Although the immigration reform debate has been stalled in Congress for some time, a new discussion has revolved around “sanctuary cities” — generally defined as jurisdictions with policies or laws that limit the extent to which local law enforcement will assist the Federal Government on immigration matters. Currently, more than 200 State and local jurisdictions have policies that do not honor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention requests. The sanctuary movement grew out of efforts by churches in the 1980s to provide safe havens for those fleeing violence in Central America. The logic behind sanctuary cities is that encouraging…

Major train accidents occurring earlier this year have prompted Congress to readdress the issue of passenger rail safety. Funding for Amtrak has long been controversial, with many Republicans wanting to privatize the system and many Democrats arguing that the United States has fallen behind other countries, such as Germany and Japan, by not making a greater investment in rail travel. The last time Congress reauthorized funding for Amtrak was through passage of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which required the Nation’s busiest railroad operators to implement a technology called positive train control (PTC) and to have it in…

In August 3, the Senate, by a 53-to-46 margin, failed to obtain the 60 votes needed to proceed on S. 1881, to prohibit Federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive, maternal, and child health services, including abortions. The organization operates about 700 clinics that treat 2.7 million patients a year. The organization says that abortions account for approximately 3 percent of its services. Planned Parenthood has been a focus of the abortion debate for some time but recently came under new scrutiny after the release of secretly taped and edited videos showing a…