Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."

I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.

Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.		17
In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to fore-go for the time the uses of such offices. By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years. 32   My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. -from Abraham Lincoln's first innaugural address Freedom is not more than one generation from extinction. We did not pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.President Ronald Reagan If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed: if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves. -Winston Churchill

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force.

Like fire; it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington

Subject:	Automatic reply:
	From:	"Corcoran, Larry (ENRD)" <Larry.Corcoran@usdoj.gov> To: "john@ironmountainmine.com" <john@ironmountainmine.com>

I have left the Department of Justice. For assistance with litigation, please contact Jamie MacAyeal at Jamie.MacAyeal@usdoj.gov. If you need other assistance, please contact my paralegal.
Best wishes to you, and Happy New Year. Larry Corcoran  - petitioner's writ of quo warranto



Full docket text for document 1268: MINUTE ORDER: This matter is set for a status conference on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 11:00 a.m. All counsel for the parties and pro se defendants shall appear in person for this conference. (Pro se defendant Ted Arman, Mr. John F. Hutchens, and William A. Logan, Jr. Esq. served via USPS) (TEXT ENTRY ONLY) (Vine, H)

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

Fifth Circuit Reverses District Court’s Denial of Motion to Intervene

.it is sufficient to conclude that the intervenors’ interests “may be” inadequately represented. See Trbovich v. United Mine Workers, 404 U.S. 528.

Sheriff Threatens Feds With SWAT Team

As more people became dissatisfied with federal government controls and land grabs, it was inevitable that local law enforcement would eventually see the bigger picture. At the northern California fairgrounds of Yreka last month, seven California sheriffs and another from Oregon gathered with a large group of citizens to say that they are finally going to do something about it.

“A giant has been awakened,” said Plumas County, Calif. Sheriff Greg Hagwood, “and they didn’t count on that,” speaking of the federal bureaucracy.

When Virtue is her opponent, Fortune wastes her threats.
E Pluribus Unum.

James Wilson, a leading member of the Philadelphia Convention and one of the first justices on the Supreme Court, explained in his influential lectures on law that the “order of things in Britain is exactly the reverse of the order of things in the United States. Here, the people are masters of the government; there, the government is master of the people.”

A necessary law requires "a definite connection between means and ends" in which the means and ends are linked "by some obvious and precise affinity." - James Madison

U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 18 (granting Congress power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof”). Although it has become conventional in modern times to call this clause the “Necessary and Proper Clause,” the founding generation uniformly called it the Sweeping Clause. If it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

Thomas Jefferson believed that laws under the Sweeping Clause were “necessary” only if they were “means without which the grant of the power would be nugatory.”

(“Article I, § 9 crafts an elaborate set of express restrictions, such as the ex post facto and bill of attainder clauses.”).

The Supreme Court’s most recent treatment of the question in Jinks v. Richland County, South Carolina assumes as settled law that statutes enacted pursuant to the Sweeping Clause must be tested separately for both necessity and propriety

Laws That Grant Too Much Discretion Are Not “Proper”

Federal administrative agencies now claim authority over matters far removed from the enumerations in the Constitution.
The agencies promulgate rules under statutory mandates that are vague, such as clean air and clean water standards "requisite to protect the public health"; broadcast licenses "if public convenience, interest, or necessity will be served thereby"; or to purchase real estate mortgages "the purchase of which the Secretary determines promotes financial market stability." The agencies also adjudicate under statutes with limited or no judicial court review.

These agencies--the independent agencies--are statutorily insulated from presidential control. The agencies perform all of the functions of government simultaneously: They promulgate the rules, enforce the rules, and adjudicate their own enforcement actions.

To accommodate this administrative state, every principle, consequence, and inference that comes from the Constitution's "one thing"--the enumerated powers doctrine--has been purged from modern law with respect both to the scope of federal power and to the institutional form of its exercise.

Creation of agencies independent of the President is now pervasive and permissible as long as the Court does not judge the agency's operations to be "central to the functioning of the Executive" or "unduly trammels on executive authority" or "impermissibly burdens the President's power to control and supervise".

Justice Joseph Story warned:

Temporary delusions, prejudices, excitements, and objects have irresistible influence in mere questions of policy. And the policy of one age may ill suit the wishes or the policy of another. The constitution is not subject to such fluctuations. It is to have a fixed, uniform, permanent construction. It should be, so far at least as human infirmity will allow, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

Self-Government and Jurisprudence

As Chief Justice John Marshall explained over two centuries ago, if Congress were to instruct the judges that a citizen be convicted of treason on the testimony of only one witness when the Constitution requires two or that a citizen be held criminally liable for actions that were legal when they were committed, then judges would have no choice but to recognize that the superior law of the Constitution would have to govern the case, regardless of the instructions of Congress.

Sir Edward Coke explained that sewer commissioners exceeded their powers by forcing one landowner to bear the costs of repairs to a river bank that benefited many landowners, even though the authorizing statute placed no limit whatsoever on the commissioners’ discretion. Discretion, explained Lord Coke, “is a science or understanding to discern between falsity and truth, between wrong and right, between shadows and substance, between equity and colourable glosses and pretences . . . .”

“the Constitution protects us from our own best intentions: it divides power among sovereigns . . . precisely so that we may resist the temptation to concentrate power in one location as an expedient solution to the crisis of the day.” 505 U.S. at 187. II.

Wasting the Wastewater

By DYLAN WALSH

“As the world enters the 21st century, the human community finds itself searching for new paradigms for water supply and management,” says a report released this month by the Water Science and Technology Board of the National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Law and practice have always been that water goes back into a river or into groundwater or the ocean before it returns for further treatment,” said Brent Haddad, founder and director of the Center for Integrated Water Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a member of the committee that wrote the report. The critical question, he said, is “whether that natural stage of treatment is actually an efficient stage of treatment.”

Sixteen experts representing industry, government, and research fields in the social sciences and hard sciences collaborated over three years to produce the study, examining everything from pathogenic risks to public attitudes about reuse.

The committee ultimately concluded that the reuse of municipal wastewater can safely and significantly increase the nation’s available water resources – potable and non-potable – without intermediate discharge into the natural environment. “The technology for treating wastewater is good enough that we don’t need that intervention,” Dr. Haddad said.

“The fact is, people already drink reused water,” said Ken Herd, the water supply program director for the southwest Florida district. In a process known as “de facto reuse,” municipal water facilities are commonly sited on rivers or reservoirs downstream from other wastewater treatment facilities, which leads to a progression of unplanned and unregulated water reuse, from one plant down to the next.

The report found that levels of chemicals in existing water supplies and recycled water are essentially equivalent. Pathogen levels were also equivalent, and sometimes even lower, in recycled water, it said.

“Nonetheless, when reuse becomes the primary intention of water management, this tends to create public pause,” Mr. Herd said.

Though reuse is not a silver bullet – such efforts must be accompanied by less costly conservation and efficiency programs – recycled water will inevitably become a “very important part of our national water management portfolio,” Mr. Herd predicts.

Mr. Grumbles agrees. “In essence, there is no wastewater,” he said. “Just wasted water.”

William Blackstone referenced the principle of reasonableness in his Commentaries on the Law of England, which was a primary reference source of the founding generation.

Drawing together the basic features of the principle of reasonableness,one can say that it requires exercises of delegated power to be causally efficacious, measured and proportionate, and respective of background rights. This principle constrains the federal executive and judicial powers under the American Constitution even without textual specification; the principle was part of the very nature of delegated executive and judicial power in the eighteenth-century English legal tradition.

LA Marine - Lester Aldridge LLP

United Kingdom: Force Majeure - The Clause, The Definition, The Application

09 January 2012

Article by Juanita May Low

Force majeure is literally translated as "superior forces". In contractual terms, it is recognised as the occurrence of an unexpected event / events beyond the control of either contracting party which disrupts the operation of the contract such that the contracting parties are excused from their liabilities and/or obligations under the contract. It is however not intended to excuse any negligence or malfeasance. It can also suspend the performance of an obligation or extend the time to perform the same.

Force majeure is only recognised in English law if there is a force majeure clause in the contract or a reference in the contract to force majeure. This is different from civil law jurisdictions where force majeure can apply regardless.

The purpose and effect of a force majeure clause is to define, as precisely as possible, the circumstances under which a contracting party is released from its contractual obligations. Parties have the ability to negotiate the scope of the clause (i.e. how wide / expansive the clause is) and the specific instances to be included within the clause. For an event to be regarded as a force majeure event, it must fulfil three tests:

1. Externality – the event / circumstance must be beyond the control of the contracting parties.
2. Unpredictability – the event / circumstance cannot be anticipated / foreseeable / expected.
3. Irresistibility – the event / circumstance is unavoidable.

Historically, force majeure events were recognised as forces of nature or acts of God events. However, the clause can and has been expanded to include events which are industry or transaction specific. Certain events created by extraneous human intervention can also fall under the category of force majeure events.

Example: fire, flood, earthquake, storm, hurricane, other nature disasters, war, invasion, act of foreign enemies, hostilities, civil war, rebellion, revolution, insurrection, military or usurped power or confiscation, terrorist activities, nationalisation, government sanction, blockage, embargo, labour dispute, strike, lockout or interruption or failure of electricity or telephone service.

In the event that there is only a reference to force majeure – example "force majeure excepted", what constitutes force majeure is then determined on a case by case basis. This would include an "Act of God" / "forces of nature" event but can also extend to extraneous human intervention events.

The burden of proof rests on the party relying upon force majeure. The party must show that the occurrence of the event falls under the force majeure clause or constitutes a force majeure event, such that the party was wholly or partially prevented from performing the contract. The party has to show that the performance of the contract was adversely affected by the force majeure event and that such event and/or non-performance was beyond the party's control and that there were no reasonable or proportionally reasonable steps to be taken to avoid the event and/or its consequences.

Parties can also agree to impose additional conditions before the force majeure clause can be invoked. This includes requiring notice before invocation to allow the other party to either try to mitigate or reduce any foreseeable losses or reserve its rights; or placing an obligation on the invoking party to mitigate the effects of the force majeure by taking reasonable steps to limit or prevent the loss.

Drafting Force Majeure Clauses:

1. Is a force majeure clause necessary to protect yourself in your contractual relations?
2. What might constitute a force majeure event that would be relevant to your contractual relations which should be included in the clause, above and beyond the standard events?
3. Is the clause intended to cover only events where there is no party at fault?
4. What are the conditions, if any, to be included in the clause – notice, mitigation, suspension of performance, extension of time for performance, etc?
5. What is the intended effect of the clause?

What to do in the event that you think the force majeure event / clause may apply?

1. Consider the contractual position in relation to applicable law and jurisdiction. As set out above, the position in the UK is different from civil law jurisdictions.
2. Consider the scope of all the clauses – and consider whether there is a specific force majeure clause and what the scope of the clause is, also any other clause which may have the effect of extending or limiting the scope of a force majeure clause / event.
3. Consider whether the three above tests are satisfied to determine whether the event being relied upon indeed falls under the ambit of being a force majeure event.
4. Consider all facts to determine that you meet all the conditions that may be required to be met before the force majeure clause is invoked.
5. Consider whether you can take any steps to mitigate the loss that may follow from the force majeure event.

CALIFORNIA REGIONAL WATER QUALITY CONTROL BOARD
CENTRAL VALLEY REGION
24/25 APRIL 2003
ITEM: 3
SUBJECT: Executive Officer’s Report
DISCUSSION:
WATERSHED ACTIVITIES

3. New Site Operator Selected For Iron Mountain Mine, Shasta County
The site operator for Iron Mountain Mine, the IT Group and IT-Iron Mountain Operations, LLC notified all parties that it would be unable to perform further work after 15 March 2002 and filed for bankruptcy. This left the site without an operator, including operation of the lime neutralization plant for treatment of acid mine drainage. AIG, the site insurance carrier, stepped in and operated the mine treatment facilities, at least until a new contractor/operator could be secured. AIG has been operating the treatment facilities successfully and recently indicated they would assume the role as permanent site operator and general contractor of the Iron Mountain Operations and Maintenance contract. The various agencies overseeing the site have approved AIG as the new site operator. (PVW)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Companies that were bailed out during the financial crisis still owe U.S. taxpayers $133 billion in outstanding Troubled Asset Relief Program funds, Treasury's plans to recoup that money have been slowed by the volatile stock market and weakness among smaller banks.

The money may never be recovered.

That's the conclusion of the acting inspector general for the government's financial bailout. Some bailout programs, like the effort to reduce home foreclosures, will last as late as 2017, the inspector general said. Those programs could cost an additional $50 billion or more.

Among the largest bailed-out companies, American International Group Inc. still owes taxpayers around $50 billion.

"TARP is not over," Christy Romero, the acting IG, said in a statement.

For Treasury to sell its stock in the largest recipient at the price where taxpayers would break even — $28.73 a share for AIG, it could take years, the report says. AIG's shares closed Wednesday at $25.31.

The Congressional Budget Office in December estimated that the total cost will be $34 billion. The CBO said that the increase in the estimated cost from a March estimate of a $19 billion loss stems “primarily from a reduction in the market value of the government’s investments in AIG and General Motors.” Read about the CBO's estimate of the cost of TARP

Those taxpayer costs that will not be paid back are related, partly, to costs from TARP’s housing programs, where taxpayers will see no recovery. SIGTARP notes that only $3 billion, or 6.6% of the $45.6 billion in funds obligated for housing programs, have been spent.

The report cites Treasury Department analysis that points out that the agency will need to sell its 1.455 billion shares in AIG AIG -0.67%  at a price of $28.73 a share for taxpayers to break even on the investment. Treasury owns a 77% stake in AIG.

Jobless claims in U.S. rise sharply
New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits rose sharply last week.

Hey buddy, want to run a failing U.S. bank?

(Reuters) - Wanted: Skilled executives willing to take over large, failing U.S. financial firms at a moment's notice.

Judge Gregory's dissent in Bullock v. Napolitano

Under unanimous Supreme Court precedent, a plaintiff may
file a suit alleging a violation of Title VII in either state or
federal court. The remaining limitation that exists where the
defendant is a federal employer—sovereign immunity—was
expressly waived in Title VII actions via § 2000-e16.

Section 2000e-16 states, in pertinent part, that a federal
employee "may file a civil action as provided in section
2000e-5 of this title." With respect to jurisdiction — the disputed
"condition" in this case — § 2000e-5 then states "[e]ach
United States district court and each United States court of a
place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States shall have
jurisdiction of actions brought under this subchapter." 42
U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(3).
Significantly, the provision does not specify exclusive federal
jurisdiction nor does it foreclose the possibility of pursuing
a Title VII remedy in state court. This is unlike a number
of consent statutes in which Congress unequivocally stated
that the jurisdiction of the federal courts is exclusive. The
Federal Torts Claims Act illustrates this distinction. See 28
U.S.C. § 1346(b) (specifying that U.S. district courts shall
have "exclusive" jurisdiction); see also, Taffin v. Levitt, 493
U.S. 455, 471 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring) (listing statutes
that specifically recite that suit may be brought "only" in federal
court). If Congress intends to limit jurisdiction to federal
courts, it knows how to do so.
But even more importantly, the Supreme Court interpreted
this very provision, § 2000e-5(f)(3), in Yellow Freight System,
Inc. v. Donnelly and unanimously determined it did not divest
state courts of their concurrent authority to adjudicate Title
VII claims. 494 U.S. 820, 823-26 (1990). While Yellow
Freight involved a Title VII action against a private employer,
and the majority understandably seeks to distinguish the decision
on that ground, the jurisdictional provision it points to
today as allegedly providing exclusive federal court jurisdiction
to adjudicate claims against a federal employer is the
very same jurisdictional provision the unanimous Court construed
in Yellow Freight to conclude that Congress did not
limit jurisdiction to federal courts; that is, § 2000e-5(f)(3). See
Yellow Freight, 494 U.S. at 823 (analyzing the text of Title
VII and directly quoting § 2000e-5(f)(3) as the pertinent statutory
language). It cannot be that the same provision has one
meaning for private sector employees and another for federal
employees where Congress expressly waived sovereign
immunity and provided that a federal employee may file a
civil action in the same manner as private sector employees.
See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c).
What’s more, nothing in the language or reasoning of Yellow
Freight limits its holding to suits against private employers.
To the contrary, the opinion paints with a broad brush.
The Court found that "[u]nlike a number of statutes in which
Congress unequivocally stated that the jurisdiction of the federal
courts is exclusive, Title VII contains no language that
expressly confines jurisdiction to federal courts or ousts state
courts of their presumptive jurisdiction." Id. at 823 (emphasis
added). And despite the Court’s acknowledgement of the
"persuasive showing that most . . . involved in the enactment,
amendment, enforcement, and interpretation of Title VII
expected that such litigation would be processed exclusively
in federal courts," the Court still found "no reason to question
the presumption that state courts are just as able as federal
courts to adjudicate Title VII claims." Id. at 826.
While "we must construe waivers strictly in favor of the
sovereign . . . and not enlarge the waiver ‘beyond what the
language requires,’" Shaw 478 U.S. at 318, we have never
gone so far as to require Congress to expressly waive exclusive
federal court jurisdiction, a jurisdiction that is neither
exclusive nor presumed. See Taffin, 493 U.S. at 458 ("[W]e
have consistently held that state courts have inherent authority,
and are thus presumptively competent, to adjudicate
claims arising under the laws of the United States."); Yellow
Freight, 494 U.S. at 823 ("To give federal courts exclusive
jurisdiction over a federal cause of action, Congress must, in
an exercise of its powers under the Supremacy Clause, affirmatively
divest state courts of their presumptively concurrent
jurisdiction.") (internal citations omitted). In every case the
majority cites as requiring express consent to a condition to
suit, a party was seeking to subject the federal government to
an unusual condition to suit or arguing that Congress had consented
to enlarged monetary penalties.* State court jurisdiction,
however, is not an enlarged monetary penalty nor is it an
unusual condition in our system of dual sovereignty.
In sum, a unanimous Supreme Court has unequivocally
stated § 2000e-(f)(3) does not give federal courts exclusive
jurisdiction nor does it foreclose the possibility of pursuing a
Title VII remedy in state court. Because a private sector litigant
may file a Title VII claim in state court and 42 U.S.C.
§ 2000e-16(c) provides that a federal employee may file a
civil action in the same manner as private sector employees,
so too can a public sector litigant file a Title VII action in
state court. Nothing in the text of Title VII itself, the Supreme
Court’s interpretation of that text in Yellow Freight, or our
time-honored system of dual sovereignty indicates otherwise.

