The Senate holds a pro forma session today at 10 a.m. and then adjourns sine die for the first session of the 110th Congress. Doubt that extra procedural step will push the session over a minute’s length.

Welcoming in the new year: The House and Senate convene the second session of the 110th Congress at noon Thursday, January 3, 2008. They then go back out until mid-January.

Also Thursday, something is happening in Iowa. Political meetings, something like that.

One House hearing, rescheduled from earlier. The Committee on Homeland Security will hold a field hearing on Thursday in El Paso, Texas: “Ensuring Homeland Security While Facilitating Legitimate Travel: The Challenge at America’s Ports of Entry.” Details here.

The President is in Crawford, Texas, returning to the White House on New Year’s Day to prepare for his trip next week to the Middle East.

The Department of Labor releases its monthly employment report for December on Friday. Prediction: The media will put the worst possible spin on the results. Admittedly, we always predict that.

Congratulations to our neighbors at the National Press Club, which is entering its 100th year. On Friday, January 4th, the club will premier its new documentary, “The National Press Club at 100: A Century of Headlines.” A panel discussion follows. Details.

And to all our friends in the Ozarks who keep the old ways, we wish you a very merry Christmas on Sunday. Since everything’s going green.

The Register-Guard’s editorial writers apparently thinks the country should be run by unelected federal agency staffers:

If ever a federal agency’s decision merited the undivided attention of congressional investigators, it is the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent rejection of California’s attempt to impose limits on greenhouse emissions from vehicles. Emissions limits in Oregon and more than a dozen other states were needlessly stalled by the EPA’s action.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has launched an investigation into why EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson refused to grant California the waiver from the federal Clean Air Act it needed to apply the tougher standards.

Investigators should start with the revelation, first reported by The Washington Post and later confirmed by California Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office, that Johnson made his decision even though his legal and technical staff unanimously recommended approval of California’s request.

Rarely do we see such bald contempt for the U.S. republic and the rule of law. The legal authority rests with the agency director, appointed by a president elected by the voters of the United States. Staff members make a recommendation, but Johnson makes the decision.

Elections have consequences.

P.S. As previously noted, Jonathan Adler at Case Western Reserve has written on the legality of Johnson’s decision. Adler observes: “Agency expertise is important, but it is not the end-all-be-all of agency decision-making, and it is no substitute for politically accountable policy decisions by political appointees.” Is that so hard to understand?

The Eugene Register-Guard polled its readers on important stories for 2007, a standard year-end space filler. The start of the story:

It was an unprecedented series of criminal sentencings, unfolding over several months at Eugene’s new U.S. Federal Courthouse. Ten radical environmentalists received prison time for their roles in eco-sabotage. Federal attorneys dubbed the case “Operation Backfire.”

Register-Guard reporters and editors deemed it the No. 1 local story of 2007. Register-Guard readers, meanwhile, didn’t feel it even qualified for top 10 status. They relegated it to 21st out of a list of 25.

Boy, we sure didn’t hear about this: A major case of eco-terrorism brought to a close 2007, complete with radical environmentalists, conspiracies, attacks that ranged over five Western states, FBI investigations, federal prosecutions. Well, despite the reporting of the Register-Guard, the news apparently failed to fire the public’s imagination.

Strange. Far-reaching domestic terrorism, an assault on private property and capitalism. Seems like it should be a top 10 story nationwide, not just in Eugene.

One of those stories that make you go, yeah, darnit, those kids should shape up.

You’re standing at a checkout counter, ready to pay, and the twentysomething behind the register is talking on her cell phone. So you wait, and wait, and wait, and when the clerk finally finishes her conversation, she offers not an apology, but a grimace that suggests you’ve interrupted.

Sound familiar? It has a name: the Service Gap.

Urrgh. Bet she has tattoos. And an exagerrated sense of self-esteem, courtesy our sociotherapeutic school system.

Bet she even responds to your thank you with an affectless “no problem.”

Grousing aside, the U.S. economy suffers from a “skills gap,” the lack of employees with the skills to succeed in a high-tech (manufacturing) economy. If the technical skills are missing, and then the basic social skills are missing, what the heck’s left?

Robots. Courteous, obliging robots.

AOL pulls plug on Netscape.

As we take a holiday break from our regular weekly “Cool Stuff Being Made” videos about manufacturing, we bring you a video about…manufacturing. The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association has produced a really great video about the importance of manufacturing in Ohio’s economy and the career opportunities that industry offers in the state.

As the homepage for “Ohio — Powered by Manufacturing” states, “Ohio manufacturers have a great story to tell. It doesn’t get told often enough.” The website has it as a streaming video, a download version in Windows Media, and links to the two-part YouTube video, here and here.

Can’t recommend this one enough.

The Ohio Supreme Court affirms the constitutionality of limits on damage awards, a decision that will help curb the caprice that does so much damage to respect for the law and U.S. economy. Jackpot justice loses, in other words. From The Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Columbus- The Ohio Supreme Court has given its stamp of approval to caps on damage awards in personal-injury lawsuits, declaring them constitutional in a 5-2 decision Thursday.

A business group that has pushed tort reform as critical to Ohio’s economic health cheered the ruling, while one of the dissenting justices called it “a sad day for the court” and “a tragic day for Ohioans.”

