By Sam Kane and Kingston Reif WHAT IS THE NEW START TREATY? • The New START treaty is a nuclear arms reduction agreement between the United States and Russia. It was signed in April 2010, approved by the US Senate in December 2010, and entered into force in February 2011. WHAT ARE THE TERMS OF […]
Key GOP Senator agitated by cost explosion of nuclear weapons enterprise
In an interview this week with Knoxville News reporter Frank Munger, Tennessee GOP Senator (and Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member) Lamar Alexander expressed is frustration and displeasure with the exploding costs of the nuclear weapons enterprise
Don’t waste money upgrading obsolete nukes
In a post-sequester era, members of Congress who are leaders on budget issues should be giving close scrutiny to wasteful government spending, including expensive weapons programs whose national security rationale is dubious. I wrote an op-ed in the Morristown Daily Record arguing that the expensive upgrade of the B61 nuclear bomb should be a target of such scrutiny. New Jersey Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen is a fiscally conservative Republican with extensive influence over the nuclear weapons budget, so he’s well-positioned to ask the tough questions about whether taxpayers can – or should – fork over $10 billion to upgrade the B61.
Huffington Post OpEd: A Most Dangerous Race
The United States should take the lead in starting discussions toward an international agreement requiring the strictest oversight and highest biosafety level for research on other potentially highly contagious and lethal pathogens. Failure to act would offer tacit permission for the entire world to carry out such research without regard to consequences. That can only lead us ever farther down a most dangerous path and a never ending gamble with all of our lives.
House Passes Anti-Nuclear Terror Legislation (Again), Ball in Senate’s Court (Again)
Last week (May 20 to be precise), the House passed the Nuclear Terrorism Conventions Implementation and Safety of Maritime Navigation Act of 2013 (H.R. 1073) by an overwhelming vote of 390-3.