*In Shaw, the Supreme Court was faced with the question of whether
Congress had consented to the recovery of interest. 48 U.S. at 312. Similarly,
in Lane v. Pena, 518 U.S. 187 (1996), the disputed condition was
whether Congress waived its immunity from a monetary damages award.
And in United States v. Sherwood, the Court analyzed whether Congress
waived sovereign immunity only for claims for certain dollar amounts in
the U.S. district courts and for other dollar amounts in the Court of
Claims. 312 U.S. 584, 587 (1941).

Nutrient Science

All growing plants need the proper amounts of 17 essential elements to develop and grow to their full genetic potential. Of these 17, 14 are usually absorbed by the plant from the soil through its roots. The three remaining elements, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen come from the air.

The micronutrients requirements by plants for normal growth and high yield are small compared to those of the macronutrients so traditionally, emphasis in crop nutrition has been on nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K). Despite the small amounts of micronutrients needed by plants to complete their life cycles, deficiencies of one or more of these elements frequently occurs in agriculture, horticulture and forestry around the world.

The table below are the essential micronutrients required for higher plants and the relative amounts of each required for healthy plant growth.

Impact of micronutrient deficiency

Historically the impact of micronutrient deficiencies on crop production has been most commonly measured as loss of crop yield. A variety of other properties may be more important than yield alone. For range crops, aspects of crop quality such as oil, protein or fiber content, are important for the price of agriculture markets. For forest products, tree form and wood quality are as important as wood volume in determining the economic value of the harvest (Dell et al., 2003).

In a cropping system, the main impact of micronutrients may be on amounts of nitrogen fived by legumes. Another aspect of impact is the effect of micronutrient concentrations in planting seed on the vigor of the next season’s crop. An emerging area of interest is the impact of micronutrient supply on grain quality for human and animal nutrition.

Agriculture can help address malnutrition around the world:

Malnutrition, often called the “hidden hunger”, can lead on to life-threatening illnesses caused by a lack of protein (protein-energy malnutrition) or micronutrients. Micronutrient deficiency is attributed to malnutrition which weakens immune systems, exacerbates the effect of childhood diseases such as measles, malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea, and can permanently impair long-term physical and cognitive development.

Micronutrient-enriched fertilizers improve soil fertility, helping to support higher yields of more nutritious food. Poor soil quality is a significant factor that leads to micronutrient deficiencies in humans – if the soil is not rich in all the necessary nutrients, food products will not contain the necessary nutritional balance. A program in Turkey has used a technique to restore micronutrients in the soil to successfully address zinc deficiencies in their population.

“Faster progress must be made in the drive for adequate food, good nutrition, good health, and sustainable agricultural growth, but the three sectors (farming, nutrition, and health) must work together to minimize the negative links among them and maximize the positive synergies.” (Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health: The Way Forward, IFPRI, February 2011)

Resource Record Details

Local Mitigation Plan Review Guide

The Local Mitigation Plan Review Guide provides guidance for Federal and State officials responsible for reviewing Local Mitigation Plans in a fair and consistent manner, and to ensure approved Local Mitigation Plans meet the requirements of the Stafford Act and Title 44 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) §201.6.1. This Local Mitigation Plan Review Guide is FEMA’s official source for defining the requirements of original and updated Local Mitigation Plans.

A Watershed Moment for the Clean Water Act

(1)   Looking 20 years ahead, what systemic risks will the emergency management community face?

(2)   What transformational events could shape emergency management's future?

(3)   What should the emergency management community be doing now to have the right future capacity and capabilities to serve those who depend on us?

California could generate massive wave

Flotsam and jetsam, Receiver of Wreck

In maritime law, flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict describe specific kinds of wreck. The words have specific nautical meanings, with legal consequences in the law of admiralty and marine salvage

Biggest Source of Water Pollution Too Lax

A state court has ruled that New York State is failing to take legally required steps to clean up one of the biggest sources of pollution in its waterways -- stormwater runoff. 

The January 10th decision of the Westchester County Supreme Court comes in a lawsuit NRDC filed in 2010, which challenged a statewide “general permit” for stormwater discharges from municipal sewers.  The court ordered the agency to fix several major flaws in the permit, to ensure all Clean Water Act requirements are met. 

Of course, proper oversight by the state, and necessary investment in stormwater infrastructure at the local level, require not only political will, but also the resources to act.

EPA’s national stormwater rulemaking: The basic principle in the MS4 permit case -- that municipalities cannot self-certify compliance without oversight by environmental regulators, and that the public has important rights to participate in decisionmaking on these matters -- should be entirely uncontroversial by now.  The Westchester County court merely followed the 9-year-old ruling of a federal appeals court, which rejected portions of EPA’s stormwater regulations for having precisely the same flaws.  That federal court directed EPA to revise the rule and fix the defects, but EPA still hasn’t done so.  In fact, while EPA has promised a wholesale revision to its rules on stormwater runoff, to adopt green infrastructure best practices recommended by the National Research Council, the schedule for that rulemaking has been repeatedly delayed.  The MS4 permit case in New York highlights the need for a national rule, to provide clarity and consistency among states in implementing the Clean Water Act.  EPA must follow-through on its commitment to a much-needed stormwater rulemaking.

Cleaning up the Clean Water Act

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 Holy war looming

• Marc Beauchamp: Posted June 12, 2010 at midnight

Growing up in Redding in the 1950s and ’60s, I didn’t think much about Iron Mountain. It was just a big gash on a hillside west of town, a sometimes useful landmark.

This was before I learned the colorful 70-year history of the mine and before Iron Mountain became famous — infamous, I should say — as one of the first Superfund sites, notorious for leaching some of the most corrosive water in the country and home to an EPA-directed treatment and cleanup operation that I joke may be the last employer in Shasta County several centuries hence.

Four years ago, while on the staff of the Record Searchlight, I got a tour of the round-the-clock pollution treatment efforts at Iron Mountain, just after a glowing federal report about all the progress made. The Iron Mountain remediation effort, it implied, was a feather in the cap of the Environmental Protection Agency and Rick Sugarek of the agency’s San Francisco office, who has spent more than two decades working on it.

Then I met Ted Arman, the octogenarian owner of the mine. Over coffee, he said the EPA has exaggerated Iron Mountain’s risks with talk of “poison” and pictures of shovel blades eaten away by acid mine drainage, and that the feds have kept him from using new technology to turn mineral-rich water into fertilizer and other products. “EPA messed up my business.”

In late March I joined him in his 1989 Lincoln for a two-hour tour of his property. Arman is clearly bitter that others, like Sugarek and CH2MHill, have made careers and fortunes from the property he’s owned since 1979.

As he traverses the winding gravel road up his mountain, he must announce his position on a radio phone.

Arman’s 89 but still full of fire and big plans. If EPA won’t let him turn acid runoff into life-giving fertilizer he aims to make his mountain known for something more than just a Superfund site. The idea — call it an epiphany — came to him three years ago: erect a 200-foot-tall concrete statue of Jesus Christ on top of Iron Mountain. He claims to have received calls from interested parties from around the world after word of his plans got on the Internet.

Old-time religion - Show time

To establish standing to challenge a statute, a plaintiff needs to show “a realistic danger of sustaining a direct injury as a result of the statute’s operation or enforcement” [Babbitt v. United Farm Workers Nat’l Union, 442 U.S. 289, 298, 99 S. Ct. 2301, 60 L. Ed. 2d 895 (1979)]; that is “pegged to a sufficiently fixed period of time” [ACLU of Florida, Inc. v. Miami-Dade County School Bd., 557 F.3d 1177, 1194 (11th Cir. 2009)]; and which is not “merely hypothetical or conjectural” [Florida State Conference of the NAACP v. Browning, 522 F.3d 1153, 1161 (11th Cir. 2008

"Welcome, Yanks!"

EPA overreaches on manure

Brownfield Redevelopers Beware!

January 19, 2012

Due Care and Indemnification Agreements and the CERCLA BFPP Defense The last year has seen its share of unique decisions relating to CERCLA liability.  Recently I blogged about one case with ramifications for brownfield developers:  Saline River Properties LLC v. Johnson Controls (USDC, ED Mich 2:10-cv-1057-SFC-MKM).  Another case similar to Saline River Properties that came out in late 2010 is Ashley II of Charleston, LLC v. PCS Nitrogen, Inc. (USDC, Dist. S.C., 2:05-cv-2782-mbs).  Ashley II originated in South Carolina and was heralded as one of the first cases to examine CERCLA’s Bona Fide Perspective Purchaser (“BFPP”) defense (which provides a liability defense to purchasers).  You would think that this would be a good … [Read more...]

Solar plans draw heat on both sides

Renewable Power Built On Superfund Sites and Landfills

January 20, 2012 By Tom Cranford

The EPA, in conjunction with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), is conducting a study to determine the feasibility developing renewable energy production on Superfund sites and former landfill or mining sites. This is part of the EPA’s RE-Powering America’s Land project.

The study aims to determine the best technology to use on each site: the best location for technology placement, the potential energy generating capacity, the return on investment, as well as the economic feasibility of the energy projects. One site might generate solar power, while another utilizes geothermal or biomass.

Every site is different and will require a different strategy due to being in various stages of the cleanup process. Lura Matthews, RE-Powering America’s Land project lead, explains:

“The site doesn’t have to be all the way cleaned up for renewable energy to be put on it. If they are cleaning ground water on the site, for example, there may still be part of the site where you can put solar panels. Renewable energy projects on the sites will be designed to accommodate the site conditions.”

Tidal power

Renewable Energy for Military Applications

Solar, Wind, Biomass, Geothermal, Hydrokinetic Energy, Biofuels and Synfuels,
Fuel Cells, Microgrids, Smart Meters, and Energy Efficiency

The DOD is positioned to become the single most important driver of the cleantech revolution in the United States,” says Pike Research president Clint Wheelock. “In particular, military investment in renewable energy and related technologies can help bridge the ‘valley of death’ that lies between research & development and full commercialization of these technologies.”

James 5:20 remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

Preventing Terrorism Requires Collaborative Relationship Between Federal and Local Resources

Watchdog Report Questions AIG Bailout, Compensation

By Arthur D. Postal, PropertyCasualty360.com

January 26, 2012

Stay Connected

President Obama has withdrawn his nomination of Rebecca Wodder to be the assistant Interior secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks

Nitro annexation creates 'free enterprise zone' around Bayer

NSF 12-037

Dear Colleague Letter - Stimulating Research Related to the Science of Broadening Participation

DATE: January 24, 2012

National Science Foundation

Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
Division of Social and Economic Sciences

Sewer Systems Treading Water

A more recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers shows the situation to be similar across the country, with the annual cost of maintaining and modernizing wastewater infrastructure not being met.

According to that report, the estimated cost of maintenance and upgrade required for drinking and wastewater treatment across the country in 2010 was $91 billion. That number looks to balloon to $126 billion by 2020 and $195 billion in 2040.

However, of the $91 billion required in 2010, only $36 billion was funded.

In the past, the federal and state governments provided significant funding for infrastructure repair and replacement.

That is no longer true today, the report stated.

"In the 1990s, the federal grants program shifted to a low-interest loan program, making it harder for many communities to address their infrastructure needs," the report says. "New York voters approved the 1996 Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act which provided funding for wastewater infrastructure in certain areas, but these funds have been fully obligated. To date, New York state has invested over $11 billion in wastewater infrastructure."

With federal and state assistance reduce, the report pointed out how the burden of maintaining wastewater infrastructure then fell on local governments. As a result, many local municipalities have had trouble convincing their residents and ratepayers that the wastewater infrastructure requires proactive management, including planning for repairs and replacement and charging rates that cover those costs.

Fewer than 40 percent of municipalities have a capital improvement plan for their wastewater collection systems, the report found.

Except for transportation infrastructure, water and wastewater infrastructure are the largest of municipal assets. Adequate water infrastructure funding, the report states, is a critical component of urban revitalization, smart economic growth and property tax relief. It is essential for the protection of public health and environment.

Job Title:Assistant Inspector General for Program Evaluation

Agency:Environmental Protection Agency

Job Announcement Number:PH-JC-12-587168

SALARY RANGE:	to / Per Year
OPEN PERIOD:	Friday, January 13, 2012 to Monday, January 23, 2012
SERIES & GRADE:	ES-0340-00
POSITION INFORMATION:	Full Time - Senior Executive Service (SES)
DUTY LOCATIONS:	1 vacancy(s) - Washington DC Metro Area, DC United States
WHO MAY BE CONSIDERED:	United States Citizens

JOB SUMMARY:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Office of Inspector General seeks to recruit exceptional men and women who will work in new creative ways that are cleaner for the environment, cheaper for business and taxpayers, and smarter for America's future. Founded in 1970, EPA is a dynamic organization employing people from diverse backgrounds dedicated to improving and preserving the quality of public health and the environment.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) adds value by promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness within EPA. The OIG inspires public confidence by preventing and detecting fraud, waste, and abuse in Agency operations and protecting the integrity of EPA programs.  By helping the Agency operate more economically, effectively, and efficiently, we contribute to improved environmental quality and human health. 

 

APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED FROM:   U.S. Citizens

KEY REQUIREMENTS



• U. S. Citizenship required.
• Designated and/or Random Drug Testing required.
• Background and/or Security Investigation required.

DUTIES:

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As Assistant Inspector General for the Office of Program Evaluation (OPE) within the Office of Inspector General (OIG), you will have full responsibility for maintaining and managing a state of the art program evaluation office within the OIG.   The Office conducts evaluations of media-based, cross-media, multimedia and management programs throughout EPA to determine their effectiveness in achieving environmental goals and provides recommendations and assistance to help the Agency realize environmental results.   In this capacity you will:

 

-Serve as the principal advisor to the Inspector General on all matters related to program evaluation activities, reporting through the Deputy Inspector General;

 

-Oversee technically sophisticated evaluations and analytical studies in a wide variety of EPA programs and operations; coordinate work with the Offices of Audit and Investigations;

 

-Provide written reports and oral presentations about complex environmental subjects for internal and external customers;

 

-Develop and institute a networking process with a wide variety of stakeholders and customers including EPA and other Federal managers, Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency , State and Local government officials, Congress, and other interested parties;

 

-Provide leadership and manage a staff of approximately 90 multi-disciplined professionals located in several EPA OIG offices  across the country.

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QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED:

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Specialized Experience Requirement

To be qualified for this position, applicants must have at least one year of prior experience in a managerial capacity with responsibility for providing supervisory direction to a large and diverse organization responsible for promoting and evaluating economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in the administration of Federal programs and operations and preventing and detecting fraud and abuse in such programs and operations.   This experience must evidence sophisticated analytical skills, superior written and oral communication skills, good judgment, and experience in interacting with government and non-government officials.

 

Senior Executive Service Requirements

Current or former career Senior Executive Service (SES) employees are not required to address the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs), but must address the Technical Qualifications (TQs).

Unless you are currently serving under a career Senior Executive Service (SES) appointment, are eligible for reinstatement into the SES, or have successfully completed a SES Candidate Development Program approved by OPM, you must submit a narrative statement covering each of the Executive Core Qualifications and Technical Qualifications questions in order to receive consideration for the position.  

Additional information on the proper preparation of Executive Core Qualification statements is available by going to the Office of Personnel Management's web site at http://www.opm.gov/ses/references/GuidetoSESQuals_2010.pdf

When responding to the Mandatory Technical and/or Desirable Qualifications and Executive Core Qualifications, you must clearly show that you possess the experience, knowledge, skills and ability to perform the duties of this position by submitting narrative responses in which you detail your experience in each of the Technical and/or Desirable Qualifications and the Executive Core Qualifications.  

Your examples should be clear and emphasize your level of responsibilities, scope and complexity of programs managed, program accomplishments with results of your actions, policy initiatives and level of contacts.  You should limit your narrative to two pages per each Executive Core Qualifications, Technical Mandatory and/or Desirable factor.

The Ethics in Government Act, PL 95-521 requires the applicant selected for this position to submit a financial disclosure statement, SF-278, prior to assuming the SES position, annually, and upon termination of employment.

In order to address all of the requirements outlined below, you must submit a supplemental document that addresses the qualifications outlined below.  This document must be entitled "Qualifications," and must not exceed two (2) pages per factor (further instructions below).

 

Mandatory Technical Qualification

 

In addition to specialized experience, applicants must possess the following technical qualifications that represent the knowledge, skills, and abilities essential to perform the duties and responsibilities of the position:

 

-Experience in successfully conducting and managing or teaching environmental evaluations

 

*Failure to address this factor will result in your application being disqualified.*

 

Desirable Qualifications

 

Although not required addressing these desirable qualifications provides more information for the Rating Panel/Selecting Official to evaluate.   Applicants will be rated and ranked using only the information submitted for consideration.

 

1.  Demonstrated expertise in the application of-need and impact evaluation methods.

2.  Advanced degree(s) in fields related to public administration, public policy, environmental studies and/or economics.

 

Executive Core Qualifications

 

1.  Leading Change: This core qualification involves the ability to bring about strategic change, both within and outside the organization, to meet organizational goals. Inherent to this Executive Core Qualification is the ability to establish an organizational vision and to implement it in a continuously changing environment.

