Congressional Dish

The House passes a surveillance bill masked as pediatric research and then wastes our time. Also, highlights from the leaked legal justification for the Obama Administration's "lawful" drone bombing of American citizens. H.R. 225: National Pediatric Research Network Act of 2013 Introduced by Democrat Lois Capps of Northern California. The bill says the Director of the National Institutes of Health (a gov't agency) can create a network of up to 20 groups of public or private non-profits to work together to do pediatric research. As a condition of accepting an award, the groups need to agree to help the Centers for Disease Control with the establishing patient registries and "other surveillance systems as appropriate and upon request by the Director of the Centers." The bill establishes a "Data Coordinating Center" to... 1. Distribute scientific findings 2. Help design and conduct research projects and to manage the resulting data 3. "To organize and conduct multi-site monitoring activities" But the bill doesn