NCPE Town Hall Meeting

Join us on June 28, 2008 for the Third NCPE Town Hall Meeting.

NCPE in the News: 2008

"Given $50,000 He Decides to Run" (Las Vegas Sun)

Acting President Julie Tousa on Jon Ralston's "Face to Face: Ethics Complaint"

Meet the Acting President of NCPE, Julie Tousa

"New Watchdog of Public Ethics Continues Enforcing Vital Unwritten Law" (Las Vegas Review Journal)

"Partying Away As Taxpayers Pay and Pay" (Las Vegas Sun)

Ethics Legislation 2007

NCPE at the 2007 Nevada State Legislature: Summary and Details

"Article 6 Commission" to study and recommend improvements in the Nevada judiciary
See Dr. Craig Walton's summary of May Meeting

NCPE statement about the danger of big donors contributing to Supreme Court justice election campaigns.

Judicial Ethics & the Complaint Processes

Craig Walton's letter, to the Las Vegas Business Journal in favor of the new plan for judicial selection

Candidate Pledge

Email NCPE Treasurer

Civics and Civic Education News

April 22, 2007 -- “A minimalist definition of citizenship”

Some have complained that the current executive branch of our government has taken to itself powers not granted by the Constitution, by the judiciary or the legislative branches or by the people, but simply claimed by the executive branch. But in Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced, Mathew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg (Norton, 2007) write that “…the problem is not so much Presidents [since Truman, as they show] seizing power as having it handed to them.

As Americans increasingly embrace a minimalist definition of citizenship, their ability to influence government policy diminishes. With its “weak political parties, its partially demobilized electorate, and its citizens transformed into mere ‘customers’ of government, [contemporary America] is made to order for presidentialism”. … In an age of the citizen as consumer-spectator, Americans care enough to complain, but not nearly enough to act. (It is drawn from Andrew Bacevich's review of 5 new books on the imperial president phenomenon, "The Semiwarriors", in the April 22, 2007 issue of The Nation, pp. 30-33).

As we state in Principle VII of public ethics, an active citizenry is the foundation for all else we treasure and try to do as a the makers and keepers of our democratic republic. But citizenship is in bad shape – many of us find our lives too scheduled with work, family and sleep to allow any time for civic activity. Other factors work against us as well – the perception that elections are negative and appeal to the worst in us, that candidates are scripted and do not listen to us, that big money controls them and the agenda of legislatures anyway.

<> A few weeks ago the Georgetown University Law Center and the American Law Institute sponsored a conference about our need for an independent judiciary, and recent attacks on that pillar underneath our Bill of Rights

(see www.law.georgetown.edu/judiciary/program.html )

<> Speaking about citizenship and civic education at that conference, recently retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor noted, sadly, that “a majority of school districts around the country have stopped teaching government and civics altogether”. Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan added that “even students at elite educational institutions are just plain ignorant about the basic nature of American government and, even worse, students seem to get dumber the longer they stay in college”.

<> The Nevada Center for Public Ethics is working to develop programs in civics education for high school teachers, and for high school students after school. Contact us or keep in touch by way of this website page. Two worthwhile, recent newspaper stories are worth reading:

“It's Unpardonable civics isn't being taught”, by Cragg Hines, Las Vegas SUN, Oct. 10, 2006, page 6.

“Cultivating civic values”, by J. R. Labbe, Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 15, 2006, page 1D.

For additional information, go to the following web sites:

The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement

The Bill of Rights Institute

Go To Civics and Civic Education Reports/Archive

Return to News/Archive page