Blog

The House Agriculture Committee yesterday released the language of an amendment by Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN), which Rep. Waxman has agreed to accept as part of the final House climate change bill in order to secure support from Peterson and other farm-state representatives. Peterson represents a large, heavily ag-dependent district in central and […]

Wednesday, I explored the various ways that the USDA takeover of bio-sequestration offsets could affect how well the offsets provision of the Waxman-Markey Climate Security Act would work. Today, we have legislative language in the form of an amendment offered by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), which fills in some of the details.  While some of […]

What was the cost, in dollar terms, of the nine lives lost in the DC Metro crash on Monday? And how does that compare to what the cost would have been to prevent the accident, or lessen the severity of it? Should we do a cost-benefit analysis to determine the best policy? Edward Tenner's post […]

Last night, House Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman announced that he had agreed with Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson that the USDA could have jurisdiction over agricultural offsets in the massive American Clean Energy and Security Act, which the House may vote on this Friday. In agreeing to what had been one of the […]

Cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. In an opinion by Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court decided two issues in this case, over a dissent by Justice Ginsburg.  The first was whether the Clean Air Act gives authority to the United States Army Corps of Engineers, or instead to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to issue […]

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled in Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council that the United States EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers could interpret the Clean Water Act to exempt water pollution sources from pollution control requirements if the pollution was accompanied by fill material. This legal feat was accomplished because the […]

While his colleagues (and former colleagues) jockey for the healthcare reform limelight, Rep. Frank Pallone is quietly busy making sure that, regardless of who pays for healthcare, the sick and injured will have safe and effective solutions to their problems. Last Thursday, Rep. Pallone held a hearing to assess FDA’s ability to properly oversee the […]

Cross posted by permission from Legal Planet. Rick earlier posted about the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This week, the Ninth Circuit may finally have brought the litigation that followed that spill to a close. You may recall that last year the U.S. Supreme Court heard Exxon’s challenge to the punitive damages […]

Andrew Freedman of washingtonpost.com’s Capital Weather Gang has a nifty catch: the Heartland Institute, the people cluttering up my newspaper this week with climate-change-denying ads, have officially changed tack on their lobbying policy. Back in March, the group told Freedman: “Our purpose is to bring scientists, economists, and policy experts together to address issues overlooked […]