Ask any child and they will admit they have a preference for which parent to ask for permission. One parent may be typically more lenient with enforcing bedtime while the other might be more lax with curfew enforcement or what shows the child is allowed to watch or eat for dinner.

While this can be an endearing quirk of parenting, a similar unequal application of the law by government agencies is a recipe for chaos.

Unfortunately the federal agencies charged with enforcing our nation’s anti-trust laws have developed just such a dysfunctional habit. Both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice are tasked with enforcing Section 7 of the Clayton Act, the prevailing antitrust law which prohibits mergers or acquisitions that would “substantially lessen competition’ or “tend to create a monopoly.”

So whenever two or more private companies attempt to complete a merger or acquisition, they must notify the FTC and the Antitrust Division. The agencies will then decide between themselves who will scrutinize the merger for section 7 violations, and then the agency in charge will have a period of time to analyze the transaction.

If it is determined that some part of the transaction would violate section 7, the agency will seen an injunction in federal court. If the injunction is granted, the parties involved in the proposed transaction often abandon the merger; if the injunction is denied, the parties move forward with the transaction.

Unfortunately, however the two agencies – the FTC and the Antitrust Division of the DOJ – are held to different standards when seeking a preliminary injunction. The FTC has a special statue that allows them to have an injunction granted with a lower burden of proof than the standard to which the courts hold the DOJ.

Additionally, if the FTC loses a preliminary injunction in federal court, it has the power to litigate its case in an administrative proceeding. The DOJ does not have that option.

This means that the same law is being applied differently depending on which agency is in charge.

And that disparity is why the Antitrust Modernization Commission recommended that Congress standardize the agencies procedures. As a result, I, along with Sens. Hatch (R-Utah), Tillis (R-NC), and Chairman Grassley (R-IA) introduced the Standard Merger and Acquisition Reviews Through Equal Rules (SMARTER) Act. This bill requires that the FTC go through the same procedures that the DOJ goes through when enforcing antitrust law.

Additionally, the bill would direct the Federal Communications Commission, which is required to decide on certain communications-related mergers, to follow their own 180-day decision window. This FCC fix would help eliminate uncertainty and ensure that parties receive a timely decision on their merger.

Just as good parents put rules in place and strive to enforce those rules uniformly, it is important to ensure agencies in charge of executing the same law do so in a uniform way. The SMARTER Act is a step towards achieving this.

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee considered legislation providing that any special counsel appointed by the Justice Department may be fired only for good cause and allowing a special counsel who has been fired to challenge the decision in court.

The proposal is politically salient because many fear the president will fire Robert Mueller. To be clear, the president should allow Mueller to finish his investigation into Russia’s election interference in a timely fashion.

But this legislation is unconstitutional, and political expedience can never trump the Constitution.

Supporters of the legislation argue it is necessary to ensure no one is above the law, but the Constitution is the highest law of the land, and the Constitution provides that only the president can exercise executive power.

Because the power to prosecute is the quintessential executive authority, any congressional attempt to direct prosecutions — including by limiting the president’s power to fire a prosecutor — is an unconstitutional breach in the separation of powers. All senators swear to uphold the Constitution, and I hope that the full Senate will not pass this legislation if it is brought to the floor.

Moreover, the Constitution itself provides several ways to hold executive branch officials accountable, most notably through elections. We should stick with those remedies, because undermining the separation of powers is a grave threat to liberty.

Some may question how legislation meant to hold the president accountable is a danger to liberty. It’s because it would empower the creation of unaccountable federal prosecutors who could not be fired for acting unjustly or unwisely. In 1940, then-Attorney General Robert Jackson said “the prosecutor has more control over life, liberty and reputation than any other person in America.”

That’s even more true if the prosecutor has been made unaccountable to the public, yet that’s exactly what this legislation aims to do.

If you are one of the roughly 2.5 million travelers who fly in the US on any given day, you know how integral flying can be for business, connecting with family and friends, and appreciating our great country. You also likely know how commercial flights can be expensive, time consuming, and stressful.

Now imagine you could pull up an app on your phone which could connect you to a private pilot who is flying to your desired destination and is willing to fly you there. The cost? Splitting part of the flying costs with the pilot.

This kind of tool already exists in Europe, and it may become a widespread reality for travelers in the United States very soon. But first, the apps have to get past the regulators. In this case, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and its subjective rulemaking.

