InsideSources is excited to announce today that we are preparing to host the first in a series of “Road to 2016” forums, which will take place across the country in the coming months. Our first event, focused on energy policy and electricity reliability, will be held in Des Moines on April 9th and is set to feature Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, and Congressman David Young of Iowa.

The Des Moines Register has a full report HERE.

 

Energy
Laurence Tribe, Obama’s legal mentor, attacks EPA power plant rule
POLITICO
Erica Martinson
Liberal legal lion Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who taught constitutional law to President Barack Obama, is the new GOP darling in the fight against the Environmental Protection Agency’s upcoming climate regulations for power plants. Tribe handed Republicans a ready-made talking point during a House hearing this week, when he accused his former student of “burning the Constitution” in the effort to combat global warming. And two days later, McConnell pointed to Tribe in a letter Thursday to the governors of all 50 states, urging them to refuse to comply with EPA’s climate rules.

Obama’s Alaska Wilderness Head Fake
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sen. Dan Sullivan
President Obama’s plan to designate 12 million acres as wilderness in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge did not fool Alaskans. The announcement in January revealed his goal of starving the trans-Alaska pipeline by stranding tens of billions of barrels of American oil permanently under the Arctic tundra, and turning the state into a giant national park.

House committee to vote on crude exports
FUEL FIX
Jennifer Dlouhy
Legislation to end the nation’s longstanding ban on crude exports is set to get votes in a House panel next week. The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade is scheduled to take up the legislation, sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, on March 25.

Wonks vs. greens
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Alex Guillén
One of the most technocratic agencies in the federal government has become an unlikely magnet for unruly eco-protesters. That’s turned meetings of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission into monthly spectacles far different from the agency’s usually dry debates about transmission planning, pricing disputes and electric reliability standards.

Litigation Awaits New EPA Emissions Rules
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Brent Kendall and Amy Harder
The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear argument on the Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever regulations requiring power plants to cut emissions of mercury and other toxic air pollutants. The rules, adopted in 2012 and scheduled to go into effect in April, were more than two decades in the making. The case could set important precedent on when and whether the agency needs to consider the potential regulatory costs to industries. Then, in April, a U.S. appeals court will consider an early challenge to the EPA’s proposal to slash carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, even though the agency hasn’t finished the regulations.

Clean Air Act and Dirty Coal at the Supreme Court
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Burning coal is a dirty business, but it can be made cleaner. The federal law balances the need for affordable electricity with reduction of significant threats to human health. The Supreme Court has upheld the E.P.A.’s authority to carry out that law’s purpose with broad discretion. There is no reason to upset that deliberate balance, or unreasonably limit the agency’s authority, now.

On oil, a good idea from Washington
THE HILL
Judd Gregg
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the GOP Senate Whip and second in command in the majority leadership, is proposing such an [good] idea. He suggests that, since we now have the capacity as a nation to produce much more oil than we need domestically, we should allow oil to be exported and then tax the exported oil.

The Obama administration strikes the right balance on fracking regulations
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Among other things, environmentalists insist that drillers should have to publicly disclose the chemicals they intend to use before beginning a job. Interior counters that it’s more important to know what drillers used than it is to have a guess about what they will use before beginning work. The industry, meanwhile, says the states are already doing an adequate job regulating fracking within their borders and that Interior should just make sure those rules are followed. The Obama administration has an answer for that, too: The federal government has leased out public land for oil and gas production in 32 states, and the rules across them are simply too inconsistent. Besides, Interior will defer to states with rules as strong as or stronger than the ones it released Friday. Unlike the various special interests around the country, the Obama administration is getting the balance right on fracking.

Technology
Why Washington drives innovators and entrepreneurs nuts
WASHINGTON POST
J.D. Harrison
“We hear something like, ‘Here’s something we all agree on and it would help,’ and yet we can’t do it?” responded Engstrom, who sat on the panel with Sinema. “That’s totally contradictory to the attitude in the tech world, which is, “Here’s a problem, I’m going to solve it.’ ”

The Obamanet Crack-Up
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Gordon Crovitz
Large majorities of both parties have opposed regulating the Internet since the 1990s. Bipartisan questioning of Mr. Wheeler offers a ray of hope that Congress will craft an alternative to Obamanet. An update to the communications law would deliver what most people understand as “net neutrality”: no discrimination based on content, reasonable network management, and competition instead of entrenched incumbents.

Cable lobby eyes opening to rewrite Web law
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
Cable and telecom industry lobbyists are launching an effort to convince lawmakers to support new legislation that replaces federal Internet regulations. After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued its new regulations to treat the Web like a public utility, major companies are now sensing an opening to escape what they consider crushing net neutrality regulations.

