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Conservative critics of President Obama’s nominee to head the Library of Congress were blindsided Wednesday when a key Republican engineered her lopsided confirmation by the full Senate despite concerns she is, in the words of one opponent, “an unqualified, far-left progressive.”

The Senate voted 74-18 to confirm Carla D. Hayden, who leads Baltimore’s public library system, as the 14th librarian of Congress.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., rushed Hayden’s nomination to the floor even as Blunt’s office declined to answer The Daily Signal’s inquiries Wednesday morning about the status of the nomination.

Critics said Hayden falls short of the scholarly credentials traditionally expected of the nation’s librarian of Congress.

However, Blunt, chairman of the Rules and Administration Committee, scheduled a June 9 committee vote that recommended Hayden’s confirmation to the full Senate.

“Hayden has made a name for herself in the far-left community as a radical activist,” the conservative group Concerned Women for America wrote Blunt and the committee before that vote. “This position is not one for radical activism, but for academic honesty and integrity.”

Before the Senate vote, Hans von Spakovksy, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, called Hayden “an unqualified, far-left progressive.”

“Republicans should be very concerned about what her confirmation …read more

House Republicans are pressing efforts to safeguard the First Amendment rights of scientific skeptics who dissent from what they consider the Obama administration’s alarmist position on climate change, according to letters to 17 state attorneys general.

The series of letters, sent Friday and signed by 19 of the 22 Republican members of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, renew an earlier request to the state attorneys general for information detailing their communications with environmental organizations.

They also ask for communications between employees for the state attorneys general and the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, or the White House.

“The committee intends to continue its vigorous oversight of the coordinated attempt to deprive companies, nonprofit organizations, and scientists of their First Amendment rights and ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution,” the letters say.

The top state law enforcement officials on the receiving end are given until the close of business June 24 to provide the House committee with “all documents and communications” between their offices and environmental activist groups pertaining to their potential prosecution of nonprofit groups, companies, and individual scientists for not toeing the official line on global warming.

“I’m glad to see this …read more

No historical evidence locates Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on what is now Liberty Farm in Fauquier County, Virginia, on the evening of July 18, 1861, three days before the First Battle of Bull Run.

So why would a prestigious state preservation group represent that as a fact?

The current owner of the farm, Martha Boneta, has sued the Piedmont Environmental Council, a nonprofit land trust, accusing the organization of knowingly making a false historical claim when selling her the property.

The environmental council, Boneta claims in the lawsuit, told her the celebrated Civil War general bivouacked on the open fields surrounding the farm.

Liberty Farm, also known as Paris Farm, is located about an hour’s drive outside Washington, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the rural village of Paris. Boneta purchased the property in 2006, 145 years after Jackson’s supposed overnight stay.

>>> Farmer Says Green Group Urged County to Harass Her With Zoning Citations

While negotiating the real estate transaction with Boneta, according to her suit in Fauquier County Circuit Court, the environmental council presented her with a document describing Jackson’s movements and coordinates in July 1861.

After a “strenuous march” from Winchester, Virginia, Jackson and his …read more

A large California teachers union and its national affiliate are forcing nonunion teachers to pay for political activism, according to a disclosure form acquired by The Daily Signal.

Under a category called “human rights,” both the National Education Association and the California Teachers Association require nonunion teachers to finance LGBT leadership training and other political goals that may run counter to the teachers’ convictions, The Daily Signal’s analysis of the disclosure form shows.

The form shows that unions charged $1.1 million in “human rights” costs to nonunion teachers as well as members in 2013-14, while identifying another $1.2 million in the same category as not chargeable to those who weren’t members.

A separate page lists $20,228 in chargeable costs for “Women and LGBT Issues” as a line item under the category of human rights. The same page includes a line item on “unconscious bias training” for which nonmembers must cover $5,436.

The teachers unions also spend a pretty penny on annual conferences described as focused on education, some of which appear designed instead to further political causes.

