The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is an independent bipartisan agency within the executive branch established by the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007. The Board is comprised of four part-time members and a full-time chairman, all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. On June 5, 2013, the British newspaper The Guardian published the first of a series of articles based on unauthorized disclosures of classified documents by Edward Snowden, a contractor for the National Security Agency ("NSA"). The article described an NSA program to collect millions of telephone records, including records about purely domestic calls. Over the course of the next several days, there were additional articles regarding this program as well as another NSA program referred to in leaked documents as "PRISM." These disclosures caused a great deal of concern both over the extent to which they damaged national security and over the nature and scope of the surveillance programs they purported to reveal. In response to the congressional and presidential requests, the Board immediately initiated a study of the 215 and 702 programs and the operation of the FISA court. This Report contains the results of the Board's 215 program study as well as our analysis and recommendations regarding the FISC's operation.

The House Rules and Manual contains the fundamental source material for parliamentary procedure used in the House of Representatives: the Constitution of the United States; applicable provisions of Jefferson's Manual; Rules of the House (as of the date of this preface); provisions of law and resolutions having the force of Rules of the House; and pertinent decisions of the Speakers and other presiding officers of the House and Committee of the Whole interpreting the rules and other procedural authority used in the House of Representatives. The rules for the One Hundred Fifteenth Congress were adopted on January 3, 2017, when the House agreed to House Resolution 5. In addition to a series of changes to various standing rules, House Resolution 5 included separate free-standing orders constituting procedures to be followed in the One Hundred Fifteenth Congress. Explanations of the changes to the standing rules appear in the annotations following each rule in the text of this Manual.

This report describes for the first time the totality and evolution since the mid-1980s of the current-day immigration enforcement machinery. The report's key findings demonstrate that the nation has reached an historical turning point in meeting long-standing immigration enforcement challenges. The question is no longer whether the government is willing and able to enforce the nation's immigration laws, but how enforcement resources and mandates can best be mobilized to control illegal immigration and ensure the integrity of the nation's immigration laws and traditions.

This book explores the phenomenon of soft power in international relations. In the context of current discourses on power and global power shift s, it puts forward a comprehensive taxonomy of soft power and outlines a methodological roadmap for its empirical study. To that end, the book classifies soft power into distinct components - resources, instruments, reception, and outcomes - and identifies relevant indicators for each of these categories. Moreover, the book integrates previously neglected aspects into the concept of soft power, including the significance of (political) personalities. A broad range of historical examples is drawn upon to illustrate the effects of soft power in international relations in an innovative and analytically differentiated way. A central methodological contribution of this book consists in highlighting the value of comparative-historical analysis (CHA) as a promising approach for empirical analyses of the soft power of different actors on the international stage. By introducing a comprehensive taxonomy of soft power, the book offers an innovative and substantiated perspective on a pivotal phenomenon in today’s international relations. As the forces of attraction in world politics continue to gain in importance, it provides a valuable asset for a broad readership. This book was the winner of the 2021 ifa (German Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations) Research Award on Foreign Cultural Policy. “In this important and thoughtful book, Hendrik Ohnesorge explains and advances our knowledge of the ways that soft power, public diplomacy, and charismatic personal diplomacy are shaping the international relations of our global information age.” Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University and author of The Future of Power

JCS-5-05. Joint Committee Print. Provides an explanation of tax legislation enacted in the 108th Congress. Arranged in chronological order by the date each piece of legislation was signed into law. This document, prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation in consultation with the staffs of the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance, provides an explanation of tax legislation enacted in the 108th Congress. The explanation follows the chronological order of the tax legislation as signed into law. For each provision, the document includes a description of present law, explanation of the provision, and effective date. Present law describes the law in effect immediately prior to enactment. It does not reflect changes to the law made by the provision or subsequent to the enactment of the provision. For many provisions, the reasons for change are also included. In some instances, provisions included in legislation enacted in the 108th Congress were not reported out of committee before enactment. For example, in some cases, the provisions enacted were included in bills that went directly to the House and Senate floors. As a result, the legislative history of such provisions does not include the reasons for change normally included in a committee report. In the case of such provisions, no reasons for change are included with the explanation of the provision in this document. In some cases, there is no legislative history for enacted provisions. For such provisions, this document includes a description of present law, explanation of the provision, and effective date, as prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. In some cases, contemporaneous technical explanations of certain bills were prepared and published by the staff of the Joint Committee. In those cases, this document follows the technical explanations. Section references are to the Internal Revenue Code unless otherwise indicated.