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Matt Shudtz | April 15, 2009
Avery DeGroh, a three-year old from Illinois, had a defibrillator implanted in her heart to deal with a congenital condition called “long QT syndrome.” It was a brand-new model with a specially designed wire (or “lead”) that is thinner and easier for doctors to install. Unfortunately, due to a problem with the new lead, one […]
Rena Steinzor | April 14, 2009
Say you live in an urban neighborhood where crime is worrisome but not overwhelming. The police are chronically understaffed, with no money to walk the beat, and instead depend on what we might call a “deterrence-based enforcement system” – making high-profile arrests, prosecuting the worst violators, and relying on the resulting publicity to frighten others […]
Yee Huang | April 13, 2009
A recent article in the Los Angeles Times described the latest absurdity in the never-ending search to quench the thirst for water: ownership of rainwater and, more precisely, the illegality of rainwater harvesting. Residents and communities in parts of Colorado are turning to this ancient practice of collecting and storing rain to fulfill their domestic […]
William Buzbee | April 10, 2009
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 — a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. […]
James Goodwin | April 8, 2009
The large earthquake that struck central Italy on Monday is devastating not only for the immense human suffering—people killed and injured, and communities disrupted—but also for the priceless losses of Italian cultural heritage. The Italian Ministry of culture has reported that the earthquake damaged a number of buildings of immeasurable historical significance, including the Basilica di […]
Ben Somberg | April 7, 2009
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 — a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. […]
Holly Doremus | April 6, 2009
This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. EPA is finally flexing its muscle on mountaintop removal mining, taking on the Corps of Engineers and stepping in for states that have been reluctant to attack the practice. Mountaintop removal mining involves blasting the tops off of mountains, typically in Appalachia, to get at coal. […]
Thomas McGarity | April 3, 2009
On Wednesday, April 1, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Entergy vs. EPA, holding that it was permissible for EPA to use cost-benefit analysis as its method of regulatory analysis in devising a regulation on power plant water intake structures. Member Scholar Amy Sinden blogged on the decision that day, here. Member Scholar Thomas […]
Matthew Freeman | April 3, 2009
The Bush Administration earned its reputation for being contemptuous of science. From suppressing an EPA global warming report so as not to put the federal government’s imprimatur on the scientific consensus that climate change was real and human-caused, to simply refusing to open an email containing formal scientific findings inconvenient to its policy objectives, the […]