Leadership Competencies:

• Creativity and Innovation
• External Awareness
• Flexibility
• Resilience.
• Strategic Thinking
• Vision

 

2.  Leading People: This core qualification involves the ability to lead people toward meeting the organization's vision, mission, and goals. Inherent to this Executive Core Qualification is the ability to provide an inclusive workplace that fosters the development of others, facilitates cooperation and teamwork, and supports constructive resolution of conflicts.

 

Leadership Competencies:

• Conflict Management
• Leveraging Diversity
• Developing Others
• Team Building

 

3.  Results Driven: This core qualification involves the ability to meet organizational goals and customer expectations. Inherent to this Executive Core Qualification is the ability to make decisions that produce high-quality results by applying technical knowledge, analyzing problems, and calculating risks.

Leadership Competencies:

• Accountability
• Customer Service
• Decisiveness
• Entrepreneurship
• Problem Solving
• Technical Credibility

 

4.  Business Acumen: This core qualification involves the ability to manage human, financial, and information resources strategically.

Leadership Competencies: 

• Financial Management
• Human Capital Management
• Technology Management

 

5.  Building Coalitions: This core qualification involves the ability to build coalitions internally and with other Federal agencies, State and local governments, nonprofit and private sector organizations, foreign governments, or international organizations to achieve common goals.

Leadership Competencies: 

• Partnering
• Political Savvy
• Influencing/Negotiating

 

Fundamental Competencies - These competencies are the foundation for success in each of the Executive Core Qualifications.

1. Interpersonal Skills: Treats others with courtesy, sensitivity, and respect. Considers and responds appropriately to the needs and feelings of different people in different situations.
2. Oral Communication: Makes clear and convincing oral presentations. Listens effectively; clarifies information as needed.
3. Integrity/Honesty: Behaves in an honest, fair, and ethical manner. Shows consistency in words and actions. Models high standards of ethics.
4. Written Communications: Writes in a clear, concise, organized, and convincing manner for the intended audience.
5. Continual Learning: Assesses and recognizes own strengths and weaknesses; pursues self-development.

 

Other Requirements

 

-It is the policy of the Agency to achieve a drug-free workplace, and persons selected for employment will be required to pass a drug test which screens for illegal drug use prior to final appointment.   If selected for and appointed to this position you will be subject to random drug testing while employed.

-A financial disclosure statement is required upon appointment into the SES.   This statement will be used to avoid conflicting situations in employment through advice and counseling.   This position is subject to random drug testing.

-Status applicants must submit a copy of their most recent SF-50, Notification of Personnel Action, which verifies status.

-All applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, marital status, political affiliation, age, sex, sexual orientation, disabling condition, membership in an employee organization, or any other non-merit factors.

-The Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General provides reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process, please notify EPA OIG. The decision on granting reasonable accommodation will be on a case-by-case basis.

-In accordance with Federal and Agency travel regulations, the candidate selected for this position will not be reimbursed for travel, transportation, and relocation expenses associated with reporting for duty to this position.

-This position is designated as critical-sensitive and requires that a background investigation be conducted and favorably adjudicated in order to establish security eligibility.

-All initial appointments to an SES position are contingent on approval from OPM's Qualifications Review Board unless the selectee has successfully participated in an OPM approved SES Candidate Development Program.

-SES pay is determined within the pay range, commensurate with experience, superior leadership qualifications, and/or other competencies consistent with the EPA OIG mission.

-As a condition of employment, all male applicants born after December 31, 1959, must have registered for the selective service. If selected for this position, the applicant must sign a statement certifying his registration, or the applicant must demonstrate exempt status under the Selective Service Law.

-Applicants must be U.S. citizens or nationals. EPA participates in e-Verify. E-Verify is an Internet based system operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in partnership with the Social Security Administration (SSA) that enables participating employers to electronically verify the employment eligibility of their newly hired employees.

-Individuals selected for this position as their first career appointment to the SES will be required to serve a one-year probationary period.

-DIRECT DEPOSIT: All Federal employees are required to have Federal salary payments made by direct deposit to a financial institution of their choosing.

 

Only experience obtained by the closing date of this announcement will be considered.

HOW YOU WILL BE EVALUATED:

Experience and demonstrated capability will be evaluated using your resume, SF-50 (Notification of Personnel Action), narrative statements for competencies underlying the ECQs, and responses to the online occupational questionnaire.

Applicants will be evaluated in the following manner:

1.  Application packages will be reviewed for completeness (incomplete or late packages will not receive further consideration).

2.  Basic qualifications review.  Your resume and questionnaire will be reviewed to assure that you meet the Specialized Experience Requirement.  (If you do not meet this requirement, you will not receive further consideration).

3.  Review of your supplemental qualifications document to determine your rating.

All five ECQs must be addressed in a supplemental statement of your application.  Your response should be clear and concise and show a level of accomplishment and a degree of responsibility.  In addition, your responses should highlight your experience, training, and achievements in conjunction with the OF-612 or resume that you provide.  Additional information on the ECQs is available at http://www.opm.gov/ses/references/GuidetoSESQuals_2010.pdf.  Applicants are encouraged to follow the Challenge, Context, Action, and Result model outlined in the guide.

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BENEFITS:

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A variety of health insurance plans; retirement system with investment options; paid holiday; paid sick and annual (vacation) leave; life insurance; incentive systems; subsidized transportation, flexible work schedule, training and development opportunities, and family/worklife program. Full descriptions of the benefits available are provided at: http://www.epa.gov/careers/benefits.html

OTHER INFORMATION:

 

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HOW TO APPLY:

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To apply for this position, you must provide a complete Application Package, which includes ALL of the following:

1.  Resume

2.  Completion of online Questionnaire.

3.  SF-50, showing you are a current or former member of the SES, if applicable.

4.  Proof of OPM Qualifications Review Board certification (OPM-approved SES Candidate Development Program graduates), if applicable.

5.  Supplemental document entitled "Qualifications."  Our system will specifically screen applicants' records for a document entitled "Qualifications."  If you do not submit a document with this title by the closing date of the announcement, the system will consider your application incomplete, and you will receive no further consideration.

 

What the supplemental document must contain:

• Your response to the Technical Qualifications (Required for All Applicants)
• Your response to the Executive Core Qualifications (Required for Applicants who are not currently in the SES or graduates of an OPM Candidate Development Program).
• Your response to the Desirable Qualifications (Optional, but recommended for all applicants).

 

Please submit only one document entitled "Qualifications."  This document must be limited in size to two (2) pages per qualification factor. 

 

Use Application Manager for convenience and quickest processing. Track your progress to a Complete Application Package using the My Application Packages checklist and status displays in Application Manager. Your Application Package status must be Complete by Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The complete Application Package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (EST) on Tuesday, January 31, 2012.

To begin the process, click the Apply Online button to create an account or log in to your existing USAJOBS account. Follow the prompts to complete the assessment questionnaire. Please ensure you click the Submit My Answers button at the end of the process.

 

Note: To return to a previously Saved or Incomplete application you may use the following link: https://applicationmanager.gov/.

To fax supporting documents you are unable to upload, complete this cover page http://staffing.opm.gov/pdf/usascover.pdf using the following Vacancy ID: 587168.   Fax your documents to 1-478-757-3144.

If you cannot apply online:
1. Click the following link to view and print the assessment questionnaire View Occupational Questionnaire, and
2. Print this 1203FX form to provide your response to the assessment questionnaire http://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/OPM1203fx.pdf and
3. Fax the completed 1203FX form along with any supporting documents to 1-478-757-3144. Your 1203FX will serve as a cover page for your fax transmission.

REQUIRED DOCUMENTS:

For this job announcement the following documents are required: 

• Resume
• Supplemental Qualifications document (see above).  
• Questionnaire
• OPM Candidate Development Program Certification, if applicable
• SF-50, Notice of Personnel Action, if applicable

Please see the instructions outlined above under How To Apply for specific instructions and options for completing and submitting your application material.  Please ensure that your resume contains your full name, address, phone number, and social security number.

Complete applications must be received by close of business Tuesday, January 31, 2012

AGENCY CONTACT INFO:

Philadelphia Services Branch

Agency Information:
Philadelphia Services Branch
US Office of Personnel Management
600 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA
19106
USA

WHAT TO EXPECT NEXT:

Once the online questionnaire is received you will receive an acknowledgement email that your submission was successful.

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EEO Policy Statement | Reasonable Accommodation Policy Statement | Veterans Information | Legal and Regulatory Guidance

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Agency Information:

Philadelphia Services Branch
US Office of Personnel Management
600 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA
19106
USA

Questions about this job:

Philadelphia Services Branch

Job Announcement Number:

PH-JC-12-587168

Control Number:

306437000

California has the potential

For Gardeners and Farmers, the Earth Moves on Wednesday

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will unveil its long-awaited new “Plant Hardiness Zone Map” expected to reflect changing climate patterns Cornell University has several experts available to discuss the significance of the changes.
Expert(s) available
—Cornell University

Area water agencies get hydropower nod
Pueblo Chieftain
The next step is for the partners to sign an agreement and gain approval from Reclamation for its plan to build hydropower at Pueblo Dam. The generation facilities would be built in the next 10 years, Broderick said. The cost estimates and timeline for ...
See all stories on this topic »

DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy invests in clean energy technologies that strengthen the economy, protect the environment, and reduce dependence on foreign oil. DOE's Water Power Program is paving the way for industry and government to make sound investment and policy decisions about the deployment of renewable water power technologies by quantifying the nation's theoretically available water power resources.

U.S. DOE to Provide Energy Efficiency Roadmap and Validation System

By Sustainable Plant Staff January 23, 2012 05:02:45 pm

Oversight Areas

• Office of the Secretary
• Bureau of Economic Analysis
• Bureau of Industry and Security
• U.S. Census Bureau
• Economic Development Administration
• Economics and Statistics Administration
• International Trade Administration
• Minority Business Development Agency
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• National Telecommunications and Information Administration
• National Institute of Standards and Technology
• National Technical Information Service
• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

THE TITLES OF THE UNITED STATES CODE

A legal brief by Larry Becraft

GSA launches courthouse

The General Services Administration is moving ahead with plans to build a new $322 million courthouse in Los Angeles despite objections from key lawmakers.

GSA issued a request for qualifications Jan. 20 for a 600,000-square-foot courthouse to be finished no later than March, 2016.

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on public buildings, said in a statement there was already enough space in existing Los Angeles courthouses.

"GSA knows this project is unnecessary, which is why they are making a mad dash to spend the money now," Denham said.

Denham and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., the ranking member of the subcommittee, sent a letter Oct. 21 asking GSA not to begin construction on the courthouse.

Rep. John Mica, Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, called the new courthouse project "idiotic" and said in a statement that it was a waste of taxpayer dollars.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement there was a "space emergency" and that the new courthouse was necessary.

"This courthouse has been on the drawing board for too long," Feinstein said in a statement.

In 2010, the GAO concluded that over the last decade, 3.56 million square feet of unneeded space was built in courthouses, wasting $835 million taxpayer dollars plus $51 million annually in operating costs.

EPA, USDA, Minnesota sign ag-based water quality pilot

Marlys Miller, Editor, Pork Magazine   |   Updated: January 18, 2012

USDA says it will close 259 offices to save $150M million

FDA and USDA Budget Cuts Leave Food Supply at Risk

Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) and HBCU Research Infrastructure for Science and Engineering (RISE)

Program Solicitation
NSF 12-533

Killer pathogens, toxic chemicals, pesticides and hazardous contaminants: all may be making their way to a dinner table near you.

If food safety advocates are correct, additional cuts to The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) and United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) meager budgets will result in even more threats to the U.S. food supply.

A June 21, 2011 memo from U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson to Commissioner of Food and Drugs Dr. Margaret Hamburg reviewed 17 Class I recalls.

The Cornucopia Institute has asked the USDA’s Office of Inspector General to investigate corruption at its National Organic Program allowing use of illegal synthetics in organic food and powerful corporations to "game the system" for approval.

WEBWIRE – Monday, January 23, 2012

MMI Law

International Law Counsel

• Law for Criminal Justice Professionals
• Criminal Law Explained For Anyone
• What is the Criminal Defense Lawyer Association?
• Criminal Law And Its Definitions
• Criminal Defense

A Good Hard Look at the Court System

New York Law Journal, January 23, 2012
Federal Law Enforcement Officers Exposures 

One man fights EPA about wastewater hookup

Time to Answer the Pro Bono Call

Pharmaceutical Industry Could Use a Shot

Large pharmaceutical companies remain pressured and some are bracing themselves for a steep drop off the patent cliff. We believe the loss of patent exclusivity on blockbuster drugs will continue to spur increasing competitive pressure as generic versions of branded medications hit the market. We note that more than $70 billion of branded drug revenues (based on 2010 sales) will lose or have already lost patent protection from the second half 2011 to the end of 2015.

A reduction in workforce has been a common response to cutting costs. Swiss drug maker Novartis recently slashed 1,960 jobs in the U.S. (1,600 were sales positions). The company previously announced 3,400 job cuts in late 2010 and 2011. We feel that lukewarm results from clinical trials for some medications are also adding difficulty for companies struggling to maintain profit margins. Last week, Novartis announced it was terminating development of two drugs, and, on Thursday, AstraZeneca, which recently halted two of its drug studies, said the FDA is seeking additional clinical information on dapagliflozin, its latest diabetes treatment.

While we feel litigation risk is manageable, it remains a concern. On Thursday, Johnson & Johnson settled another one of its cases regarding the mis-marketing of its anti-psychotic drug, Risperdal. Johnson & Johnson will pay the state of Texas $158 million (the state originally sought $579 million). In addition, the European Medicines Agency has begun reviewing Novartis' multiple sclerosis pill Gilenya following seven unexplained deaths.

Despite challenges, we feel that potential growth in emerging markets, new product launches, and an active acquisition environment could aid the pharmaceutical industry as it seeks sustainability.

ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS . IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE ' WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM '. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE.

SOURCE: Fitch Ratings

Copyright Business Wire 2012

HHS OIG Launches New Website to Pursue OIG's "Most Wanted Deadbeat Parents"

by Shaw Bransford & Roth P.C.
January 19, 2012

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday the launch of a new Child Support Enforcement website aimed at enlisting the public's help in identifying and pursuing parents who are behind in child support payments or have fled to avoid making their payments.

"OIG agents tirelessly pursue fugitives who skip out on their court-ordered child support payments," said Gerald Roy, OIG's Deputy Inspector General for Investigations. "We have global reach. We will find you so you can be held accountable for meeting your responsibilities to your children."

The website will feature photos and information on OIG's "most wanted deadbeat parents," as well as OIG's hotline number (1-888-476-4453) and an online fugitive tip form. OIG's hotline will allow callers to report information related to fugitive parents and will have both English and Spanish operators.

Currently, the website lists five wanted fugitives and two recently captured fugitives, OIG said Tuesday in a news release. While the majority of child support cases fall within state jurisdiction, the federal government can intervene in cases involving parents who neglect to pay child support for longer than one year, noncustodial parents who owe more than $5,000 and have children living in a different state, or noncustodial parents who flee the state or country to avoid making child support payments, OIG said.

"There are parents and children across the country who need help," said Inspector General Daniel Levinson. "Visit our new website to see if you recognize any of the featured fugitives -and submit any helpful tips that will aid us in locating them."

» DOT OIG and FBI Agents Arrest Government Contractor Accused of Intellectual Property Theft

» DHS Pilot Program Integrates New Application to Enable Seamless Interagency Data Sharing

What's Your Risk?
Federal Law Enforcement Officers Exposures

Federal law enforcement officers face potential liabilities and vulnerabilities while performing job duties. For specific information about your exposures and how professional liability protection provides the necessary protection, please choose the group below that best represents you:

• 1811's & Special Agents                                    • Bureau of Prisons Officials

• Law Enforcement Officers                                  • TSA Employees

• Probation and Pretrial Officers                            • Federal Flight Deck Officer

This resource examines the professional exposures of those who work in federal law enforcement. The news items, explanations, accounts, scenarios and comparisons found here are provided by Federal Employee Defense Services (FEDS), the preferred provider of professional liability insurance by the leading federal law enforcement associations. When the spotlight is on you, having FEDS protection will bring immediate relief - and the subsequent results you expect and deserve.

For more information on FEDS, please visit the FEDS website.

1811's and Special Agents Overview

Whether you are a special agent/1811 with the ATF, DEA, DHS, DOE, FBI, FWS, EPA, IRS/CI, NCIS, Secret Service, USFS, USMS, USPS, U.S. Attorney’s Office or in an OIG office you have undoubtedly heard of professional liability insurance.

The increased activity and sophistication of organized and other white collar crime syndicates, terrorists, cyber criminals, violent offenders and other criminal activity has taken investigations and enforcement matters to new levels resulting in an increased need for law enforcement officers to protect themselves with professional liability insurance. For coverage starting today, buy now.

There are three areas of exposure that a professional liability policy responds to for law enforcement officers: civil law suits, administrative and disciplinary matters, and criminal investigations. For instance, PLI becomes necessary when:

• An agent is sued personally for a job-related action (i.e., Bivens action);
• An agent becomes involved in a misconduct or administrative matter/investigation for a job related action, a judicial proceeding; or
• An agent is subject to a criminal investigation for a job-related action.

For additional special agent information, read Civil Benefits, Administrative Benefits and Criminal Benefits.  Listen to law enforcement issues on Audio.

The exposure to civil lawsuits is the very reason that the DOJ and several federal employee associations collaborated over 20 years ago to create the concept of PLI for federal employees. They wanted to protect federal employees and allow affordable legal representation and indemnity protection for those circumstances in which federal employees were held personally liable and had to provide their own defense - even though they were within their scope of employment or rendering a professional federal service.

This is also the very reason that Congress enacted special legislation requiring agencies to reimburse all law enforcement officers up to ½ of the cost of professional liability insurance. This congressional action clearly demonstrates Congress’ official support and belief that law enforcement officers have a sense of security while making the tough [or split-second] decisions that are part of the job. With annual costs at $270 and a net cost of only $135 a year after reimbursement for our minimum coverage limit, there is no reason for federal law enforcement officers not to have career and financial security protections in place.

