Latest news with #DarrelIssa
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Valor may not expire, but award recognition should have limits
On June 12, Rep. Darrel Issa, R-Calif., introduced the Valor Has No Expiration Act, which would waive time limitations for military decorations since January 1940 if underlying records were 'classified, withheld from the public record due to sensitivity, or redacted for national security purposes.' He claimed this expanded on a 1996 law which waived the statute of limitations for personnel carrying out intelligence duties from 1940-1990. According to Issa, his bill 'removes this arbitrary end date and expands the criteria.' The inspiration was retired Navy Capt. Royce Williams, whose Korean War dogfight was allegedly classified for decades, making him 'ineligible for the Medal of Honor.' When the Medal of Honor was authorized in the Civil War, there were no time restrictions or evidentiary requirements. This proved disastrous for the Army, the service that eventually proposed time limitations on the medal. Most Civil War Medals of Honor from the Army were recommended decades late, which the Army referred to as an 'embarrassing abuse' as hundreds of veterans petitioned for the medal 'without any sound documentation.' The Army referred the matter to the attorney general, who in 1892 ruled that medals should be based on 'official reports,' not 'unofficial evidence [after decades of] unexplained delay.' In 1897, Secretary of War Russell Alger published regulations limiting medal recommendations to within one year of qualifying actions. In 1901, Secretary of War Elihu Root proposed a three-year award limit, since Civil War medal recommendations were taking 'most of the time and attention of the Department.' Congress finally passed Root's statute of limitations in 1918 for the Army, and 1919 for the Navy, fixing the Army's awarding of the Medal of Honor and service crosses at three years, and the Navy's at five years. These were standardized a century later. Congress originally waived time limitations for most military awards via time-consuming private bills. In 1996, Congress required military departments to first review stale medal submissions. If endorsed by the military, Congress considered waivers for the defense bill. This was no rubber stamp; waivers applied to 'appropriate' cases deemed not to be 'an undue administrative burden.' Issa claims that his bill removes an 'arbitrary end date' for the 1996 waiver for 'intelligence activities,' and extends it to cases impacted by classification. This misunderstands the earlier law, which required submission of stale cases within 30 days of passage. Unlike the intelligence waiver, the Valor Has No Expiration Act has no future time limitation, meaning that it is a standing waiver. Further, Issa misquoted the 1996 law, and also confused the name of the Medal of Honor, which he referred to as the 'Congressional Medal of Honor.' Issa claims his bill is necessary to prevent denials like that of Capt. Williams, who he alleges was denied the Medal of Honor due to record classification. However, Williams' case is inapposite, since it appears his defect was not classified records, but rather that official records contained no mention of his dogfight. After all, the Navy reviewed Williams' case in 2022 and determined that his valor fell below the Medal of Honor, presumably after reviewing previously classified records. Issa and others have repeatedly introduced bills to authorize Williams the Medal of Honor since 2023. This suggests that the purpose of the Valor Has No Expiration Act is not to benefit other veterans, but rather to grant Williams another reconsideration. Repeated waiver submissions ignore that the Navy reviewed Williams for this action twice, resulting in a Navy Cross that Issa called 'an appropriate recognition' of Williams' heroism. Public law permits stale case reconsideration only once, not an unlimited number of times. The intent of this process is to pass a waiver if both the department and Congress agree on the merits, not for Congress to pass waivers to pressure the military. No evidence suggests a need for this waiver. The bill is also vague, applying to all cases where records 'were classified, withheld from the public record due to sensitivity, or redacted for national security purposes.' Since the waiver applies to all claimants since 1940, and since most modern military operations require some manner of redaction or classification, this would make tens of millions of veterans eligible for award reconsideration. This would overwhelm the military and simultaneously permit them to award stale medals with a mere report to Congress, significantly reducing oversight. The present administration has apparently awarded only one medal falling under this statute of limitations, a stale Distinguished Service Cross awarded to retired Sgt. Maj. Eric Geressy. The Army requested no waiver from Congress as required, which apparently makes the award unlawful. This seemingly justifies strengthening oversight of stale military awards, not relaxing it. If deserving veterans were truly denied valor awards as a result of classified records, then there should be a higher burden of proof to obtain a remedy. Further, any waiver of the time limitations should be discrete and tailored to cure the defect, as with earlier remedies from Congress. Dwight S. Mears is a retired Army major with a military background in aviation, military intelligence and strategic planning. He was commissioned from West Point as an aviation officer and flew and commanded in helicopter and airplane units, and subsequently was selected to return to West Point as a history professor. He earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School. He is the author of 'The Medal of Honor: The Evolution of America's Highest Military Decoration.'
Forbes
2 days ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Pro Codes Act—Or, What If The Law Came Behind A Paywall?
LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES: Republican US Congressman Darrel Issa gives a thumbs up as he waits for ... More the newly elected Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory speech at a party in Los Angeles, CA, 07 October 2003. Issa financed the signature collection for recalling Davis and was a gubernatorial candidate before he dropped out of the race after pressure from the Republican Party. AFP PHOTO/HECTOR MATA (Photo credit should read HECTOR MATA/AFP via Getty Images) What if reading the law required a subscription—or quoting a Treasury Regulation had copyright infringement implications? That's the premise, promise, and peril of the so-called Pro Codes Act, H.R.4072, now before Congress under the thin policy mask of transparency and balance. At first glance, the bill reads like a reasonable compromise: it allows private organizations that develop technical standards—things like building codes, electrical codes, and potentially tax compliance protocols—to retain their copyrights even after those standards are incorporated by reference into the law. In exchange, they're supposed to make the material 'publicly accessible' online and they can't overtly charge for it. This isn't a win for transparency; it is a legislative shell game that transforms public legal obligations into privatized commodities—public domain law into copyrighted code. For lawyers, tax practitioners, businesses, and most importantly the public at large, it is a direct threat to access, accountability, and justice. The Pro Codes Act has been floated in the past with the same promise: that any incorporated standards will be available and 'publicly accessible online.' In practice, 'accessible' is defined as being roughly synonymous with 'visible'—that is to say, users can look, once they've made an account and agreed to clickwrap terms—but the act says nothing about allowing for download, printing, copying, or integration into practitioner tools. This is a particularly galling development in fields like tax, where reference to technical standards can be a prerequisite for understanding the law—and integration into third party tools all but demanded by the realities of practice. If the Pro Codes Act becomes law, however, building energy efficiency standards that determine whether a given development is entitled to a tax credit could be locked behind a web viewer with no search function. Access to justice concerns emerge when one realizes that these third-party standards, once incorporated by reference, carry every bit of the force of law. Individuals are required to comply with them but promised only a glance at them; it begins to feel akin to being bound by the contents of a folder tucked away in a locked filing cabinet. American jurisprudence has long turned on the notion that the law belongs to the people. This has taken practical effect in general rules like the inability to copyright the law. Judges don't own the copyright in their drafted opinions, legislatures don't retain rights to their written statutes. This isn't some high-minded philosophical opinion – it's Supreme Court doctrine. Most recently, in a 2020 decision involving Inc., the Supreme Court held that the annotations to Georgia's official code—there written by a legislative commission—could not be copyrighted. The logic was they were created in the course of official legal duties and carried the force of law. The Pro Codes Act would undermine that second prong—allowing private Standards Development Organizations to retain copyright over technical standards that have been explicitly incorporated by reference into statutes and regulations and carry the force of law. Congress would thus be allowing for a two-tiered system of laws: public obligations under private control. Commodifying the law turns the rules of civil society into a private enterprise's product tipping the scales of justice against taxpayers, tax practitioners, underfunded legal aid clinics, and community nonprofits serving low-income families. For these professionals, access to the law is the difference between serving a client and turning them away. Imagine, for instance, trying to advise a client on energy-efficient property deductions under Section 179Donly to discover the applicable standard is only available in a non-searchable format behind a login. Cross-referencing a second building standard would present the same challenge. Further, you'll need to make sure you check the license agreement for both SDOs before you post on your website lending guidance to other prospective clients—you may not be able to quote the law without violating the licensing agreement. Larger firms and accounting agencies will simply buy a commercial license that folds access to these copyrighted standards in to a larger database—small public interest advocates will be left navigating a legal system with rules behind walls they can't afford a ladder to scale. The Pro Codes Act doesn't just introduce inconveniences; it makes the law inequitable. The law becomes stratified, with one version for VIPs and another for those relying on incomplete access. Proponents of the Pro Codes Act, including Congressman Darrell Issa that introduced the bill, would argue this is about fairness—structuring a careful balance between public access and private enterprise. A moment's reflection, however, illustrates it is nothing more than an attempt to monetize one of the last great commons in American democracy: the law itself. SDOs present themselves as noble and underfunded stewards of technical knowledge and safety. Many are, in reality, multimillion-dollar enterprises. What they see in incorporated-by-reference standards is the potential for a legally-sanctioned monopoly, and with it the opportunity to extract rents from the very people who are legally required to follow their rules. That isn't about preserving innovation—it's about cordoning off a corner of the commons and charging admission. SDOs are not taxpayer-funded organizations. They thrive because taxpayers are compelled to follow their rules and, if the Pro Codes Act passes, may have to pay to see them in any meaningful and useful way. The proposal is privatization in its most cynical form. If lawmakers are serious about ensuring equal access to the law, they don't need to draft a new compromise. They need only honor the principle that has been with us all along: that once something carries the force of law, and folks are expected to abide by it, it belongs to all of us. If SDOs want to build better versions of the law, be that adding annotations, making it interactive, or releasing value-add editions of some stripe, they are free to do so. The baseline must remain, however, that the rules themselves are free. The Pro Codes Act doesn't enhance public access, it restricts it in the name of profit and behind a thin veneer of balance.
