing institutions that create hostile environments for the nation’s cadets, soldiers, and veterans.”
Christopher Griffin, a research assistant in Asian studies at AEI, was selected to participate in the Manfred Wörner Seminar, a ten-day program in Germany that brings together thirty young Americans and Germans to discuss security policy, transatlantic cooperation, and U.S.-German relations. AEI research fellow Vance Serchuk participated in the program last year.