FEDS continually works with many law enforcement communities and associations to ensure that we provide the protection officers need to do their jobs. Please read what these associations and other industry leaders have to say about professional protection and why they recommend FEDS in testimonials and endorsements. Compare FEDS to Others.

FEDS founder is a former employee of a federal law enforcement agency and encourages all federal employees to be as informed as possible about the benefits of having PLI protection in place. Read more about how and why FEDS got started here. And if you can't find answers to your questions in Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's), please call us at 301-229-2481 or contact us via email.

Benefits are secured by a U.S. based AM Best (A) (Excellent) Rated Insurance Company

• A federal employee who is accused of misconduct or wrongdoing in the course of their job.
• Legal fees paid up to $200,000 in an administrative investigation, disciplinary action or judicial sanction proceeding.
• Up to $100,000 for criminal legal defense.
• Up to $1,000,000 or $2,000,000 for liability damages in a civil suit.
• A 36 month extended reporting period after leaving federal service.

For information on the specific exposures you face, please choose from the following federal position or agency that best describes your job and professional responsibilities:

1. Law Enforcement and Security Officers:

• 1811's & Special Agents
• Law Enforcement Officers 
• Probation and Pretrial Officers
• Bureau of Prisons Officials
• TSA Employees
• Federal Flight Deck Officers

2. Intelligence & State Department

• Intelligence Officers/ Personnel
• State Department /Foreign Service Officers

3. Executives and Managers

• Executives, Managers and Supervisors

      Agency Specific:

• IRS Managers & Employees
• SSA Managers
• FAA Managers

4. Federal Judges / Federal Attorneys 

5. Medical Professionals

• Federal Physicians & Other Medical Professionals
• Federal Veterinarians

6. Federal Wildland Fire Fighters

7. Regulatory Agency Employees including but not limited to:

• APHIS
• Dept. of Energy
• Dept. of Housing & Urban Development
• EPA
• FAA
• FDA
• FERC
• FSIS
• NRC
• SEC & Other U.S. Financial Regulatory System Employees

8. Other Vulnerable Federal Employee Positions

• FEMA and Other Federal Response Employees
       including EPA, Public Health & USDA First Responders
  
• Contracting Officers
       including COTR/COR, Grant Officials, Certifying Officials, Task
       Administrators, CTO, QAE and other contractor oversight or
       federal fund appropriation positions
  
• HR Specialists
       including HR, EEO, Employee and Labor Relations Personnel

Benefits are secured by a U.S. based AM Best (A) (Excellent) Rated Insurance Company

The policy provides top quality legal defense counsel to defend employees under an IG or management investigation into allegations of job-related wrongdoing, or an investigation by the Office of Special Counsel into allegations of whistleblower reprisal, in an environment where employees believe that filing with the IG or OSC empowers them and gives them a suit of armor.

Who provides my legal representation?

For over 25 years, FEDS lawyers have defended federal employees and law enforcement officers in all types of investigations, disciplinary proceedings, civil and criminal actions. Once coverage is determined by the FEDS Claims Administrator, your case will be assigned to the appropriate legal counsel. Shaw Bransford & Roth is our lead panel of attorneys and will handle most civil and administrative cases. For other matters, such as criminal investigations and prosecutions, or matters for which SB&R may have a conflict, we have access to Schertler and Onorato, L.L.P., Ebanks, Smith & Horne, L.L.P., the Law Offices of Thomas G. Roth and other nationally recognized panels of attorneys depending on the circumstances of your case. Please scroll down for more information about the outstanding firms that have successfully represented federal employees.

Shaw Bransford & Roth P.C.

Shaw Bransford & Roth P.C. leads our panel of attorneys and exclusively handles claims for FEDS. Founded in 1982, SB&R provides quality legal representation on a wide range of employment law and federal personnel law issues. The focus of this practice is on discipline and adverse action cases, employment discrimination complaints, Inspector General and Internal Affairs investigations, security clearance issues, and other federal and private-sector employment disputes. Its attorneys litigate cases before the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Foreign Service Grievance Board and federal and state courts. The firm is AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell®. The law firm is also listed on the GSA Schedule and is available to perform legal services for federal agencies. Visit their website Newsroom for articles written for federal employees.

Schertler and Onorato, L.L.P.

Based in Washington, D.C., this is an established litigation law firm that handles a wide variety of criminal, civil and domestic relations cases. The firm consists of a talented team of skilled attorneys that serve an impressive list of clients. The two name partners, David Schertler and Danny Onorato, are former federal prosecutors with the United States Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. and the Department of Justice. Visit the News section of their website for an impressive list of cases handled.

Ebanks, Smith & Horne, L.L.P.

With trial lawyers that have personal reputations for hard-work and quality legal representation over the past twenty-five years, its founding members and partners have specialties that include Civil Trial Law. James D. Ebanks has more than 125 jury trials and is AV rated by the prestigious Martindale-Hubbell® organization. The frim has handled several high profile cases including the federal litigation involving the Branch Davidians as well as serving as a consultant to the FBI in the matters of Ruby Ridge. Marvin C. Moos' impressive list of cases includes the United States Supreme Court in litigation against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Law Offices of Thomas G. Roth

As a former Assistant United States Attorney, supervising an office of 75 criminal and civil AUSA's, Tom Roth has tried numerous federal criminal cases including income tax evasion, conspiracy, narcotics, racketeering, fraud and other white collar crimes. This experience lends expertise to his current practice of criminal defense in State and Federal Courts, State and Federal civil litigation and defense of administrative and disciplinary cases on behalf of federal agents and other federal officials. Tom is also an Adjunct Professor at Seton Hall Law School - his prior teaching experiences include trial preparation and cross-examination techniques, as well as search and seizure instruction, for federal agents.

This list of firms is not all inclusive and the focus of FEDS access to attorneys nationwide is always on the experience and expertise required to handle federal employee related matters.

Benefits are secured by a U.S. based AM Best (A) (Excellent) Rated Insurance Company

Employer not liable under CERCLA for employee's actions

• Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
• Frank J. Deveau
• USA
• January 11 2012

On November 9, 2011, the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota (No. 0:11-cv-00619-DWF-FLN), ruled that Northern States Power Company, through its wholly owned subsidiary Xcel Energy, (“Xcel”) was not liable for the unauthorized actions of its former employee that resulted in environmental contamination.

FOCUS: Speculators Start Buying Metals Futures, Options Again

(Kitco News) - A price rebound for metals across the board encouraged speculators to start to rebuild bullish positions in both precious and base metals futures and options, according to U.S. government data released Friday.

Biden to speak at Dems' retreat

The CIA’s relationship with the NYPD has troubled lawmakers and top intelligence officials.

Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said the CIA has “no business or authority in domestic spying, or in advising the NYPD how to conduct local surveillance.”

Clapper also said it did not look good for the CIA to be involved in any city police department.

New supercomputer crunches data at PNNL

The newest computer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is powerful enough to perform 162 trillion calculations per second, completing computations as fast as 20,000 personal computers combined.

It is the second supercomputer on the Department of Energy national laboratory campus in Richland. The first one, Chinook, is ranked as the 127th most powerful in the world, and the new one, Olympus, is comparable.

CATASTROPHE MITIGATION AND RESTORATION (SRCSGT)
SOL: SCB120220111024
DUE: 012712
POC: Samia C. Brandford, Contract Specialist, samia.brandford@whs.mil, 703-545-1578.
WEB: FBO.gov Permalink at https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/WHS/REF/SCB120220111024/listing.html

After Recent Revelations, Hospitals Must Finally Become Safety-First Environments

Special EMForum.org Webinar Program
January 26, 2012, 2:00-3:00 PM EST

Crisis Response and Disaster Resilience 2030
David J. Kaufman
Director, Office of Policy and Program Analysis
Federal Emergency Management Agency

Moderator: Amy Sebring, EMForum.org
FEMA has released the Crisis Response and Disaster Resilience 2030 report, which includes insights on the future role of emergency and disaster management; strategic needs and gaps the community will have to address; and a look into the emergency management community of 2030. The strategic needs, highlighted in the report, in particular - focused around essential capabilities, innovative models and tools, and dynamic partnerships - are intended to be a catalyst for leadership throughout the emergency management community and to prepare us, and the Nation at large, for whatever challenges and opportunities the future holds.
FEMA Strategic Foresight Initiative Website
Crisis Response and Disaster Resilience 2030: Forging Strategic Action in an Age of Uncertainty

sell, lease water rights for instream use

By John Bowman

Siskiyou Daily News

Posted Jan 20, 2012 @ 09:28 AM

Yreka, Calif. —

Diversion irrigators on the Shasta River and its tributaries may soon be able to sell or lease their water rights for instream use.
The Shasta River Water Trust will host an informational workshop on Tuesday, Jan. 24 at the Holiday Inn Express in Yreka from 6-8 p.m to inform water users and gather input from them. According to a recent press release, the water trust would like to encourage water users in the Shasta Valley to attend the workshop if they are interested in learning more about opportunities to lease or sell their water rights.
The water trust is a collaborative effort between the Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District (RCD) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC).
According to Adriane Garayalde, administrator for the Shasta RCD, the two organizations have spent several years working on the development of the program and hope that it can become an independent entity in the near future.
“Water is the life-blood of Siskiyou County’s agricultural community and if we’re going to bring back the salmon, we need to make sure it’s done in a way that ensures our ag community is kept whole,” Shasta River Water Trust coordinator Amy Campbell said. “I hope this program is one tool that can be used to bring the salmon back and keep our ranches intact.”
Campbell told the Daily News the program will aim to provide water users in the Shasta Valley with an incentive-based approach that helps relieve landowners from regulatory pressures while fairly compensating them for the water they leave in the river for fish.
“The water trust will work with willing sellers or leasees only and will pay fair market value for water that can provide cold water benefit for fish,” Campbell added.
While the concept of water trusts are fairly new, the Scott River Water Trust has been working with water users in the Scott River watershed for five years. The release said the Shasta River program will borrow from what has been learned in the Scott and from similar efforts in the Columbia River basin.
Garayalde said that the program is still in its infancy, and it has procured one private donor and one nonprofit donor so far.  Funding is a very large part of the picture in a program that seeks to pay people for leaving water in the rivers, and she said the program is currently recruiting donors and hopes to bring more on board in the near future.
Garayalde said the program is now at the stage where water user input is needed, which is one of the purposes of the meeting on Jan. 24.
“We want to get an idea of how much interest there is initially so we have a better idea of our potential scope,” she said.
She added that water user input will be very important in developing the final structure of the program.
The Scott River Water Trust became the first water trust in the state of California in 2007. The goal of the program is “to improve stream flow for salmon and steelhead at critical periods of their life cycles in the Scott River stream system while economically protecting Scott Valley’s family farms and ranches,” its website says.
Sari Sommarstrom, executive director for the Scott River program, spoke in Sacramento at a legislative information hearing on the topic, “Coho Salmon on the Brink: Understanding the Depth of the Crisis and Recovery Strategies.”
At the meeting she told legislators, “The Scott River Water Trust offers a win/win tool for fish and agriculture, using good data to target flow needs and coho sites.”
Sommarstrom said streams with marginal flows will improve immediately with the added flow from leased water, creating better habitat for salmon and steelhead to flourish.
For more information about the Shasta River Water Trust, contact Campbell at (530) 926-3281.
For more information about the Scott River Water Trust, contact Sommarstrom at (530) 467-5783 or visit www.scottwatertrust.org.

Superfund Report - 01/23/2012

EPA Moves To Clarify Hazardous Waste Rules, Opening Door To Controversy

EPA has launched a broad new rulemaking to clarify and consolidate its regulations for hazardous waste generators, a move that one industry source says could make it easier for some companies to comply with disparate requirements, but which also could open the door to controversial policy changes.725 words

 

Maine Plan To Narrow Landmark Take-Back Programs Draws Mixed Feedback

A recent report from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that recommends ending some of the state's landmark product stewardship programs -- citing high costs and in some cases low recycling rates -- is drawing strong criticism from national and state environmental groups but praise from industry groups.1646 words

 

EPA, Local Agencies Offer New Guides For Energy Projects On Brownfields

EPA and a group representing local government cleanup officials are floating new guidance to help municipal and other entities decide how and whether to support development of renewable energy facilities on contaminated brownfields sites -- a key agency goal.1210 words

 

California Cleanup Program Cuts Draw Concerns Amid Redevelopment Fight

California Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) budget proposal to eliminate several toxics department "brownfield" cleanup programs in the state may have a negative impact on cities facing new cleanup oversight authority as a result of the state's elimination of redevelopment agencies, sources say. Although sources note most redevelopment groups do not currently rely on the department programs slated to be cut, the elimination of redevelopment agencies may force local officials to reassess the programs' worth, sources say.642 words

 

House Lawmakers Eye Fix To Appropriators' Waste Manifest Objections

House Republicans are working to amend Senate-approved legislation that would allow EPA to follow through on its long-pending plans to modernize its system for tracking hazardous waste shipments by providing congressional appropriators oversight authority over the program.617 words

 

GOP Urges EPA To Stall Chemical Reporting Rule Amid Industry Concerns

Republican lawmakers are calling on EPA to delay the submission period for data required under the agency's new industrial chemicals reporting rule by four months just weeks before the Feb. 1 start of when industry begins to provide 2011 data the rule requires.925 words

 

EPA Checks For Cleanup Mishaps After Publishing Wrong Water Standard

EPA is investigating whether an error published in the latest edition of its drinking water standards document has led to any mistakes at hazardous waste cleanup sites or drinking water facilities that would have to be corrected retroactively, an agency source says.872 words

 

EPA's New Detection Method Seen Driving Cr6 Monitoring Requirement

EPA has issued a revised method for measuring levels of hexavelent chromium (Cr6) in drinking water, which appears to resolve concerns raised by drinking water utilities while fueling speculation that the agency's upcoming Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR3) will require utilities to monitor for the ubiquitous contaminant.1350 words

 

Activists' Suit Seeks Hard Deadline For EPA To Issue Final Coal Ash Rule

Environmental and public health groups are suing EPA to try to force a hard legal deadline for the agency to issue the final version of its long-stalled coal combustion residuals (CCRs) disposal rule, arguing that EPA is ignoring a Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) requirement to periodically review and revise its waste rules.859 words

 

Industry Warns High Court Over Allowing Judges To Set Strict RCRA Fines

A natural gas distribution company is urging the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that allowed a judge, rather than a jury, to impose enhanced criminal fines for a waste law violation, warning the justices that allowing the ruling to stand would undermine defendants in a host of environmental and other enforcement actions.1247 words

 

States Press White House, DOE To Fully Fund Nuclear Cleanup Budget

State environmental commissioners are pressing the White House budget office and Energy Department (DOE) to fully fund DOE's nuclear cleanup budget next year, even as a DOE waste official warned last year that the cleanup program will likely suffer cuts in the coming years with possible breaches of cleanup milestones.470 words

 

Activists Questioning Legal Reasons For Water Data Block At Camp Lejeune

Open government and environmental groups are circulating draft letters they hope to send this week to the Defense and Health & Human Services secretaries to stress concerns and question the legal justification for the Department of the Navy's (DON) recent decision to restrict the release of water contamination data from a North Carolina base where up to 1 million people may have been exposed to toxic chemicals.1181 words

 

Army Faces NRC Scrutiny Over Depleted Uranium Pollution At Multiple Sites

The Army is working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on plans for the environmental monitoring of depleted uranium (DU) contamination at multiple sites, even as the military has raised concerns over the training restrictions the NRC has imposed at these sites and questioned NRC's jurisdiction at ranges the military continues to operate.1055 words

 

EPA Advice On Nuclear Cleanup In Japan Prompts Concerns Of Precedent

EPA is including a controversial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) guide for cleaning up after nuclear attacks on a short list of reference materials it is providing to Japanese officials seeking advice on how to remediate the Fukushima power power plant meltdown, a move that is prompting strong criticisms from environmentalists who fear such advice could set a precedent that would dramatically weaken domestic cleanup standards.1247 words

 

EPA Eyes Addition Of Nonylphenol To Toxic Release Reporting Database

EPA is weighing whether to add the commonly used detergent chemical nonylphenol (NP) to the list of substances that require reporting under federal emergency planning laws, a move the agency first suggested in the chemical action plan it released for the substance in 2010.779 words

 

IG Finds EPA Plan To Improve EDSP Falls Short Of Recommendations

EPA's Office of Inspector General (IG) says the agency's recently issued plan to improve its Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) -- known as EDSP21 -- falls short of some recent IG recommendations to improve the program's management and speed its implementation.784 words

 

GAO Call To Improve IRIS Seen Ignoring Program's Substantive Problems

Longtime observers of EPA's chemical risk assessment program are urging the agency to fix what they see as major substantive flaws with the program, such as inadequate consideration of risk uncertainty, saying a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report calling for improvements focuses too narrowly on procedural issues.1220 words

 

EPA Agrees To GAO Calls To Further Improve Risk Assessment Program

EPA is backing new calls from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to further enhance the transparency and efficiency of its chemical risk assessment program, after GAO warned EPA may face new challenges to releasing its assessments in a timely manner, such as its failure to win White House approval to respond to industry data quality challenges.664 words

 

Food Sector Joins Calls For EPA To Withdraw Dioxin Analysis From Review

Organizations representing the food and agriculture industries are joining the chemical industry in urging EPA to withdraw its dioxin risk assessment from interagency review just weeks before the agency is slated to release the document.1017 words

 

Military Researchers Advise Less Stringent Risk Level For Explosive RDX

Military researchers are suggesting that EPA and other federal agencies use a non-cancer risk level less stringent than the current EPA standard for the explosive RDX -- a contaminant at military sites -- as a result of a new modeling approach the researchers applied to both old and new data.1134 words

 

Reggie Cheatham Named Official Federal Facilities Cleanup Chief

Reggie Cheatham, a long-time EPA career employee, has been named officially to lead EPA's Federal Facilities Restoration & Reuse Office (FFRRO), after serving as acting director for more than a year, an EPA spokeswoman says.323 words