The court upheld caps approved by the legislature in 2004. One limits awards for pain and suffering and other intangible injuries to $350,000 unless the injured person lost a limb or bodily organ. The other restricts punitive damages to twice the amount of damages awarded as compensation for injuries.

The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association comments:

“This is a major victory for manufacturers in Ohio that is years in the making,” said OMA President Eric Burkland. “The court’s decision enhances Ohio’s ability to create a predictable legal environment in which businesses pursue market opportunities within a common sense civil justice system without fear of costly, unnecessary lawsuits.”

The OMA has posted the slip opinion here.

Other coverage:

UPDATE (3:25 p.m.) The NAM was one of six business groups that submitted a brief supporting the caps. You can read our summary of the case and the brief by going here.

The New Year is upon us but this week “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” is taking a look back at some of its best guests of the past.

Some of the most influential people in the nation have appeared on “America’s Business” during the last year or so. These include two candidates for the presidency in 2008 – former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

We’ll again hear what Romney and Huckabee had to say about issues important to manufacturers, including healthcare and education.

There is more than one breed of Democrat. This week we’ll rebroadcast excerpts of our September conversation with Rep. Allen Boyd of Florida and Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross of the fiscally conservative “Blue Dog Democrats.”

Ross and Boyd talked about legislation to raise fuel efficiency in cars and trucks. “Blue Dogs we’re environmentalists but we want to have a common sense approach,” Ross said during his appearance.

Rising healthcare costs and the nation’s deteriorating roads and bridges have long worried manufacturers. “America’s Business” will rebroadcast parts of its interviews with American Trucking Association President Bill Graves and Newt Gingrich, a former Republican congressman from Georgia and Speaker of the House.

Graves appeared on the program in September, just a month after a Minnesota bridge collapse killed 13 people, to talk about the nation’s infrastructure problems. America’s aging road system has caused more traffic jams, which in turn have contributed to air pollution, Graves said.

“We are burning fuel while we are waiting in traffic,” he said during that interview. “We are idling and adding to the already recognized environmental problems that we face as a nation.”

And Gingrich in May talked about efforts to reform the nation’s healthcare system through his organization, the Center for Health Transformation.

“America’s Business” will also take another look at some of the craziest lawsuits filed in the recent past with Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership. Remember the man who sued God?

And the National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler will give us “The Last Word” when he talks about manufacturing successes in 2007.

For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out www.americasbusiness.org.

EPA’s proposed new ozone rule just doesn’t make sense.

The agency’s current ozone standard helped clear smog from America’s skies and needs more time to go into full effect.

But a new proposal to adopt a more stringent ozone standard isn’t based on sound science, would be unattainable in many parts of the United States, and seriously dampen economic growth. EPA plans to announce the new rule by March 2008.

So far the proposed ozone rule has been mostly flying below the public radar. But criticism is growing. Here’s an excerpt of what former Indiana State Rep. Bruce Carter said about the proposal in an editorial in today’s South Bend Tribune:

The hard work we have made to date is just now having an impact on the quality of our air. Let’s continue to reap the benefits of these efforts before we change a standard that will result in significant economic hardship on Indiana.

And former North Carolina Gov. James Martin said this in a recent letter to the editor in The Dispatch of Lexington, N.C.:

What is most alarming is that this proposed regulation by the EPA is not based on solid, reliable science. In addition, the EPA estimates the new standard will cost Americans up to $22 billion a year. As a former governor of this great state, I’m proud of what North Carolina has achieved by way of improving air quality, and I don’t want to see unnecessary regulations inhibit our state’s prosperity when we are already taking successful steps in the right direction.

For Martin’s full letter, click here.

Let’s hope EPA listens to what Martin, James and many other Americans have said about its ozone proposal and drops it.

From the Washington, D.C., Examiner:

Imagine the national outcry if hundreds of Fortune 500 corporations were discovered to be routinely falsifying their tax returns in order to qualify for tax credits worth billions of dollars.

And what if it was further learned that some accounting firms specialized in preparing fraudulent profit and loss statements to deceive the government and that the same firms also provided “experts” to help the corporations prepare equally fake supporting documents?

Does anybody doubt that there would be a bipartisan demand in Congress that would force the president to take dramatic action to investigate the scandal, identify and prosecute those responsible and recommend new laws aimed at preventing such frauds from ever again being perpetrated?

No imagination is needed to recognize the ill wind of a genuine national scandal of epic proportions blowing through the nation’s court system. It is the scandal of a relatively few well-placed class-action liability lawyers and equally corrupted professionals from other fields using false damage claims to enrich themselves by generating billions of dollars in legal fees and administrative costs, compensatory damage payments and other court-ordered reparations.

The Examiner calls for a Justice Department investigation into pandemic, noting law professor Lester Brickman’s estimate that “mass tort fraud” has cost at least $30 billion just in the last 15 years. As the Examiner reports, Brickman has cited “compelling evidence” that “many if not most of the medical reports supporting more than 700,000 damage claims filed in asbestos, silica, diet drug and silicone breast implant litigation are frauds.”

We have previously called for congressional investigations into the economy-killing, justice-perverting transgressions of the tort bar. Surely Congress has the courage, staff and insight to bring public scrutiny to bear.

Surely.