by jpitney | Feb 5, 2021 | Civility, Polarization
Aversive partisanship (aka negative partisanship) is a threat to civility and civil society. Maggie Koerth and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux at FiveThirtyEight: Four years ago, Lilliana Mason learned something she really, really hoped wasn’t true. A political scientist who...
by jpitney | Feb 4, 2021 | Biden, Journalism
Morgan Gstalter at The HIll: Nearly all of the members of Maryland’s congressional delegation signed a letter to President Biden on Thursday asking him to posthumously award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the five people killed in the Capital Gazette newsroom...
by jpitney | Feb 2, 2021 | Bipartisanship, Congress, Uncategorized
From Axios: Some 70% of bills enacted in the last Congress had at least one Republican and one Democrat co-sponsor, highlighting the need for bipartisanship to get things done under current House and Senate rules, according to data from Quorum provided to Axios’...
by jpitney | Feb 1, 2021 | Biden, Civic Education, civic virtue, Civility, Deliberation, Democracy, Polarization
A release from the University of Virginia Center for Politics Responding to President Joe Biden’s inaugural request to end the “uncivil war” in America, the University of Virginia Center for Politics is launching a yearlong national Civility Project in an effort to...
by jpitney | Jan 31, 2021 | Congress, House of Representatives
Last December, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed that a temporary committee created to make Congress “more effective, efficient, and transparent” would continue its work through 2023. Organized in 2019, the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress has...
by jpitney | Jan 29, 2021 | Congress, House of Representatives
Claremont McKenna College and AEI have an event today at 8 AM Pacific: Last December, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed that a temporary committee created to make Congress “more effective, efficient, and transparent” would continue its work through 2023. Organized...
by jpitney | Jan 28, 2021 | Journalism, Russia
From the Committee to Protect Journalists: New York, January 26, 2021 – Russian authorities should allow journalists to cover protests freely and without fear, and refrain from attacking or detaining members of the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists said...
by jpitney | Jan 26, 2021 | Congress, House of Representatives
Patrick Ramjug at LegBranch.org: says that two types of motions to recommit (MTRs) on the House floor: the rare “simple” MTR sends the bill back to the reporting committee, effectively killing it. The “amendatory” MTR is akin to an eleventh-hour amendment to the bill...
by jpitney | Jan 25, 2021 | Claremont McKenna College, Congress
From AEI: Modernizing Congress: A conversation with former Reps. Brian Baird (D-WA) and Tom Graves (R-GA), Friday, January 29, 2021 | 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM ET https://www.aei.org/events/modernizing-congress-a-conversation-with-former-rep-tom-graves-r-ga/ Last December,...
by jpitney | Jan 24, 2021 | civic virtue, Civility, Democracy, Polarization, Religion
David French: On January 15, Hunter Baker, the dean of arts and sciences at Union University—a Baptist college not far from me in Jackson, Tennessee—did something exceedingly rare in our highly polarized time. He published an apology. In an essay in Public Discourse,...