 

EPA Research Chief Paul Anastas Announces Plan To Step Down

EPA's research chief, Paul Anastas, who has led the agency's controversial chemical risk assessment program, is leaving the agency next month.696 words

 

White House Panel Urges Administration To Strengthen Regulatory Reviews

A key group of White House business advisers is urging the administration to voluntarily strengthen the process it uses to review EPA's and other agencies' rules, including increasing the use of pre-rulemaking efforts to better justify the need for new regulations and crafting mechanisms to allow permanent review of existing rules' costs and benefits.764 words

 

Industry Plans Revised Bid To Urge EPA To Craft Nanomaterials Framework

Industry groups are aiming to revise their plan for EPA to create a framework for testing and regulating nanoscale materials even as the agency continues to move forward with issuing case-by-case rules for the particles -- which present a major challenge for the agency because of the vast difference in toxicity based on small changes in their properties.1286 words

 

White House Panel Highlights Environmental Risks Of Nanoscale Materials

A White House science advisory panel is slated to highlight the importance of assessing potential environmental impacts of nanoscale materials prior to manufacturing in an upcoming report evaluating the effectiveness of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), which coordinates nanotechnology programs across EPA and other agencies.706 words

 

Lautenberg Urges USGS Study Of Fracking's Potential Seismic Risks

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) is calling for U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to launch an investigation into the seismic risks associated with hydraulic fracturing and related waste disposal activities following a series of earthquakes in Ohio that have already prompted calls for stricter EPA disposal regulations.617 words

 

Industry, GOP Fear EPA Fracking Investigations May Preempt Water Study

Industry and Republican sources are raising concerns that separate EPA investigations into whether hydraulic fracturing operations in Wyoming and Pennsylvania contaminated water supplies may preempt the finding of a broader EPA fracking study, and are also criticizing the differing approaches in the two existing investigations.1635 words

 

Despite Legal Limit, EPA Using Superfund To Address Likely Drilling Waste

EPA is using its Superfund law authority to investigate and address hazardous substances found in drinking water wells in Pennsylvania and Wyoming that the agency is signaling could have been caused by natural gas drilling, a rare move since the law has rarely been used to address oil and gas drilling operations.713 words

Inside Cal/EPA - 01/20/2012

Senator's Water Board-Reform Bills Respond To Stormwater Permit Outcry

Sen. Rod Wright (D-Los Angeles) has introduced two bills seeking to reform how the state water board conducts its business, including eliminating rules preventing board members from discussing regulations with stakeholders and requiring the board to follow Administrative Procedure Act (APA) standards, such as conducting cost-benefit analysis of rules. The bills are seen as a direct response to recent outcry from industry and local government officials who are attacking proposed statewide stormwater permits, including a controversial industrial permit.879 words

 

Activists, Industry Seen Clashing Over Ballot Measure To Weaken Prop. 26

A voter initiative that may appear on the November election ballot would ensure that California lawmakers can pass new environmental program fees by a majority vote instead of a two-thirds vote, a measure that is expected to be strongly supported by environmental groups and opposed by industry and taxpayer groups, sources said. The measure is designed to remedy what is viewed by some as a flaw in Proposition 26 -- that it does not exempt pollution mitigation fees from the definition of taxes, sources said.819 words

 

Energy Commissioner Signals Plan To Remove Biogas Regulatory Barriers

Officials with Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) Administration plan this year to pursue new policies and potentially legislation to remove regulatory barriers to widespread biogas production in the state, which is expected to allow the gas to receive substantial credit under the state's climate change and renewable power programs, a top energy commissioner indicated during his Senate confirmation hearing this week.628 words

 

DPR Eyes Revised Legal Defense In Methyl Iodide Registration Case

The Department of Pesticide Regulation Jan. 20 is slated to submit a new legal argument to an Alameda County Superior Court judge defending the agency's decision to register the controversial pesticide methyl iodide and explaining how the decision does not violate the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).619 words

 

Groups Attack CalRecycle Over Carpet Program; Prop. 26 Suit Possible

The Department of Resources, Recycling & Recovery (CalRecycle) this week adopted a carpet recycling program amid strong opposition by various groups, including taxpayer advocates who charge the program includes a likely illegal tax that violates Proposition 26.1005 words

 

Quebec May Not Be Ready For California GHG Trades, Limiting WCI Effort

Although officials with the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) -- a collaborative effort involving Canadian provinces, California and several other western states to tackle climate change -- said last week they expect Quebec to be part of California's first greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade allowance auction in August, a number of questions and doubts are emerging about whether this will be the case and, as a result, whether WCI will actually become an active program in 2012.986 words

 

CalRecycle Paint Stewardship Program May Face Industry Legal Challenge

A waste department program adopted this week requiring paint manufacturers to establish waste management and take-back programs may face a legal challenge by the paint and coatings industry, which argues that several aspects of the department's plan violate the state law creating the program. For example, the industry argues that reporting requirements go beyond what is allowed under statute. Industry officials also argue that the law requires the department to clearly spell out how a program fee will be assessed instead of eventually billing industry to cover agency costs to administer the program.1039 words

 

Brown Says Clean Energy, GHG Cuts Critical To State's Economic Growth

Gov. Jerry Brown (D) in his state-of-the-state speech this week underscored the pivotal role clean energy development and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction programs will play in the state's economic growth, saying those efforts will eventually create millions of good "green" jobs, much as the computer industry has evolved as a major employer over the past several decades.394 words

 

Groups Launch California Business Tax Initiative To Fund Clean Energy

Clean energy advocates have begun the process of trying to qualify a voter initiative to appear on California's November 2012 election ballot that would charge a new tax on businesses and use the revenue for energy efficiency and clean-energy programs. Environmentalists deem the initiative as crucial, pointing to fears that last year's expiration of a longstanding utility ratepayer charge used to fund such programs may slow the state's progress in reducing power sector greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.766 words

 

Activists Praise New Protections In DOI, California Renewable Power Pact

Environmentalists are generally praising an expanded renewable energy pact between the Department of Interior (DOI) and California for including provisions ensuring that wind, solar and other renewable projects comply with several governmental planning frameworks aimed at minimizing impacts to plant and animal species -- provisions they found sorely lacking in an initial 2009 federal-state agreement.908 words

 

EPA Urged To Scrap Zero-Emission Credit For EVs In 2017-2025 GHG Rule

Some auto groups are urging U.S. EPA to revise its proposed light-duty vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) and fuel economy rules for model years 2017-2025 by scrapping a policy that credits electric vehicles (EVs) as emitting zero GHGs, saying it fails to account for GHGs resulting from power plant electricity generation necessary to charge the vehicles. But American car companies are strongly opposing this recommendation.901 words

 

CPUC Eyes Bolstering Home Energy Efficiency With Loans, Bill Repayment

California energy regulators may approve a model program that would offer residential customers bank loans to make their homes more energy efficient, with loan repayments included in their monthly utility bills. Experts say the program would represent the country's first statewide "on-bill repayment" (OBR) system, though some local governments and utilities across the country have implemented such mechanisms.969 words

Risk Policy Report - 01/17/2012

GAO Call To Improve IRIS Seen Ignoring Program's Substantive Problems

Longtime observers of EPA's chemical risk assessment program are urging the agency to fix what they see as major substantive flaws with the program, such as inadequate consideration of risk uncertainty, saying a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report calling for improvements focuses too narrowly on procedural issues.1216 words

 

EPA, California Sign Agreement To Share Green Chemistry Assessment Data

EPA has signed an agreement with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to exchange data and help the state in its fledgling green chemistry program, which agency officials view as a potential model for national chemical policy reforms.841 words

 

Military Researchers Advise Less Stringent Risk Level For Explosive RDX

Military researchers are suggesting EPA and other federal agencies use a non-cancer risk level that is less stringent than the current EPA standard for the explosive RDX -- a contaminant at military sites -- as a result of a new modeling approach the researchers applied to both old and recently reported data.1135 words

 

EPA's New Detection Method Seen Driving Cr6 Monitoring Requirement

EPA has issued a revised method for measuring levels of hexavelent chromium (Cr6) in drinking water, which appears to resolve concerns raised by drinking water utilities while fueling speculation that the third iteration of the agency's Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR3) will require utilities to monitor for the contaminant.1346 words

 

Lautenberg Urges USGS Study Of Fracking's Potential Seismic Risks

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) is calling for U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to launch an investigation into the seismic risks associated with hydraulic fracturing and related waste disposal activities following a series of earthquakes in Ohio that have already prompted calls for stricter EPA disposal regulations.614 words

 

White House Panel Highlights Environmental Risks Of Nanoscale Materials

A White House science advisory panel is slated to highlight the importance of assessing potential environmental impacts of nanoscale materials prior to manufacturing in an upcoming report evaluating the effectiveness of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), which coordinates nanotechnology programs across EPA and other agencies.704 words

 

NTP Finalizes New Carcinogen Listing Process Despite Industry Concerns

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has finalized a new process for creating its biennial list of carcinogens -- despite industry charges that the changes will do little to resolve their concerns over NTP's controversial recent listing of formaldehyde as a human carcinogen and styrene as a "reasonably anticipated" one.1199 words

 

Industry, GOP Fear EPA Fracking Investigations May Preempt Water Study

Industry and Republican sources are raising concerns that separate EPA investigations into whether hydraulic fracturing operations in Wyoming and Pennsylvania contaminated water supplies may preempt the finding of a broader EPA fracking study, and are also criticizing the differing approaches in the two existing investigations.1663 words

 

EPA Weighs Setting Possible First-Time Water Quality Criteria For Bromide

EPA is weighing whether to develop first-time water quality criteria for bromide, a pollutant found in wastewater from hydraulic fracturing operations as well as discharges from cooling towers and emissions control technologies at coal-fired power plants.1210 words

 

EU Industry Sustains Charges Green Chemistry Rules May Violate WTO

European Union (EU) industry officials are continuing to charge that the California toxics department's draft green chemistry regulations may conflict with a "technical barriers to trade" (TBT) agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO). EU officials say the department should ensure that WTO countries are allowed to comment on the department's plan as it inches closer to completion.960 words

 

California Ballot Seeks Biotech Food Labels Modeled On Toxics Program

Environmentalists are seeking to qualify a voter initiative on California's November 2012 election ballot that would require special labels for food that contains genetically engineered ingredients -- due in part to concern that EPA and other agencies have not adequately regulated the substances.747 words

 

Industry Plans Revised Bid To Urge EPA To Craft Nanomaterials Framework

Industry groups are aiming to revise their plan for EPA to create a framework for testing and regulating nanoscale materials even as the agency continues to move forward with issuing case-by-case rules for the particles -- which present a major challenge for the agency because of the vast difference in toxicity based on small changes to their properties.1303 words

Water Policy Report - 01/16/2012

Fearing EPA Nonpoint Limits, Farms Ask Congress To Block Settlement Talks

Agriculture industry officials are calling on Congress to apply oversight pressure to scuttle ongoing settlement talks between EPA and environmentalists over the agency's role in approving and administering so-called areawide waste treatment plans, fearing the imminent pact could provide EPA with new authority to regulate nonpoint sources.895 words

 

State Board Seeks Data Before Ruling On Air Limits In Novel Water Permit

A North Carolina permit review board Jan. 11 delayed ruling on a novel state water permit that seeks to regulate ammonia air releases from a large poultry farm and instead remanded the permit to an administrative law judge (ALJ) for an evidentiary hearing to decide if the emissions constitute a "discharge" that can be regulated in the permit.1411 words

 

EPA's New Detection Method Seen Driving Cr6 Monitoring Requirement

EPA has issued a revised method for measuring levels of hexavelent chromium (Cr6) in drinking water, which appears to resolve concerns raised by drinking water utilities while fueling speculation that the third iteration of the agency's Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR3) will require utilities to monitor for the contaminant.1348 words

 

Utilities Eye NRC Report To Boost Push For Potable Reuse Of Wastewater

Water utilities in arid regions are hopeful a new report from the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council (NRC) that finds direct recycling of heavily treated wastewater into drinking water supplies is as safe or safer than current drinking water sources could boost EPA's involvement in developing a national potable reuse program.1187 words

 

High Court Appears Poised To Allow Judicial Review Of EPA Water Orders

The Supreme Court appears poised to allow recipients of EPA Clean Water Act (CWA) orders to challenge them in court before the agency seeks to enforce them, a move that at least one high court justice says could force EPA to revise its enforcement system to allow for more review of its findings.1204 words

 

High Court Poised To Decide Whether To Review California Stormwater Suit

The Supreme Court could announce as soon as Jan. 17 whether it will review a closely watched case that municipalities say sets a dangerous precedent by making them liable for nonpoint source pollution that flows through their stormwater systems.805 words

 

Judge Rules Against Discovery In Landmark Chesapeake TMDL Challenge

A federal judge has allowed a controversial industry report on pollution in the Chesapeake Bay to be added to the record in an ongoing challenge to EPA's regional cleanup plan for the bay, but the judge has denied an industry request for additional discovery, allowing the landmark test of EPA's authority to set such pollution limits to move to summary judgment.865 words

 

Court To Rule On Nutrient Criteria Despite EPA Pledge To Withdraw Rule

A federal district court judge is poised to rule in a consolidated legal challenge to EPA's landmark numeric nutrient criteria for Florida's inland lakes and streams even though state regulators and legislators are working to finalize their own criteria that EPA has indicated it is willing to accept, effectively rendering the litigation moot.1332 words

 

Activists Revising Petition Challenging Florida Numeric Nutrient Criteria

Environmentalists intend to revise their petition to a Florida administrative law panel seeking to overturn a pending rule that would establish numeric nutrient criteria in the state in order to add objections that last-minute changes to the rule would significantly narrow the universe of waterbodies that would be subject to the criteria.574 words

 

EPA Seeks To Improve Biological Protections To Address Key Water Risks

EPA and states are working to strengthen local programs for assessing waters' biological health and protecting them, programs that the agency says are not as advanced as those to address toxic chemicals but that are increasingly important to address nutrient pollution, climate change and other emerging water quality risks.1170 words

 

Idaho Suit Could Force First Application Of Oregon Fish Consumption Levels

Idaho environmentalists have filed suit to force EPA to approve or deny the state's 2006 human health water quality criteria for toxics, a move that is likely just a first step in a legal battle to push the state to include controversial fish consumption rates in the criteria similar to those used in Oregon and touted by EPA as a national model.648 words

 

Setting Key State Precedent, EPA Backs Montana's Variance For Nutrients

In a move that could provide a model for states seeking flexible implementation of water quality criteria for nutrients, EPA has approved Montana's statewide variance for its draft criteria, concluding a years-long dialogue between the state and the agency over whether such a broad variance is allowed under the Clean Water Act (CWA).1249 words

 

Listing Of Gulf Waters Undermines EPA 'Credibility' With Key Farm Groups

The Iowa Department of Agriculture and several state farm groups are calling on EPA to drop its ongoing efforts to list three segments of the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana as impaired for low oxygen levels, saying the move further undermines the agency's credibility with the agriculture sector, as well as the agency's vow to have states address the issue.1505 words

 

EPA Agrees To GAO Calls To Further Improve Risk Assessment Program

EPA is backing new calls from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to further enhance the transparency and efficiency of its chemical risk assessment program, after GAO warned EPA may face new challenges to timely release of its assessments, such as its failure to win White House approval to respond to industry data quality challenges.1346 words

 

TRI Finds Increased Toxics Releases in 2010, Mostly Due To Mining Industry

EPA's latest annual analysis of its Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) finds a 16 percent increase in toxic substance releases and disposals in 2010 compared to its 2009 TRI data, which the agency largely attributes to increased releases from the metal mining industry.498 words

 

EPA Weighs Setting Possible First-Time Water Quality Criteria For Bromide

EPA is weighing whether to develop first-time water quality criteria for bromide, a pollutant found in wastewater from hydraulic fracturing operations as well as discharges from cooling towers and emissions control technologies at coal-fired power plants.1211 words

 

Industry, GOP Fear EPA Fracking Investigations May Preempt Water Study

Industry and Republican sources are raising concerns that separate EPA investigations into whether hydraulic fracturing operations in Wyoming and Pennsylvania contaminated water supplies may preempt the finding of a broader EPA fracking study, and are also criticizing the differing approaches in the two existing investigations.1576 words

 

Activists Hope Fracking Disposal Quakes Bolster Push To End RCRA Waiver

Environmentalists are pointing to a series of earthquakes in Ohio believed to be caused by a disposal well used to store wastewater from hydraulic fracturing natural gas extraction operations to bolster their efforts to urge EPA to reverse a long-standing exemption excluding oil and gas wastewater from hazardous waste regulation.1223 words

 

Advocates Seek Fracking Moratorium Until Health Risks Understood

Health researchers and environmentalists are calling for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing until researchers have more comprehensive data on the health effects of the controversial drilling practice.571 words

 

GAO Slated To Probe EPA Pretreatment Program Amid Water Utility Split

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is launching a probe of EPA's effluent limitation guidelines (ELG) program under the Clean Water Act (CWA), and though the scope is not yet clear, sources say the study will likely examine the portion of the ELG program dealing with pretreatment standards - which has long been the source of divisions among wastewater utilities.1048 words

 

EPA, California Sign Agreement To Share Green Chemistry Assessment Data

EPA has signed an agreement with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to exchange data and help the state in its fledgling green chemistry program, which agency officials view as a potential model for national chemical policy reforms.846 words

 

Activists Press For Water Board Role In California Green Chemistry Rules

California's toxics department should collaborate closely with state water regulators in developing green chemistry regulations and establishing lists of "chemicals of concern" in products to ensure that emerging contaminants causing water quality violations are adequately regulated under the program, environmentalists argue in their latest comments to the department.714 words

 

EPA Moves Toward Watershed-Based Pollution Controls Spur Skepticism

The Obama EPA is stepping up efforts to adopt more watershed-based pollution controls rather than site-specific requirements, particularly for addressing nutrient pollution - an approach that may better address non-point sources that until now have been largely unregulated.1377 words

