The Jefferson Journal

Commentary

Christian Braunlich
September 19, 2017

President Obama’s Executive Order on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was clearly unconstitutional and deserved to be upended. But there is also a clear case for Congress to take action on behalf of those who came here as children and are now contributing to society and the American economy.

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Christian Braunlich
September 6, 2017

Author’s Note: When Cameron Elementary School Principal George Towery retired in 2010, I wrote the following column about his accomplishments and his leadership. In a world in which many seem to define themselves by their politics, it’s hard to imagine a principal combining the instructional ideas of the Heritage Foundation...

Jefferson Forum
September 6, 2017

It’s time to introduce into the public lexicon a distinction between “social justice warriors” and “social justice entrepreneurs.” Social justice warriors (or SJWs, as they are known short-hand on some conservative blogs) seek to remedy the conditions of the poor and downtrodden through political action, typically calling upon government to...

Jefferson Forum
September 6, 2017

As a transportation professional, I’m a bit overwhelmed by proliferating articles and technical papers dealing with autonomous vehicles. And I’m increasingly distressed by the growing disparity between what appears in the popular media and what’s in the technical literature, because the former is what seems to motivate legislators and planners....

Jefferson Forum
September 6, 2017

One of America’s founding principles is the public’s right to know what their government is doing. The framers of the Constitution mentioned no exceptions, not even for national security, but a free press was permanently enshrined in the First Amendment, because a vigilant citizenry was – and is – the...

Jefferson Forum
September 6, 2017

Before I could enjoy a movie last week, I was forced to endure five minutes of climate and weather fear-mongering, when the theater previewed Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Sequel.” His attempt to pin every weather disaster of the past decade on humanity’s fossil fuel use felt like fifty minutes of water...

Jefferson Forum
August 23, 2017

While activists and politicians, and even world governments, debate over how to stop global warming and defeat climate change, the solutions to reducing humankind’s impact already exist in the private sector. Technologies now exist, or are on the cusp of first commercialization, to gasify coal and even coal ash cleanly;...

Jefferson Forum
August 23, 2017

With students packing up to go back to college this month with declared or undeclared majors, it’s a good time to consider the fields that graduating students are going into and whether they match up with the skills businesses need. From 2010 to 2016, students with a degree in computer...

Jefferson Forum
August 23, 2017

How do Virginia’s public higher-ed institutions rate on the goals established in the 2005 Restructuring Act and embedded in state code? The data is incomplete. This is the fourth of four articles exploring higher-education accountability in Virginia since enactment of the 2005 “Restructuring Higher Education Financial and Administrative Services Act.”...

Jefferson Forum
August 23, 2017

Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued an opinion regarding biofuels. Jim Lane of Biofuels Digest claimed “…it [court decision] was the biggest victory in the courts for biofuels, ever.” The decision is 85 pages. The dispute arose when EPA did not publish sufficient volumetric...