For the 2013-14 school year, the teachers unions charged nonmembers as well as members a total of $49,739 for an “Equity Human Rights Conference,” nearly twice …read more

The incestuous relationship between eye doctors and contact lens manufacturers opens the door to unsavory practices …read more

The incestuous relationship between eye doctors and contact lens manufacturers opens the door to unsavory practices …read more

Calling community activists: If you’re a committed, left-leaning activist who’d like to take part in “grassroots campaigns to protect the health, economy, environment, and livelihood of Ohio communities,” then Ohio Citizen Action has got a job for you.

And it’s one that pays reasonably well, with benefits on top. This could be an especially nice deal for recent college graduates looking to help create a little drama in Cleveland when the Republican National Convention convenes in July.

Just google Craigslist and Ohio Citizen Action, and you get an advertisement that declares: “Change the World and GET PAID … $80/day (Downtown Cleveland).”

You’ll learn the nonprofit group seeks candidates who “possess strong communication skills and a genuine commitment to the environment, progressive politics, and the empowerment of our fellow OH residents.”

The ad, specifying Cleveland, says positions are full time and pay $80 a day, with bonuses available at 20 days.

Applicants should expect to work from 2 to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. And yes, they should be committed to community organizing with an eye toward “environmental justice” and “sustainable energy.”

“Getting paid to participate in a supposedly ‘grassroots’ campaign is a contradiction in terms,” quipped Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal …read more

The lead researcher in a study that concluded fracking in Ohio didn’t contaminate groundwater told The Daily Signal that, contrary to her previous remarks, donors to the study did not pull funding because of “specific disappointment” with those results.

Amy Townsend-Small, an assistant professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati who conducted the three-year study, did acknowledge that some financial backers “have declined to continue funding past the initial study period.”

However, Townsend-Small said in an email Monday to The Daily Signal, those decisions not to donate more might be because the study didn’t establish a relationship between hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and water contamination in Carroll County and other areas that include the Utica Shale deposit.

Townsend-Small also said the results “show that fracking does not always lead to groundwater contamination, but that continuous monitoring is needed to ensure contamination has not occurred.”

“The left likes to continually talk about settled science, but often it’s settled on a predetermined outcome,” Nick Loris, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation who studies energy issues, told The Daily Signal. “Politicians use that predetermined outcome to justify policies that drive up the costs of affordable, reliable energy—even though those policies have little to …read more

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., wants to build broad, bipartisan support for taxpayer funding of a nonprofit foundation with the audacious task of combating and ultimately eliminating the modern slave trade, known as human trafficking.

Conservatives, however, argue that Corker’s bill would duplicate current government programs and not sufficiently guard against the use of funds to pay for abortions for victims of human trafficking.

Over 27 million people, including many women and children, “suffer in forced labor and sexual servitude in more than 165 countries,” Corker’s office says.

Human trafficking is a $150 billion worldwide industry that “destroys lives, destabilizes countries, and fuels organized crime and terrorist networks that threaten U.S. interests,” a Corker aide wrote in an email to The Daily Signal, adding: “To eliminate slavery on a global scale, we need a coordinated effort that allows us to focus resources responsibly where this crime is most prevalent.”

The Tennessee Republican’s “End Modern Slavery Initiative Act” would provide funding for the nonprofit foundation to target human trafficking.

Critics on the right, though, hesitate to get behind Corker’s legislation because of the abortion issue.

“There are real concerns that the bill lacks sufficient pro-life statutory protections and would create a foundation that could use non-federal …read more

Despite the lack of a definitive ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of mandatory union dues, workers across the nation have ample opportunity to challenge why they’re forced to pay for political activism they don’t support.

That’s clear from a state-by-state map that measures the current level of worker freedom in both the private and public sectors.

When the high court split 4-4 this week on a landmark case challenging “agency shop” rules requiring public employees to pay union fees, it meant a lower court ruling in favor of the unions will stand.

However, those who watch “right to work” issues closely say, other litigation will continue to gestate at the state and local levels.

In Illinois, for instance, the town of Lincolnshire is pressing ahead with a right-to-work ordinance that has received scant press attention, but could have significant legal reverberations.

The Supreme Court case known as Friedrichs v. California Teachers involved public sector workers. But had the high court ruled in favor of 10 California schoolteachers who object to that state’s agency shop rules, it likely would have created additional momentum for right-to-work initiatives in the private sector, according to a team of researchers with the Center …read more