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This post was written by CPR President Rena Steinzor and Michael Patoka, a student at the University of Maryland School of Law and research assistant to Steinzor. Last October, the EPA proposed to regulate, for the first time, the toxic coal ash that sits in massive landfills and ponds next to coal-fired power plants across […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit heard arguments Thursday on the Obama administration’s request that it stay the District Court’s injunction of the 6-month deepwater oil development moratorium, and by a 2-1 vote quickly rejected the request. The moratorium halted any new drilling, and the granting of any new permits […]

On Tuesday, the EPA released its long awaited rule to replace the Bush era Clean Air Interstate Rule, invalidated by the DC Circuit in 2008’s North Carolina v. EPA. There are many things that could have been different or improved, but given the EPA’s need to get a rule out quickly to replace the existing rule, […]

Over on Slate this weekend, William Saletan posted an Elena Kagan piece in which he describes a 1996 incident in which the future presumptive Supreme Court Justice, then working at the White House, commented on a draft statement on “partial birth abortion” by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).  Congress was then on […]

Sorry to link to the Daily Show again, but I swear it’s relevant. On last night’s show, Lewis Black covered recent food safety and consumer product safety news. “But knowingly selling us broken cars, poisoned medicines — if I didn’t know any better, I’d think these companies were just in for the money!”

Desperate to move a funding bill for Chesapeake Bay restoration out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, progressive Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) went into the scrum with one of the body’s most conservative members, James Inhofe (R-OK). After a struggle of uncertain intensity and duration, the two emerged, with Inhofe, who openly ridicules the […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Previously I wrote about the shortcomings of ESA consultation on the Deepwater Horizon and other offshore oil rigs. Today I take up the implications of the spill itself under the ESA. At least one ESA lawsuit has already been filed, and at least partially resolved. The Animal Welfare Institute, Center for […]

In an op-ed in this morning’s Raleigh News & Observer, CPR Member Scholar Victor Flatt describes why it is that BP was allowed to drill its Macondo 252 deepwater well — the one that is now spewing oil into the Gulf — without conducting a serious analysis of the risks of a blowout, and providing a detailed and […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. The media have paid a lot of attention to the cavalier attitude of the former Minerals Management Service (now called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement) toward the National Environmental Policy Act (I blogged about it here and here and Dan weighed in here). Less has been said, […]