Weekly Capitol Report
For over 200 years American patriots have shed their blood to fight for independence, liberty, and a democratic process that puts more power into the hands of citizens than monarchs and tyrants. Our country's history is also marked with numerous physical and political battles to expand the right to vote to millions more deserved Americans.
Thousands of brave Americans have answered the call of duty to serve our country and protect us from terrorism.
The coming weeks will ultimately decide the future of the United States Supreme Court for decades to come. Our next President will have the opportunity to fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia by exercising his or her most significant responsibility as expressly set forth in Article II of the United States Constitution. And the reality is, never has this decision mattered more.
For every instance of one fraudulent vote, a legitimate American voter is disenfranchised. As the Supreme Court of the United States recognized when it upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s voter identification law in 2008, “… not only is the risk of voter fraud real but…it could affect the outcome of a close election.”
1,811. It was learned this week that was the number of illegal aliens who were ‘mistakenly’ granted American citizenship by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. All of these 1,811 illegal immigrants now turned American citizens were previously ordered to be deported or removed from the U.S.
This week, the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee conducted a public hearing delving into the policies and procedures the U.S. State Department employs for preserving federal records.
The Salem community and I took a major step toward fall last Friday when we watched Salem High Football return to play under the familiar ‘Friday Night Lights’. The start of a new school year is exciting because it is an opportunity for students to set new goals for the academic year and start to put plans in motion to achieve those goals.
This week marks the 20th anniversary of “welfare reform” and at the time it was hailed as one of the most widespread changes to addressing federal poverty our nation had ever seen. They promised it was the end of welfare as we would know it.