 

Despite Patchwork Of State Fracking Rules, Industry Resists EPA Measures

A growing patchwork of varying rules from states struggling to keep pace with the natural gas boom and gain public confidence in the safety of hydraulic fracturing is prompting activists to call for EPA intervention with national rules, but industry is pushing back against any federal rules - despite typically opposing a patchwork state regulations.1504 words

 

Budget Cuts May Pose 'Nightmare' For EPA, State Regulators In 2012

Steep budget cuts for EPA and state environmental agencies could create major problems for environmental programs, a broad range of sources say, with declining quality in permits and rules leading to weaker pollution controls and lesser oversight and enforcement to protect against serious violations of environmental laws and rules.1561 words

 

EPA's UIC Permit Program Faces Major New Duties With Limited Funds

EPA's underground injection control (UIC) program is seeing a major expansion of its responsibilities as regulators prepare to permit previously unregulated activities, including hydraulic fracturing, carbon storage and stormwater control, to protect groundwater but state officials say funding still languishes far below permit needs.1611 words

 

As EPA Rules Take Center Stage, OIRA Faces Competing Calls For Reform

With EPA's rules slated to be a key focus of the election-year debate, advocates on all sides are increasingly calling to reform the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the White House office that reviews the agency's regulations.1546 words

 

Spotlight On EPA, Election 2012 Poses Huge Stakes For Regulatory Efforts

EPA regulations - and their economic effects - are expected to remain a central focus in the 2012 presidential campaign - raising the stakes for the agency, its supporters and opponents long after the winner is known.1500 words

 

EPA, NAS Plans Eyed To Fill Gaps In Novel 'Sustainability' Approach

EPA and other scientists are looking to an upcoming agency plan for implementing its new holistic "sustainability" approach and a pending National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study to address concerns that a recently issued NAS report advising the agency to adopt the approach left gaps in how officials should proceed.1135 words

Defense Environment Alert - 01/17/2012

Military Researchers Advise Less Stringent Risk Level For Explosive RDX

Military researchers are suggesting EPA and other federal agencies use a non-cancer risk level less stringent than the current EPA standard for the explosive RDX -- a contaminant at military sites -- as a result of a new modeling approach the researchers applied to both old and new data.1138 words

 

EPA Agrees To GAO Calls To Further Improve Risk Assessment Program

EPA is backing new calls from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to further enhance the transparency and efficiency of its chemical risk assessment program, after GAO warned EPA may face new challenges to releasing its assessments in a timely manner, such as its failure to win White House approval to respond to industry data quality challenges.1345 words

 

GAO Call To Improve IRIS Seen Ignoring Program's Substantive Problems

Longtime observers of EPA's chemical risk assessment program are urging the agency to fix what they see as major substantive flaws with the program, such as inadequate consideration of risk uncertainty, saying a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report calling for improvements focuses too narrowly on procedural issues.1220 words

Department of Labor Expands Benefits Eligibility for Nuclear Workers

Department of Energy workers involved in environmental remediation at uranium mill sites should be aware of a recent expansion in compensation benefits under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA).

January 21, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) authorizes payments of compensation and health benefits to eligible nuclear weapons workers who performed environmental remediation duties at Department of Energy (DOE) mill sites and other locations around the country. This program covers employees and former employees, as well as contractors, subcontractors and certain survivors of deceased individuals.
The Director of the Division of Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation at the U.S. Department of Labor recently announced that 17 additional uranium mills around the country will receive coverage under the EEOICPA, and three mill facilities will have coverage extended to new time periods. Newly listed facilities include the following uranium processing sites: - Colorado: Grand Junction, Gunnison, Maybell, Naturita, Rifle and Slick Rock - Utah: Mexican Hat - Arizona: Tuba City and Monument Valley - New Mexico: Ambrosia Lake - Wyoming: Riverton and the Spook Site in Converse County - Idaho: Lowman - Oregon: Lakeview - Texas: Falls City Another major development in the compensation program is the extension of EEOICPA benefits eligibility to remediation workers employed in Durango, Colorado, between 1986 and 1991; Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, between 1983 and 1985 as well as 1996; and Monticello, Utah, between 1983 and 2000. These benefits will compensate workers who performed work authorized under the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act (UMTRCA) and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The EEOICPA authorizes benefits of up to $400,000 and additional medical benefits to workers who have developed radiogenic cancer, chronic silicosis, beryllium sensitivity or chronic beryllium disease while working at a covered DOE facility, atomic weapons employer, beryllium vendor, or uranium mill sites. Those involved in environmental remediation at these mill sites should be aware of this recent expansion in compensation benefits. A radiation exposure attorney can explain RECA claims eligibility and related issues to help uranium workers cope with the onset of illness caused by exposure due to uranium mining, government nuclear testing or remediation of contaminated sites. Article provided by Killian & Davis, P.C. Visit us at www.killianlaw.com --- Press release service and press release distribution provided by http://www.24-7pressrelease.com

Junior miners benefit from joint ventures

Small operations on the lookout for 'sugar daddies'

Home › Hacks ›

January 20, 2012, 9:37AM

UPDATE: Looking For a 'FireSheep' Moment, Researchers Lay Bare Woeful SCADA Security

Populist Groundswell Frustrates Globalists

January 21, 2012   dave

By Keith Johnson

Amid rising economic turmoil and social unrest, members of the global elite will convene at a ski resort in the peaceful mountains of Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum 2012 (WEF) from Jan. 25 to 29. Though not as elusive as the shadowy Bilderberg group,* the central bankers, politicians and corporate leaders who make up this body have shown themselves to be just as enthusiastic about seeing their plan for world government put into motion. However, those who come to participate in this year’s forum may not leave quite so optimistic.

According to the WEF’s Global Risks 2012 report, “The potential of the world economy may not be met due to the interplay between fiscal imbalances and demographic trends.” Citing the Occupy and Arab Spring movements as an example, the report goes on to surmise that the disappointing realities of the global economic crisis are “amplified by a growing sense that wealth and power are becoming more entrenched in the hands of political and financial elites.”

The globalist agenda is certainly on the ropes, and the 469 “experts and industry leaders” who contributed to this report are rather forthright in communicating their frustration. Early on, the authors claim that the “seeds of dystopia” have been sown and foresee a future populated by unemployed youths and a growing number of pensioners bearing down on debt-ridden governments. “It needs immediate political attention,” said WEF managing director Lee Howell, “otherwise the political rhetoric that responds to this social unease will involve nationalism, protectionism and rolling back the globalization process.”

During the five-day forum, 50 global risks will be addressed, which these so-called “experts” predict are likely to occur over the course of the next 10 years. They claim that the “severe income disparity” between rich and poor will pose the greatest danger to the world economy, followed by “chronic fiscal imbalances.” Rising greenhouse emissions and a looming water supply crisis also rank high on the list of concerns. But these much-hyped environmental threats have always been a priority on the globalist’s agenda and serve as their justification for seizing, controlling and taxing every last natural resource on the face of the planet.

The perceived danger of cyber attacks on government facilities and critical infrastructure now ranks as the fourth biggest threat to global security, according to the report. Of course that’s just a cover story for their real concern. The globalists obviously see the World Wide Web as a cog in their machine and intend to taper it down to something manageable. Their rhetoric corresponds with recent overtures by the U.S. government to enact legislation—such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—that would seek to regulate free speech over the Internet. The authors of the report actually reveal their true intentions in a section they refer to as “x-factors: emerging concerns with unknown consequences,” where they write, “The gatekeepers of the broadcast news era are gone, and the integrity and ethics of mass reporting online are increasingly unknown.”

For nearly four decades, The WEF has been a hub of globalist ideas and strategies. The 2011 forum drew the world’s top leaders including French President Nicholas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, World Bank Chief Robert Zoellick and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Other regular attendees include former President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger—still a powerful global player.

Last year, The Telegraph reported that 5,000 soldiers were deployed to reinforce the police presence during the Davos WEF 2011 event. In contrast, only 120 demonstrators braved the freezing temperatures to protest. Though a police spokesman admitted that the demonstration was “largely peaceful,” officers still deemed it necessary to fire rubber bullets and use water hoses to break up the crowd. Demonstrators responded with snowballs and lumps of ice.
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* The Bilderberg group is a Rothschild-Rockefeller-oriented annual, unofficial, by-invitation-only meeting of approximately 120 to 140  guests, mostly from North America and Europe, most of whom are bankers, politicians and heads of major corporations.
——
Keith Johnson is an independent journalist and the editor of “Revolt of the Plebs,” an alternative news website that can be found at  www.revoltoftheplebs.com.

Current Research

Iron Mountain, California

At Iron Mountain near Redding, CA research is currently focusing on a “molecular-level understanding of the metabolism of organisms involved in AMD formation”. The project is using several methods to identify the molecular community and the roles of specific organisms present. DNA sequence analysis is used to learn what organisms are in the environment and then fluorescence in-situ hybridizations (FISH) determines cell type distribution and geochemical conditions. Samples are taking from different locations such as sediments, pore fluids, free-flowing waters, and subaerial biofilms. These field samples then serve as innoculum in various media that are incubated under aerobic, microaerophillic, and anaerobic conditions. Information about growth rates, metabolic capability, and optimal growth conditions is taken from isolates which are then identified through DNA sequence analyses. Currently, analysis has identified Leptospirillum group II, Leptospirillum group III, and Ferroplasma acidarmanus. [9] Allen, E. and Banfield, J. 2005. “Community genomics in microbial ecology and evolution”. Nauture Reviews Microbiology 3:489-498. http://seismo.berkeley.edu/~jill/amd/AMDresearch.html#fieldsite

Highlights of Research Progress, Genomic Science Program

by I Gallery
Apr 19, 2010 ... Microbial Community Thriving in Acid Mine Drainage ... abandoned gold mine at Iron Mountain , one of the nation's worst Superfund sites (see ...
genomicscience.energy.gov/research/progress_metagenomics.shtml - Cached

An Archaeal Iron -Oxidizing Extreme Acidophile Important in Acid ...

by KJ Edwards - 2000 - Cited by 239 - Related articles
THE COMPOSITION OF COEXISTING JAROSITE-GROUP MINERALS AND WATER FROM THE RICHMOND MINE , IRON MOUNTAIN , CALIFORNIA. H. E. Jamieson, C. Robinson, C. N. Alpers ...

Advances in the Hydrogeochemistry and Microbiology of Acid Mine Waters

by D Nordstrom - 2000 - Cited by 39 - Related articles
refuse piles. This species optimally grew at 55°C and pH about 2. At the Iron Mountain Mine site, a new iron-oxidizing Archaeon has been found, Ferro- ...
www.informaworld.com/index/910193110.pdf

Oxidation Kinetics of Tetrathionate at Low pH: Implications for ...

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
the Iron Mountain Mine site may be intimately linked to the mechanism and rate of sulphur oxidation in different environ- ments. It is the goal of this ...
www.the-conference.com/JConfAbs/5/362.pdf - Similar

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Event
Advisory Committee for Geosciences

Spring 2012 Meeting

April 18, 2012 8:30 AM  to 
April 19, 2012 2:00 PM
Arlington

Spring Meeting of AC GEO.

Meeting Type
Advisory Committee Meeting

Contacts
Melissa J. Lane, (703) 292-8500 mlane@nsf.gov
       Preferred Contact Method: Email

NSF Related Organizations
Directorate for Geosciences

Event
CANCELLED -- Role of Science in Moving the Planet to Green Energy and a Sustainable Future

NSF Distinguished Lecture in Mathematical and Physical Sciences

January 20, 2012 2:00 PM  to 
January 20, 2012 3:00 PM
Room 110

Professor EMILY A. CARTER

Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment

Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering & Applied and Computational Mathematics

Princeton University

Martin Act Preemption, Superfund Clean-Up, Control of Church Buildings

Mary Elizabeth McGarry and Roy Reardon

"The settlement of a lawsuit is a powerful tool for revising EPA's authority and writing new regulations"

House, Senate Lawmakers Highlight Concerns with EPA “Sue & Settle” Tactic for Backdoor Regulation

- EPW Blog  Friday, January 20, 2012 (0) Comments | Print friendly | Email Us

to allow us, other members of Congress, and the public to fully understand the breadth of the Federal regulatory authority that EPA believes it can assert, please provide responses to the following questions within two weeks of the date of this letter:

 

1. Does EPA consider a ground water aquifer to be a water of the United States under the Clean Water Act?  Please explain.
 
2. Does EPA consider a ground water aquifer to be a point source?  Please explain.
 
3. Does EPA believe it has the authority under the Clean Water Act to regulate leaching of pollution into ground water?  Please explain.
 
4. Does EPA believe it has the authority under the Clean Water Act to regulate the direct discharge of pollutants into ground water?  Please explain.
 
5. According to a recent press article, an EPA spokeswoman has said section 208 of the Clean Water Act does not authorize EPA to exercise any Federal regulatory authority over nonpoint sources.  Please confirm for us that the Clean Water Act does not provide EPA with any authority to craft section 208 areawide plans or to exercise any Federal regulatory authority over nonpoint sources under section 208 or any other section of the Clean Water Act, and that section 208 is consistent with the rest of the Clean Water Act that leaves the management of nonpoint sources to the states.
 
6. Does EPA believe it has the authority under the U.S. Constitution and under the Clean Water Act to commandeer a state legislature and require a state to enact an enforceable regulatory program for nonpoint sources?  Please explain.
 
7. Does EPA believe it has the authority to withhold Federal funding from a state that is in compliance with an areawide waste treatment management plan that has been approved under section 208?  Please explain.
 
8. Does EPA believe that a requirement in section 603(f) of the Clean Water Act that a state fund projects that are consistent with a state’s plan developed under section 208 of the Act constitutes authority to require a state to enact an enforceable regulatory program for nonpoint sources?  Please explain.
 
9. Does EPA believe that a requirement under 603(f) of the Clean Water Act that a state fund projects that are consistent with a state’s plan developed under section 208 of the statute constitutes authority to withhold Federal funding from a state whose areawide waste treatment management plan does not include an enforceable regulatory program for nonpoint sources?  Please explain.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. -Inhofe EPW Press Blog

---

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Recycling water

Difference engine: Waste not, want not

Jan 20th 2012, 10:37 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES

A survey done in 1980 for the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), which looked at two dozen water authorities that took their drinking water from big rivers, found this unplanned use of waste-water (known as “de facto reuse”) accounted for 10% or more of the flow when the rivers were low. Given the increase in population, de facto reuse has increased substantially over the past 30 years, says a recent report on the reuse of municipal waste-water by the National Research Council (NRC) in Washington, DC.

Along the Trinity River in Texas, for instance, water now being drawn off by places downstream of Dallas and Fort Worth consists of roughly 50% effluent. In summer months, when the natural flow of the river dwindles to a trickle, drinking water piped to Houston consists almost entirely of processed effluent.The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 sets the same standard for potable water throughout America, irrespective of whether it is derived from pristine mountain streams, recycled effluent from sewage works, or de facto reuse from upstream communities.

The recent NRC report makes it clear that any possible health hazards—caused by exposure to chemical contaminants or disease-causing microbes in reprocessed waste-water—do not exceed (and, in some cases, may be significantly lower than) the risks inherent in existing drinking water.

Finding the money to keep clean water flowing, though, is quite another matter. A decade ago, the EPA reckoned that, with many of the country’s drinking-water and sewage works coming to the end of their working lives, up to $450 billion would need to be invested in new plant between 2002 and 2020. If there is to be greater reliance on recycled waste-water, that may not be nearly enough.

Getting the great American public to accept having waste-water in its drinking supply is a bit of a problem, too. As the NRC report notes, people have been trained for generations to think of their water supply and their waste disposal as two quite separate, and unrelated, undertakings. No-one is sure how they will come to terms, if ever, with the notion that the two are part and parcel of the same thing. But if only people could be persuaded to take the taste test, your correspondent is certain they, too, would find that recycled waste-water can be every bit as sparkling and tasty as the freshest mountain dew.

Shadows On High: "We The People" Not "We The Corporations"

By Brian Rothenberg on January 20, 2012 11:12 AM

DHS to Focus on Providing Intelligence to Local Governments, Private Sector to Counter Domestic Threats

January 21, 2012 in Featured

Department Of Homeland Security Should Change Its Intelligence Mission, Experts Say (Huffington Post):

Nearly a decade after Congress created the Department of Homeland Security to prevent other 9/11-style terrorist attacks, a bipartisan group of experts says it is time for the agency to shift its focus from foreign enemies to working with local governments and the private sector so it can secure the border and critical infrastructure from homegrown threats. “The growth of our expectations of domestic security, and the evolution of threats away from traditional state actors toward non-state entities — drug cartels, organized crime, and terrorism are prominent examples — suggest that the DHS intelligence mission should be threat agnostic,” said a report by the Aspen Homeland Security Group, which is co-chaired by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “Though the impetus for creating this new agency, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, was clearly terrorism-based, the kinds of tools now deployed, from border security to cyber protection, are equally critical in fights against emerging adversaries,”‘ the report continued. In prepared testimony to be given Wednesday afternoon to the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism, HUMINT, Analysis, and Counterintelligence, Chertoff and two other Aspen Group members — including Philip Mudd, a former FBI official who is now deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center — stressed the unique role of DHS. They noted that in a time of budget constraints, DHS must focus on its “core competency while the agency sheds intelligence functions less central” to its mission.

Hearing before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission” (Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group):

In all these domains, public and private, DHS customers will require information with limited classification; in contrast to most other federal intelligence entities, DHS should focus on products that start at lower classification levels, especially unclassified and FOUO, and that can be disseminated by means almost unknown in the federal intelligence community (phone trees, Blackberries, etc.).

Partnerships and collaboration will be a determining factor in whether this refined mission succeeds. As threat grows more localized, the prospect that a state/local partner will generate the first lead to help understand a new threat, or even an emerging cell, will grow. And the federal government’s need to train, and even staff, local agencies, such as major city police departments, will grow. Because major cities are the focus for threat, these urban areas also will become the sources of intelligence that will help understand these threats at the national level, DHS might move toward decentralizing more of its analytic workforce to partner with state/local agencies in the collection and dissemination of intelligence from the local level.

