After the Higgs: Particle Discovery Opens Next Chapter of Physics
Cornell University
News reports indicate that Rep. Darrell Issa (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, dropped confidential information from a Justice Department wiretap application into the Congressional Record last week. “While the executive branch sometimes seeks civil or criminal penalties against those who reveal confidential information, it cannot seek such penalties against Issa because the speech or debate clause of the constitution protects members of Congress when they expose sensitive information in the Congressional Record,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers Wesley Smith and Sau Lan Wu, who have leading roles in experiments to find the Higgs boson, are available to comment on the most recent developments in the search. The Higgs boson is an elusive particle expected to hold key information about how the universe is built. An announcement from the European Organization for Nuclear Research's (CERN) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collaboration is scheduled for 2 a.m. CDT July 4.
The Large Hadron Collider’s two experimental research collaborations at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva, will announce the latest results in their search for the Higgs boson at 2 a.m. CDT Wednesday, July 4. University of Chicago physicists will be available to comment on the new findings.
Dr. Jo Ivey Boufford, President of The New York Academy of Medicine, one of the nation’s oldest and preeminent medical academies, is available to comment on the landmark ruling regarding the constitutional legality of the Affordable Care Act. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling on Thursday, June 28, 2012.
“The Republicans in the House of Representatives apparently believe that they can get some political traction in the ‘Fast and Furious’ controversy, and plan to increase the political pressure on the Obama administration to disclose additional information by holding Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “The criminal contempt is essentially symbolical,” Clark says. She notes that the federal prosecutor actually works for Holder, and almost certainly will not prosecute his boss.
“Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion on the Affordable Care Act mostly conforms with the way I previously understood the taxing power of the federal government,” says Adam Rosenzweig, JD, tax law expert and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Rosenzweig says that there were two important pieces of the Roberts opinion from a tax standpoint.
Richard Manski is a nationally recognized expertise in data analyses, oral health services research, and oral health policy. He is serving as a senior scholar at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).