The two executive orders issued by the White House—“Bringing Guidance out of the Darkness,” and “Transparency and Fairness”—promise to start clearing the fog of faulty guidance documents issued by federal administrative agencies in the so-called Washington D.C. “swamp.” The administration should be applauded on taking a decisive step to reduce agency overreach.  Among other mechanisms to…

Despite the fact that both the Constitution and Administrative Procedure Act prohibit the practice, federal agencies often engage in the common-place tactic of issuing informal interpretations, fact sheets, and other forms of “guidance,” the practical outcome of which is to surreptitiously force the regulated community to comply with  a variety of “policy positions” that are…

           The Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, is one of the most important legal tools Americans have for ensuring the federal government is transparent. Given the mammoth size of the federal bureaucracy, FOIA helps inform Americans of “what their government is up to,” in the words of Henry Steele Commager…

  The United States Forest Service (“USFS”) dropped the “Roadless Rule” (66 Fed.Reg. 3244) on the public in the last ten days of the Clinton administration, the outcome of which was to essentially deny access to and management of 58.5 million acres of National Forest lands throughout the Country.  That Rule covered a full 30%…

New Civil Liberties Alliance recently hosted a showing of Little Pink House, a 2017 fact-based film dramatization of the events leading to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Kelo v. New London.  When that case was handed down in 2005, immediate, nationwide outrage rocketed it to the dubious distinction of being the most hated Supreme…