Dems split on how to ‘club’ patent trolls
THE HILL
Mario Trujillo
A broad spectrum of interest groups — from technology and retail firms to the university system and biotechnology industry — have pulled the party in different directions.  Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is one of the most vocal opponents of broad changes, which he says could damage innovation. He has joined a few other Democrats in support of a scaled back approach sponsored by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).

Bill Would Limit Use of Student Data
NEW YORK TIMES
Natasha Singer
Called the Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act, the bill would prohibit companies that operate school services — like online homework portals, digital grade books for teachers or student email programs — from knowingly using or disclosing students’ personal information to tailor advertisements to them. It would also bar them from collecting or using student data to create marketing profiles. In phone interviews, Representative Jared S. Polis, a Colorado Democrat, and Representative Luke Messer, an Indiana Republican, the bill’s sponsors, said they hoped to increase trust in education technology companies.

Silicon Valley spars with Obama over ‘backdoor’ surveillance
THE HILL
Cory Bennett
Silicon Valley and a bipartisan group of lawmakers are lining up against the Obama administration, criticizing what they see as a lack of support for total online privacy. The steady rise of sophisticated privacy techniques such as encryption and anonymity software has put the government in a difficult position — trying to support the right to privacy while figuring out how to prevent people from evading law enforcement.

Finance
A coming crackdown on Federal Reserve power?
POLITICO
Jennifer Liberto
A move to shift power away from the New York Federal Reserve Bank is finding some powerful friends in Congress amid lingering worries that a key part of the central bank is too cozy with Wall Street. Two Republicans running the banking committees have both said they plan to explore proposals from the outspoken, former Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher that would roll back a long-standing provision that gives the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank an automatic position as vice chairman of a powerful committee and weaken New York’s oversight of Wall Street banks.

Where is the Federal Reserve headed?
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Samuelson
The Federal Reserve is at a crossroads, and it doesn’t know where it’s going. After holding short-term interest rates near zero for six years, Fed policymakers, led by chair Janet Yellen, are prepared to raise them — but when, how much and with what consequences they haven’t said.

Citigroup Says Court Order Will Let It Pay Argentine Bond Interest
NEW YORK TIMES
Alexandra Stevenson
There is a new twist in the fight between Argentina and a group of hedge funds that has been playing out in New York courts. A United States federal court has allowed Citigroup to make interest payments to investors holding $2.3 billion of Argentine bonds due at the end of the month, the bank said on Sunday in a statement.

Hillary’s trade dilemma
POLITICO
Doug Palmer
The likely 2016 presidential candidate has yet to show her hand on whether she supports the latest effort to pass “fast track” trade promotion authority, but that could happen as soon as Monday morning when she takes the stage with prominent labor leaders at a Washington event put on by a liberal-leaning political think tank. What she says there — or in coming weeks — could improve or imperil her position with unions, Democratic colleagues in Congress, the business community and the sitting president.

Politics
Obama promised to curb the influence of lobbyists. Has he succeeded?
WASHINGTON POST
Juliet Eilperin
The Paone hire may be the starkest example of both the success and the failure of the president’s initiative, which the administration credits with reducing special-interest influence on the government and bringing new, and more diverse, faces into the executive workforce. Critics deride it as political grandstanding, a move that has deprived the administration of talent and has been repeatedly circumvented.

Ted Cruz jump-starts GOP’s battle for White House
USA TODAY
Catalina Camia
Sen. Ted Cruz kicked off a new phase in the 2016 presidential race Monday when he declared himself a candidate for the GOP nomination, setting the stage for a frenetic battle among Republicans eager to take back the White House. Cruz made it official just after midnight, tweeting, “I’m running for President and I hope to earn your support!”

Iowa’s uneasy embrace of Hillary
POLITICO
Gabriel Debenedetti
Last week brought a small measure of relief to Iowa Democrats. The private email controversy dogging Hillary Clinton has been pushed off the front pages for now. Her schedule of paid speeches has come to an end. Her team is finally beginning to take shape here, led by an Iowan who’s respected and well-known among the state’s political class.

Boehner, Pelosi Reach Across the Aisle on ‘Doc Fix’ Legislation
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Siobhan Hughes
A House vote expected this week will be the first test of whether leaders of the two parties can win support for small structural changes in how the costs of Medicare are covered—a significant political shift for Congress, which has for years been at an impasse over entitlement programs.

Charges Against Sen. Robert Menendez Expected as Early as This Week
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Devlin Barrett
Federal investigators are preparing to file criminal charges against Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey as early as this week, after a legal battle over how much the Constitution shields lawmakers and their aides, according to people familiar with the investigation.