This new approach to intelligence — serving local partners’ requirements, providing intelligence in areas (such as infrastructure) not previously served by intelligence agencies, and disseminating information by new means — reflects a transition in how Americans perceive national security.

What Is the Proper Role of the Courts?

In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton referred to the judiciary as the least dangerous branch of government, stating that judges under the Constitution would possess “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.” Yet recently, the courts have wielded great power, directing the President on questions as monumental as how to conduct war, and micromanaging the states concerning even the most minute details of local school and prison operations. What is the proper role of the courts?

"[T]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." - James Madison, Federalist 47

The Founders studied political philosophy and the rise and fall of nations throughout history. When confronted with tyranny on their own shores, they rebelled against the dangerous consolidation of power in the British monarchy. Through reason and experience, they recognized that government can threaten liberty by abusing its powers, and they sought to avoid this by separating powers in the U.S. federal government. They believed that this separation of powers, coupled with a system of checks and balances, would make “ambition … counteract ambition.” Rather than depending on officeholders to restrain themselves (which given the power of ambition is unsafe), or on rules set down on paper (which are too easily ignored), the Founders gave each branch authority to exercise, and an interest in defending its own prerogatives, and thereby limited the ability of any one branch to usurp power.

Accordingly, the Founders vested the legislative power (the power to make the laws) in Congress, the executive power (the power to enforce the laws) in the President, and the judicial power (the power to interpret the laws and decide concrete factual cases) with the courts. But even these powers were not unfettered. Federal courts, for example, can hear only “cases or controversies”: they cannot issue advisory opinions. The courts cannot expound on a law of their choosing or at the request of even the President himself, but must wait for a genuine case between actual aggrieved parties to be properly presented to the court.

In explaining judicial power under the Constitution, Hamilton noted that the courts would have the authority to determine whether laws passed by the legislature were consistent with the fundamental and superior law of the Constitution. If a law was contrary to the Constitution, then it was void. Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court agreed, famously announcing its authority to rule on the validity of laws—known as judicial review—in the case of Marbury v. Madison. In weighing the validity of a provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

"Those who framed the Constitution chose their words carefully; they debated at great length the most minute points. The language they chose meant something. It is incumbent upon the Court to determine what that meaning was." Attorney General Edwin Meese
July 9, 1985

But the Marbury Court did not claim that the courts possessed the exclusive or supreme authority to interpret the constitutionality of laws. The other branches of government are also legitimately responsible for interpreting the Constitution. The President, for example, takes an oath to support the Constitution, and carries out this oath by determining which laws to sign. While the President may sign or veto legislation for political or policy reasons, the President faithfully discharges his oath by vetoing legislation if he believes that it would violate the Constitution. If the law was signed by one of his predecessors, a President may engage in constitutional interpretation by choosing not to enforce it if he believes it to be unconstitutional.

Thus, President Thomas Jefferson ordered his Attorney General not to enforce the Alien and Sedition Acts because he believed that they violated the First Amendment. Jefferson did this even though some courts had held that the Acts were constitutional. Jefferson’s action is an early practical example of the President using his independent role and judgment to interpret the Constitution.

Members of Congress also take an oath to support the Constitution. Congress interprets the Constitution by deciding which laws to enact. Congress may (and does) choose to enact or reject legislation for political or policy reasons, but when its Members reject legislation that would violate the Constitution, they are acting in accordance with their oaths.

That is how our system is supposed to work. But over time, the Supreme Court has grabbed power by declaring that “the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution.” The Supreme Court has even gone so far as to declare that its decisions that interpret the Constitution are the supreme law of the land.

Unfortunately, the political branches have largely acceded to these bloated claims. For example, when Congress was considering the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act—popularly known as McCain-Feingold—which imposed numerous restrictions on election-related speech, its Members delivered speeches acknowledging that provisions of the Act were likely unconstitutional. That should have ended the debate.

But some Members surprisingly went on to state that questions of constitutionality were for the Supreme Court, not Congress, to decide, and that Congress should pass the legislation because it was too important not to enact. This was a flagrant abdication of Congress’s role in determining the constitutionality of legislation.

Similarly, when President George W. Bush signed the legislation, he issued a statement asserting that he expected the courts to resolve his “reservations about the constitutionality” of provisions of the Act. This once again left the courts to answer constitutional questions that the President could have and should have decided himself. Thus, by the acquiescence of Congress and the President, the weakest branch has largely succeeded in its self-anointed claim of supremacy.

The federal courts have not only grabbed power. They have also changed how judges carry out one of the core function of the judiciary: interpreting laws. The proper role of a judge in a constitutional republic is a modest one. Ours is a government of laws and not men. This basic truth requires that disputes be adjudicated based on what the law actually says, rather than the whims of judges.

In determining whether a contested law is consistent with the Constitution, judges act within their proper judicial power when they give effect to the original public meaning of the words of the law and the Constitution. This necessarily means that judges acting in accordance with their constitutional duties will at times uphold laws that may be bad policy, and strike down laws that may be good policy. This is because judicial review requires the judge to determine not whether the law leads to good or bad results, but whether the law violates the Constitution.

In recent decades, judges have engaged in judicial activism, deciding cases according to their own policy preferences rather than by applying the law impartially according to its original public meaning. They have become enamored of ideas like “living constitutionalism,” the theory that the Constitution evolves and changes not through the amendment process set out in the Constitution itself, but as a result of the decisions of judges who supposedly serve as the supreme social arbiters. They have drawn on external sources like foreign laws when the outcome they desired did not comport with the original public meaning of the law under review.

"The danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion … but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day." - Joseph Story
1833

Liberal activist Justice William Brennan famously said that “With five votes you can do anything around here”—five votes being a majority of the Supreme Court. Living up to Brennan’s boast, the federal courts have awarded the federal government power to regulate matters well beyond its constitutional authority. The courts themselves have taken over school systems and prisons for decades at a time, created new rights found nowhere in the Constitution, whittled away at constitutional rights (like property rights) that they apparently dislike, and asserted that they have the authority to decide questions concerning how to conduct the War on Terror that are constitutionally reserved to Congress and the President.

The courts have increasingly intervened on what are properly political questions. They have thereby undermined the ability of the American people to decide important issues through their elected representatives. Not surprisingly, the courts have become increasingly politicized institutions, and the nomination and confirmation of judges has also been politicized.

The Constitution is resilient, and it provides its own mechanism for renewal. The President nominates, and the Senate confirms, federal judges to serve during good behavior. If America is to be again a country of laws, and not of men, the people must demand that their President nominate and Senators confirm only judges who will conform to the proper role of a judge, and rule based upon the words and the original public meaning of the Constitution.

Robert Alt is the Deputy Director of and Senior Legal Fellow in the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Enduring Truths

• Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 78, “The Judiciary Department,” and No. 81, “The Judiciary Continued, and the Distribution of the Judicial Authority.”
  Hamilton explains the importance of an independent judicial branch and discusses the meaning of judicial review. Thought by Hamilton to be “the least dangerous branch,” the judiciary has neither the ability nor the resources to create and enforce laws. It remains the “proper and peculiar province” of the courts to interpret statutes and determine whether they comport with the Constitution.
• Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Book 3, Chapter IV, “Who Is the Final Judge or Interpreter in Constitutional Controversies.”
  One of the cornerstones of American jurisprudential interpretation, Commentaries provides a deep and methodical examination of the Constitution and reveals how the Constitution was viewed and interpreted after its adoption. In Chapter IV, Justice Story explains the nature of judicial review and sets forth a philosophy of judicial restraint.
• Edwin Meese, “Before the American Bar Association.” July 9, 1985, Washington D.C.
  In the first in a series of historic speeches, Attorney General Edwin Meese discussed the proper role of the Supreme Court and the singular importance of enforcing the Constitution’s original meaning. The proper way to interpret the Constitution is for judges to discern the original meaning of the constitutional text as it was written and publicly understood at the time of ratification. Because of this speech and the vigorous debate that followed, many judges have returned to a jurisprudence of originalism.
• Ronald Reagan, “The Investiture of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia at the White House,” September 26, 1986, Washington D.C.
  In a speech before the investiture of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Associate Justice Scalia to the Supreme Court, President Reagan outlines the importance of judicial restraint in order to ensure that our government remains one that is governed by the people. The role of the judicial branch is to interpret the law, while the ability to enact and enforce those laws is left to the legislative and executive branches. President Reagan understood that freedom is not preserved by one branch alone. Rather, our freedom is secure only when the entirety of our constitutional system works together and no branch is given the upper hand.

Current Issues

• EXPANSION OF POWER. Todd Gaziano, Randy Barnett, and Nathaniel Stewart, “Why the Personal Mandate to Buy Health Insurance Is Unprecedented and Unconstitutional,” December 9, 2009.
  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare,” includes a mandate that all private citizens enter into a contract with a private company to purchase a good or service, or be punished by a fine labeled a “tax,” which is unprecedented in American history. For this reason, there are no Supreme Court decisions authorizing this exercise of federal power. Although it is always difficult for the Supreme Court to thwart what is perceived to be the popular will, the majority of the justices who are inclined to preserve the system of enumerated powers and adhere to the original meaning of the text of the Constitution will have little inclination or incentive to stretch the Commerce Clause to uphold the unconstitutional scheme presented in Obamacare.
• JUDICIAL ACTIVISM. Robert Alt and Hans von Spakovsky, “The Liberal Mythology of an ‘Activist’ Court: Citizens United and Ledbetter,” June 15, 2010.
  Liberals are currently engaged in a concerted effort to redefine judicial activism. Rather than accepting the true definition of judicial activism—when a judge applies his or her own policy preferences to uphold a statute or other government action that is clearly forbidden by the Constitution—liberals now apply the term any time a statute is struck down or a court delivers an unfavorable decision. This new tactic is on display in the Left’s response to two major Supreme Court cases: Citizens United v. FEC and Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. These cynical and derisive attacks are unfair to the justices who participated in these decisions and injure the public’s faith and confidence in the judicial system.
• ELECTED JUDICIARY. Deborah O’Malley, “A Defense of the Elected Judiciary,” September 9, 2010.
  Activist judges and activist judicial rulings have led to the increasing politicization of judicial selection. A well-funded movement advocates “merit” selection in which unelected, unaccountable experts and special interests recommend the appointment—and in some cases actually select—judges as a way to combat politicization. This process simply moves the politics behind closed doors. Judicial elections are subject to potential flaws, but there are also due-process checks in that system. Judicial elections better meet the goals of promoting judicial independence and assuring public accountability than does so-called merit selection.

James Madison, Federalist No. 49, 1788

Posted on January 20, 2012 by The Dubuque Town Crier

Speaking of the need for the Constitution:

“[I]t is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government.” –James Madison, Federalist No. 49, 1788

“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.” –John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

The American people to take a stand against President Obama’s abuse of power.
Under Article II, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution, the President has the power to fill vacancies that may happen during Senate recesses, as Gaziano writes. In this case, President Obama was seeking to fill the vacancy in the CFPB, a new agency that has come under significant criticism given its unparalleled powers to issue expansive regulations with virtually no accountability. Republicans in the Senate, to date, have refused to confirm the President’s nominees to head up the CFPB, vowing to block Senate approval until reforms are made to the agency. So President Obama has decided to act without their approval by attempting to make a recess appointment. The trouble is that Congress is not in a recess because the House of Representatives never consented, as required under the Constitution, Article I, section 5. That means that the President simply does not have the power to make this appointment. Gaziano explains the implications of the President’s actions:

[The recess appointment] power has been interpreted by scores of attorneys general and their designees in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel for over 100 years to require an official, legal Senate recess of at least 10-25 days of duration. (There are a few outlier opinions, never sanctioned by the courts, that suggest a recess of six to seven days might be enough–but never less than that.)

The President’s purported recess appointment of Cordray would render the Senate’s advice and consent role to normal appointments almost meaningless. It is a grave constitutional wrong that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has already denounced. But it fits a pattern of extra-constitutional abuse by the White House that seems more interested in energizing a liberal base than safeguarding the office of the presidency.

Why take such action? The President says it’s because he can’t wait for Congress to act on behalf of the American people. The truth is that the President is hell bent on ramming through his agenda, and he is entirely unwilling to compromise with the duly elected representatives who sit in the House and Senate. By circumventing the Senate and appointing Cordray, the President can ensure that his big-government regulatory agenda is enacted without the reforms that Congress is demanding. Unfortunately, the Cordray appointment is not the only example of the President’s wanton, unilateral actions.

Apart from Cordray, the President also plans to make three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board without Senate approval, which will fundamentally alter the makeup of the board and enable the President to realize his Big Labor agenda. That means an unrestrained push to unionize businesses at all costs and punish companies that seek to grow in non-union states (as was attempted in the Boeing case) — even if it means harming both workers and the economy. And in the case of environmental regulations, immigration law, No Child Left Behind, the auto bailout, the selective enforcement of voting rights laws, and the regulation of the Internet (among others), the Obama Administration has in fact enacted its agenda via legislative fiat time and time again.

In an interview last month with 60 Minutes, the President gave warning of his intentions to preside over an imperial presidency for the next year. “What I’m not gonna do is wait for Congress,” he said. “So wherever we have an opportunity and I have the executive authority to go ahead and get some things done, we’re just gonna go ahead and do ‘em.”

“The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.” –Ronald Reagan
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Shasta Lake pot rules

"We are looking at our ordinance and taking out all of the requirements for permitting," said Carla Thompson, development services director.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - (Mealey's) When a private attorney is temporarily retained by the government to work with or under government employees, that attorney is entitled to the same qualified immunity that government employees receive, the attorney representing Steve A. Filarsky told the U.S. Supreme Court Jan. 17 (Steve A. Filarsky v. Nicholas B. Delia, No. 10-1018, U.S. Sup.) (lexis.com subscribers may access Supreme Court briefs for this case).

(Oral arguments transcript.  Document #73-120210-002T.)

"Petitioner may assert qualified immunity on the same terms as the fire department officials, because he was working side-by-side with them and under their supervision on a personnel investigation.  And this is really exactly the situation that the Court reserved and anticipated in Richardson [v. McKight (521 U.S. 399, 407 [1997])] [enhanced version available to lexis.com subscribers / unenhanced version available from lexisONE Free Case Law], that when you have a situation where private and government workers work closely together and you deny qualified immunity to the private person, it would directly affect the ability of the government employees to do their jobs." 
"That rule comports with the history and policy concerns that have animated this Court's [42 U.S. Code] section 1983 and immunity jurisprudence," Patricia A. Millett of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld in Washington

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LM Home > Completion of the CERCLA Natural Resource Damage

Spotlight

Goal 4: Completion of the CERCLA Natural Resource Damage Process at the Rocky Flats Site  

Discharges of hazardous constituents to the soil and water at the Rocky Flats, Colorado, Site during nearly 50 years of nuclear weapons component production resulted in residual contamination left in the soil and water. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Responsibility Act (CERCLA) was enacted to enforce cleanup and reporting requirements on contaminated property, and places liability for damages to natural resources due to discharges of hazardous constituents with the discharger of the damaging waste. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for those damages at the Rocky Flats site. Normally, a typically long and contentious assessment of the scope and cost of the natural resource damages (NRD) is conducted before funding is sought and provided for projects to offset those damages.

In keeping with the effort to close the site ahead of schedule, DOE secured an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the State of Colorado, and Colorado’s U.S. Congressional delegation to extinguish any claim to NRD by the State. In exchange for extinguishing potential NRD claims, $10 million would be provided to protect critical upland prairie habitat on the western portion of the site that contained privately owned mineral rights (shown in the figure at right).

The funding was secured for DOE by Congress under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 in what became know locally as the Minerals Act. DOE, USFWS, and three agencies of the State of Colorado then formed the Rocky Flats Natural Resource Trustee Council to manage the use of the money.

DOE was quick to utilize the funding by purchasing three separate parcels of minerals underlying the surface lands already owned by the U.S. government. These parcels are labeled A-1, A-2, and C on the figure. The remaining funds were subsequently transferred to an interest-earning account controlled by the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment. The Trustee Council approved several other projects, including contributing to a local municipality a percentage of the purchase price of a property to the east of the site for inclusion within their protected open-space program. Another project purchased the minerals underlying a portion of the property to the northwest of the site, while gaining a donation of the remaining minerals underlying Parcel D-1.

Recently, the Trustee Council approved the use of the remaining money to buy out and extinguish mining leases and permits on all the western mining parcels except C, which was not encumbered by a mineral lease. In addition, this funding was used to leverage contributions of more than $10 million from local city and county governments to purchase the mineral rights underlying Parcels B and D-2 on the site. The deal also included purchasing the lands and minerals of the adjacent Section 16 State Land Board property and extinguishing the associated mining lease.

As was envisioned in the Minerals Act, the Rocky Flats Natural Resource Trustee Council has now protected all critical upland prairie habitat on the Rocky Flats site for future incorporation into the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge and supplemented these almost 5,000 acres with the additional 640 acres of Section 16. 

This corresponds to Goal 4 of LM's Goals—
Optimize the use of land and assets.
Click here to view all of LM's Goals and Performance Measures

Technology Innovation News Survey

The December 1-15, 2011 Technology Innovation News Survey has been posted to the CLU-IN web site. The Survey contains market/commercialization information; reports on demonstrations, feasibility studies and research; and other news relevant to the hazardous waste community interested in technology development.

The latest survey is available at: http://www.clu-in.org/products/tins/

Home » Policy Area » Environment » Water » Legislative and Regulatory Action

Department of Commerce Reorganization Draws Debate and Concern

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By Brydon Ross | Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 2:48 pm

Last Friday President Obama rolled out a proposal to reorganize and streamline various agencies and roles within the sprawling reach of the Department of Commerce. One aspect of the plan would move the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the jurisdiction of the Department of Interior. The move has sparked debate over reducing the federal government's size and concern that key functions of national fisheries and oceans policy will be diminished.

