http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/house-ss-t-committee-starts-off-114th-congress-on-partisan-footing

House SS&T Committee Starts Off 114th Congress on Partisan Footing
Marcia S. Smith
Posted: 27-Jan-2015

The House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee held its organizational meeting for the 114th Congress this morning. The typically routine meeting held at the beginning of each new Congress had a strong partisan flavor to it this year, however. The committee's top Democrat, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), issued a sharply worded news release detailing changes Republicans made to committee rules on party-line votes, calling it the "single greatest attack" on the rights of the minority party in the history of the committee.

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Johnson, who has served on the committee for 23 years under both Democratic and Republican leadership, clearly disagrees. She listed the following changes that she believes diminishes the Minority's rights:

• shortened notice requirements for markups and allowing the Majority to waive notice requirements entirely;
  
• eliminating review periods for Members to review legislative reports prior to filing;
  
• requiring more Members to support a request for a recorded vote;
  
• allowing the Majority to hold a hearing without a single Minority member present;
  
• providing the committee chair with unilateral subpoena authority;
  
• eliminating requirements for consultation with the Minority; and
  
• the Committee receiving blanket deposition authority in House Rules "for the first time in the half century history of the committee."
  

Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) contrasted this committee's stance with that of another committee on which she serves, House Transportation and Infrastructure, where the entire organizational meeting, including adoption of rules, took "five minutes" rather than beginning "a new Congress and a new year fighting about the rules."

A webcast of the contentious meeting is on the committee's website.

The rules may seem arcane (read our "What's a Markup" fact sheet to learn what some of them mean), but they give the Majority power to hold hearings, subpoena witnesses and documents, and to more easily pass legislation out of committee and to the floor of the House on a partisan basis. Of all the changes, giving the chairman unilateral authority to issue subpoenas could have the greatest impact. In the last Congress, only the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA) had such power. House SS&T is one of several committees planning to give their chairs such authority in this Congress. Smith said repeatedly that the authority is necessary because of the Obama Administration's "dilatory tactics in responding to letters from this committee" and its "lack of transparency."

How that will play out in the space policy arena remains to be seen, but the sharp differences between the parties on NASA were evident in 2013 when, under the previous rules, the committee approved on party-line votes a new NASA authorization bill that would have prohibited NASA from proceeding with the Asteroid Redirect Mission, dramatically cut funding for NASA overall and especially for Earth Sciences, and established the position of NASA Administrator as an appointed 6-year term. That bill was never voted on by the House and a bipartisan version was crafted the next year after budget caps were raised, promoting greater agreement. That bill did pass the House, but was not considered by the Senate and died at the end of the last Congress, so this Congress will be starting over again. Smith did say today that he hopes a new NASA authorization bill can clear the committee in a bipartisan manner as it did last year.

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Why Sitting By The Fire Is The Best!
DNews
Published on Dec 28, 2014

Whether we’re out camping, or sitting by a fireplace, humans seem to naturally enjoy sitting by a fire! Why is this?

Read More:

Fire Good. Make Human Inspiration Happen.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fire-good-make-human-inspiration-happen-132494650/?no-ist
“New evidence suggests that fire may have influenced the evolution of the human mind.”

The Evolutionary Reason Why We Love Sitting By A Crackling Fire
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/18/the-evolutionary-reason-w_n_6171508.html
“Relaxing in front of a crackling fire (or at least the Netflix version) is one of the most enjoyable ways to spend a cold winter evening. And now scientists know why.”

Health and campfire influences on arterial blood pressure: defraying the costs of the social brain through fireside relaxation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25387270
“The importance of fire in human evolutionary history is widely acknowledged but the extent not fully explored. Fires involve flickering light, crackling sounds, warmth, and a distinctive smell.”

Evolution by Fire
http://harvardmagazine.com/2009/11/cooking-and-human-evolution
“ANTHROPOLOGISTS and evolutionary biologists have long sought to understand what makes humans special.”