Flight-sharing of this kind has existed for years. Pilots would post on physical airport bulletin boards allowing any willing participant to jump on their flight and split costs. Companies like Flytenow and Airpooler saw a better way to advertise these flight opportunities and essentially put airplane bulletin boards online and on apps – including information about the pilot’s flight history and certifications, so people know who they’re hopping on board with.

But when these companies tried to get the greenlight from the FAA, they were shut down. According to the FAA interpretation of their 1986 advisory circular, the fact that the app allowed private pilots to list their flights more broadly meant they were no longer private pilots and instead needed to be certified as ‘common carriers,’ a classification that holds many more regulations. They also began reassessing what was and was not considered ‘compensation’ under the advisory and if more broadly advertised cost-sharing flights violated that as well.

To be clear, nothing about the flights themselves changed; they still had the same safety checks guidelines that applied when the flights were shared via bulletin board. But because FAA bureaucrats had interpreted an ambiguous 30-year old regulation, an innovation that could open the skies and drive down costs was shut down.

This ambiguity is why I’ve introduced the Aviation Empowerment Act. The bill would clearly define many of the key terms in the circular, especially those used in the ‘common carrier’ definition. It would allow private pilots to advertise their flights in whatever way they deem appropriate. These fixes would not only open the door to flight-sharing apps, it would also ensure that any future interpretation of ‘common carrier’ would be subject to formal regulation procedures before it could take effect.

Additionally, it creates a new categorization of pilot that would allow private pilots to profit from flying under certain circumstances, not just receive compensation for fees and expenses.

The changes in this bill allow for innovation and competition in the aviation industry. Because it makes no changes to safety guidelines and certifications, it does so without endangering pilots or passengers.

And that means if you are one of the 2.5 million people who fly in the US every day, you will have more safe, cost-effective options to choose from as you fly across this great country.

The men and women of our armed forces put themselves at risk around the world every day so that we at home can enjoy the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. At a bare minimum we should honor their service by making sure they have the same rights we do when they return home.

Unfortunately some in Congress are working to pass legislation that would undermine our veterans’ due process rights.

The Fix NICS Act of 2017 has a laudable goal: to decrease gun violence by increasing state and federal agency participation in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

Mandated by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, NICS is a national database of people who are not allowed to purchase or possess firearms. The names on the list fall into one of nine categories listed under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). For example, the law prohibits people from owning or possessing a gun if they have been “convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence,” “discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions,” or “convinced in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.”

When a licensed firearm dealer wants to sell a gun to a customer, that dealer must first contact NICS to see if the buyer is on the list. If the buyer’s name is on the list, the dealer cannot sell a firearm to that buyer.

For the most part, the system works. Sometimes, unfortunately, it does not. In 2016, an Air Force veteran who was dishonorably discharged for a domestic violence conviction before a general court-martial attempted to buy a firearm from a federally licensed gun dealer. The dealer sent his name to NICS, and his name should have appeared in the system due to both his dishonorable discharge and his domestic violence conviction. However, the Air Force never sent this veteran’s name to NICS, so his name cleared the system and the dealer sold him the firearm.

That convicted domestic abuser went on to kill 26 people in Sutherland Springs, Texas with that firearm in 2017. If the Air Force had forwarded the killer’s name to NICS, as it was required to do, then those 26 people might be alive today.

So we do need to fix NICS. But the current Fix NICS bill before the Senate has a fatal flaw that undermines the due process rights of our veterans.

Specifically, it allows federal agencies to continue to label veterans as “mental defectives,” thus stripping them of their right to possess firearms.

Of course, anyone who has been adjudicated by a judge as a potential danger to themselves or others should not be able to buy or possess a gun. But that is not what the Veterans Administration does to our veterans. Instead, the VA labels veterans who are unable to manage their benefits as “mentally defective” and sends their names to the FBI to be added to the list of people forbidden from owning firearms.

And this is not a rare occurrence. As of December 2016, the entire Executive Branch had sent more than 173,000 “metal defective” names to the NICS index. Of those 173,000 names, almost 168,000 came from the VA. That’s more than 97% of all federally generated records.

Our veterans should not have to worry that their civil rights will be violated if they seek help from the very federal agency that was designed to help them. And none of us should have to worry that convicted domestic abusers, or any of the other eight categories of people prohibited from possessing firearms, will go on a shooting spree.

Fortunately there is an easy fix to the Fix NICS bill. A single amendment requiring a judge to determine that a person is a danger to themselves or others, or meets similar criteria, before being labeled a “mental defective” would do the trick.

We are confident the Senate can make this change, thus better protecting us all.

This op-ed was co-written by Mark Geist and first appeared on Townhall.com