According to press accounts, the impetus of the announcement was centered largely on consolidating several disparate agencies with similar missions like the Small Business Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Trade and Development Agency Promotion, and the largely independent Office of the Trade Representative.The White House estimated that the consolidation would save $3 billion over 10 years and result in reductions of 1,000 to 2,000 jobs and help marginally reduce the growth in government. Little noticed during Friday's rollout was a provision that would move NOAA and its  agencies like the National Weather Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service under the Department of Interior. The President used a refrain from his State of the Union speech last year by noting,"As it turns out, the Interior Department is in charge of salmon in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in salt water."  The move caught many off guard, including Congress, with one prominent environmental group stating they were "extremely troubled" by the proposal because it would potentially minimize NOAA's independence.

Although it was created in 1970 by President Nixon, NOAA does not actually have any organic legislation to codify its existence. Thus, the Administration does not need congressional approval to reorganize NOAA unlike the other trade and business focused agencies at Commerce. The rub, however, is in the myriad laws that give the Secretary of Commerce jurisdiction over fisheries policy, marine mammal protection, coral reef protection, marine sanctuaries, ocean and weather monitoring, satellites, etc. that are not within the purview of the Department of Interior. Congress must amend a staggering amount of existing laws to comply, and that means taking away jurisdiction over NOAA and its $5 billion budget from Congressional and Senate Committees - something that is typically loathed on a bipartisan basis. A more immediate and practical example to consider is the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which is the primary federal law governing fish stocks, catch limits, and managing essential fish habitat. The complex decisions of divvying up stock allocations between commercial and recreational fishermen, establishing fishing seasons, and fishery management plans are currently regulated by the Commerce Department. What happens when a fish season were to open or close and the existing regulations or oversight mechanisms to approve or deny plans are not put in place at Interior? How would businesses plan for such a scenario? Such uncertainty has led groups representing commercial fisherman to openly question the NOAA reorganization proposal. 

Getting the details right will be incredibly important for communities and states that rely on jobs and tourism dollars from our coasts. In 2009, the seafood industry alone supported over 1 million jobs and $116 billion in sales in the U.S.

Babs and Difi Meet SOPA and PIPA: California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein are fighting on the wrong side of history in the epic battle between New and Old Media being waged over the draconian internet censorship bills known as SOPA and PIPA.

Caught between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, two of their most powerful constituencies, Thelma and Louise so far are standing with the Motion Picture Association of America and its allies over Google and its All-Right-Thinking People coalition as the Senate considers the (inhale) Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (exhale), its version of the Stop Online Piracy Act, dubbed SOPA, pending in the House.

Amid this week’s widespread web black-out and protests by tens of thousands of sites, including Wikipedia, Reddit and Google, mega-kudos to Austin reporter Stephen Webster, who used the opensecrets.org data base of the Center for Responsive Politics to tote up campaign contributions from PIPA supporters to members of the Senate and discovered both Babs and Difi in the Top 10:

While Silicon Valley may have found their voice echos on Capitol Hill more loudly than expected, what remains after Wednesday’s protest is even more telling that what provoked it: Senate Democrats are now the core pillars of support for the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), which has not otherwise engendered a strict partisan divide among lawmakers.

Far and away, the top beneficiary in the Senate from interest groups that support PIPA is Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who’s taken in just short of a million dollars from those groups, according to data from OpenSecrets.org. She’s also the most recent Senator to co-sponsor PIPA, adding her name to the list on Dec. 12. The runner-up is Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who’s taken $777,383 from PIPA-supporting interest groups, and has co-sponsored the bill since May 2011.

In fact, a list of the top 20 beneficiaries of special interest money in favor of PIPA reads like a list of the Senate’s most influential Democrats: Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) in third; Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in fourth; Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in fifth; Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the bill’s primary sponsor, in sixth; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in seventh; Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in eighth; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in ninth; and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) in tenth.

Feinstein, to her credit, at least made a failed effort to broker a compromise in the struggle. Here’s hoping she gives it another shot soon: Calbuzz stands second to no one in opposing online piracy, but we’re exactly the kind of little guy site that could get “disappeared” in a hurry, unjustly and with no right of appeal, under PIPA and SOPA, which represent a shotgun approach to dealing with a problem that wants a rifle.

Boxer, Feinstein both supported SOPA/PIPA

01.20.12 - 4:25 pm | Tim Redmond |

The grassroots and corporate tech rebellion against two Internet censorship bills was, by all accounts, a stunning success and a demonstration of the clout of online politics and web organizing -- and the emergence of Big Tech as a potential counterbalance to Big Entertainment. But it's worth noting as the dust settles that two of the biggest supporters of SOPA and PIPA were the senators from California, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein.

Raw Story points out that Boxer was a major recipeint of Hollywood money:

Far and away, the top beneficiary in the Senate from interest groups that support PIPA is Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who’s taken in just short of a million dollars from those groups, according to data from OpenSecrets.org. She’s also the most recent Senator to co-sponsor PIPA, adding her name to the list on Dec. 12.

Most of the Bay Area delegation opposed the bill. S.F.'s Nancy Pelosi was against it early on, as was Barbara Lee of Oakland. Jackie Speier of San Mateo and the South Bay's Pete Stark were also both opposed. If Lynn Woolsey, the retiring rep. from Marin, has taken a position, it's not clear what it is; she's listed by most of the anti-censorship groups as undecided.

But for the two senators, both from Northern California, the SoCal position carried the day.

Salk Professor Joanne Chory Awarded 2012 Genetics Society of America Medal

Released: 1/20/2012 5:45 PM EST
Source: Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Leader in plant biology research recognized for outstanding contributions to the field of genetics

Newswise — The Genetics Society of America (GSA) has honored Joanne Chory, Salk Institute professor and director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory and Howard H. and Maryam R. Newman Chair in Plant Biology, as the recipient of the prestigious 2012 Genetics Society of America Medal.

GSA established the Genetics Society of America Medal in 1981 to recognize mid-career researchers for outstanding contributions to the field of genetics during the previous 15 years of their careers; it is one of five awards given out annually by the prestigious organization for "distinguished service in the field of genetics."

GSA President Philip Hieter, Ph.D., said,"the individuals honored this year exemplify the seminal contributions that genetics makes to our fundamental understanding of living systems, helping point the way toward such applications as developing new treatments for human disease and increasing the yields of agricultural crops. We are delighted to honor these geneticists who have added so much not only to our field, but to society as a whole."

Chory, an expert on how plants regulate their growth, pioneered the analysis of plant responses using genetic approaches in Arabidopsis thaliana to reveal the molecular mechanisms underlying plant development. Her laboratory has led the plant field for 20 years and made major discoveries in how plants detect and respond to changes in their environment, particularly light, which has implications for the growth and development of agricultural crops in challenging environments. She elucidated how plants perceive light; identified how chloroplasts signal to the nucleus; and defined a new pathway for the biosynthesis of the plant hormone auxin. She also discovered a novel steroid hormone in plants, identified the steroid receptor and elegantly dissected the signaling network.

"The Genetics Society of America Medal is a tremendous honor and underscores Joanne's extraordinary impact and leadership in the field of plant biology," said William R. Brody, President, Salk Institute. "For more than two decades, Joanne has been a driving force in understanding how plants detect and respond to changes in the environment."

Chory has received many awards and honors throughout her career including the Award for Initiatives in Research from the National Academy of Sciences, the L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science and the Kumho Award in Plant Molecular Biology among others. In 2003, Dr. Chory was named Scientific American's Research Leader in Agriculture. She is a member of the Royal Society ,U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Joanne Chory is a foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences and is an associate member of EMBO.

In 2011, Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators named the Salk Institute as the number one research organization for plant biology in the world.
About the Genetics Society of America:
Founded in 1931, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) is the professional scientific society for genetics researchers and educators. Its nearly 5,000 members work to advance knowledge in the basic mechanisms of inheritance, from the molecular to the population level. GSA promotes research and fosters communication among geneticists worldwide through a number of GSA-sponsored conferences including the biennial conference on Model Organisms to Human Biology, an interdisciplinary meeting on current and cutting edge topics in genetics research, and annual and biennial meetings that focus on the genetics of particular model organisms. GSA publishes GENETICS, the leading journal for seminal research in the field and a new, online publication, G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, which publishes high quality foundational research, particularly research that generates useful genetic and genomic information. For more information about GSA, please visit www.genetics-gsa.org.

About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the world's preeminent basic research institutions, where internationally renowned faculty probe fundamental life science questions in a unique, collaborative, and creative environment. Focused both on discovery and on mentoring future generations of researchers, Salk scientists make groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer's, diabetes and infectious diseases by studying neuroscience, genetics, cell and plant biology, and related disciplines.

Faculty achievements have been recognized with numerous honors, including Nobel Prizes and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1960 by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, M.D., the Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark.

Federal Agency Consolidations Pose Concerns for USGC

Maintaining USTR staff dedicated to agriculture is important.

Compiled by staff 

Published: Jan 20, 2012

President Obama has requested approval from Congress to consolidate six federal trade and commerce agencies. This consolidation plan concerns the U.S. Grains Council, according to USGC Vice President of International Operations Rebecca Bratter, because of the impact it will have on agricultural trade.

"Right now the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, we work with them very closely, they have a special office for agriculture, they have a special ag negotiator who has ambassador level status and we count on that person to represent our interests in any ongoing trade negotiations," Bratter said. "For us and all of agriculture where we would like to express our concern is that this consolidation process if it goes forward as it is being proposed would fold in the office of the U.S. Trade Representative with a number of other agencies."

Those other agencies include the Small Business Administration, Export-Import Bank, Overseas Private Investment Corporation and Department of Commerce.

Bratter says the purpose of this consolidation is to help small businesses navigate through the various agencies that conduct trade. Streamlining the processes and making those easier is a good thing, however she says the concern is the office of the U.S. Trade Representative will be consumed by priorities of other departments and not have time for the ag sector, which is unique from other sectors.

"Throughout all of the worst years of the economic recession in the U.S. it was kind of recession proof, ti was one of the few sectors that continually posted growth," Bratter said. "In 2011 we had a record year; we exported about $137 billion of ag exports, which was an increase of about $20 billion from the year before. We all know ag generates jobs; they say that for every billion dollars in ag exports it supports about 8,000 jobs in the U.S. Also, we've got a number of really critical ag negotiations coming up for the Trans Pacific Partnership, there's talk about a U.S-EU free trade agreement, there is still the possibility of a Doha Round and we want to make sure that the USTR continues to have a department dedicated to agricultural trade."

The key point for USGC Bratter says is for the USTR to maintain its special power and role in U.S. agricultural trade negotiations. USGC doesn't want the USTR to get swallowed up by other agencies.

Bratter says the council wants the agency to retain its cabinet-level status, the ag negotiator to remain an ambassador and have specific staff dedicated to ag so those interests are properly represented.

RNC passes Resolution Exposing UN Agenda 21, ICLEI and “Sustainable Development”, **unanimously**

.....WHEREAS, according to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy National  sovereignty is deemed a social injustice;; now therefore be  RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee recognizes the destructive  and insidious nature of United Nations Agenda 21 and hereby exposes to the  public and public policy makers the dangerous intent of the plan;; and
therefore be it further
RESOLVED , that the U.S. government and no state or local government is
legally bound by the United Nations Agenda 21 treaty in that it has never
been endorsed by the (U.S.) Senate, and therefore be it further
RESOLVED, that the federal and state and local governments across the
country be well informed of the underlying harmful implications of
implementation of United Nations Agenda 21 destructive strategies for
policies and rejection of any grant monies attached to it, and therefore be it
further
RESOLVED, that upon the approval of this resolution the Republican National
Committee shall deliver a copy of this resolution to each of the Republican
members of Congress, all Republican candidates for Congress, all Republican
candidates for President who qualify for RNC sanctioned debates, and to
each Republican state and territorial party office.
Chief Sponsor:
Helen Van Etten
Republican National Committeewoman for Kansas
Co-­Sponsors:
Carolyn McLarty
Republican National Committeewoman for Oklahoma
Kim Lehman
Republican National Committeewoman for Iowa
Paul Reynolds
Republican National Committeeman for Alabama
Demetra DeMonte
Republican national Committeewoman for Illinois
Solomon Yue
Republican National Committeewoman for Oregon
Donna Cain
Republican National Committeewoman for Oregon
Cindy Costa
Republican National Committeewoman for South Carolina
John Sigler
Republican State Chairman for Delaware
Steve Scheffler
Republican national Committeeman for Iowa
Peggy Lambert
Republican National Committeewoman for Tennessee
Jim Bopp
Republican National Committeeman for Indiana
Bruce Ash
Republican National Committeeman for Arizona
DeMarus Carlson
Republican National Committeewoman for Nebraska

Royally screwed on the River Thames

By Mark Halper | September 9, 2011, 2:16 AM PDT

01/19/2012 11:06:44 AM EST

Virginia Supreme Court Dismisses Liability For Landfill Pollution

Posted by

LexisNexis® Mealey's™ Daily Legal News

RICHMOND, Va. - A divided Virginia Supreme Court reversed a trial court's $ 9.6 million award to a couple who sued Campbell County for contamination of wells that supplied their mobile home park by an adjacent county landfill, saying Jan. 13 that the passive, gradual seepage of leachate and landfill gas into groundwater is not covered by the statutes the plaintiffs cited (Campbell County v. Claude M. Royal, et al., No. 101168, Va. Sup.; 2012 Va. LEXIS 19). Full story on lexis.com

01/18/2012 10:52:23 AM EST

EPA chief: Global warming promotes terrorism

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Steve Milloy | 12 Comments

Egad.

Politico reports,

Environmental ills such as pollution and climate change can help foster anti-Americanism and terrorism in underdeveloped nations, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and other Obama administration officials said Friday.

“Factors like poverty and resource shortages can lead to instability,” Jackson said at the National Council for Science and the Environment’s National Conference on Environment and Security. She noted that commerce, transportation and recreation now affect the rapidly filling planet, which has limited natural resources.

As a result, she said, the U.S. faces “both an opportunity and a responsibility to ensure that economic and environmental progress reaches into the most economically challenged and environmentally polluted communities around the globe”…

“The reason 50,000 children died there in Somalia and not in Ethiopia and Kenya, [which] had environmental conditions that were just as bad if not worse, was because you had a terrorist group in charge of part of Somalia,” he said. “So you can take this tour around the world, and there are dozens of examples where the integration of environmental risk factors, human insecurity and weak governance lead to direct national security consequences for our country and the whole world.”

If feds can bust Megaupload, why bother with anti-piracy bills?

A growing battle over copyright on the internet came to a head this week as digital protests scuttled two anti-piracy bills, police arrested Megaupload's millionaire filesharing pirate, and hackers brought down the Department of Justice website.

EPA official returns to Yale

By Liliana Varman

Friday, January 20, 2012

Yale’s “father of green chemistry” announced that he will leave his position as science adviser and assistant administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development in mid-February to return to Yale.

Paul Anastas has been on public service leave from the Yale Center of Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, where he served as director before his appointment to the EPA position by President Barack Obama in 2009. In his absence, his wife Julie Zimmerman, associate professor of green engineering at Yale’s School of Engineering & Applied Sciences and the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, has taken on the role of acting director for the Center.

“I think that [Anastas’s] impact will be lasting on our organization,” said Liz Blackburn, the EPA’s science communication director for the Office of Research and Development. “I’m going to miss him immensely. You don’t often get to work with such a visionary leader and so I feel really privileged that I had this opportunity.”

Evan Beach, program manager at the Center, said Anastas’s EPA appointment initially caused some uncertainty about the future of the Center because it was unclear how much time Anastas would serve in the agency.

“It made us worry about the program here at Yale, but at the same time I personally think he was a great choice for the position because he can bring the green chemistry focus to the EPA better than anybody else could,” Beach said.

Anastas announced his departure from the EPA on Jan. 5, Blackburn said. His departure, although never discussed, was always a possibility, she said, because he has two young daughters. She added that his main reason for leaving was to spend more time with his family, as he has been at the EPA since his youngest daughter was born.

Blackburn credited Anastas with fostering a greater sense of partnership within the EPA, citing increased collaboration among the agency’s scientists. Another of his accomplishments, she added, is his “Path Forward,” a plan stating that sustainability should be one of the EPA’s major goals, and that the organization should produce “rapid, relevant and responsive” research.

Both Beach and Blackburn cited the “Green Book” — a set of recommendations for how the EPA can adopt sustainability into its work — as one of Anastas’ major contributions during his time at the agency. Beach added that Anastas has also been “instrumental” in ensuring that the agency fund programs in green chemistry and sustainability, adding that he’s noticed a trend in the EPA requiring that research projects have a sustainability element.

Several undergraduates working for the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering said they are eagerly anticipating Anastas’ return to the University.

“I am definitely excited about Dr. Anastas’ return,” said Genoa Warner ’12. “I love my research at the Center, and although I’ve never met Dr. Anastas, I’m excited to learn from him.”

Emily Hong ’14, a researcher in Zimmerman’s lab, said the University as a whole will benefit from Anastas’ return.

“No doubt he will bring back invaluable experience and expertise from his time at the EPA that can be immediately applied to the Center’s current research projects,” she added.

Anastas holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachussetts at Boston and master’s and doctoral degrees in chemistry from Brandeis University.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Global Warming and Weather Psychology - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

Jonathan Rose is chairman of the board of the Garrison Institute, president of Jonathan Rose Companies and board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Earth is warming, which is changing weather patterns and often causing localized weather volatility as opposed to localized warming. Extreme storms, droughts, intense rains, unusual amounts of snow or lack of snow are all signs of global warming. People know the weather is getting less predictable. They call it “weird weather.”

[Odd lack of alarmism at a "clean energy" discussion]

KENNEWICK, Wash. - The Pacific Northwest is not yet suffering greatly from climate change, and it's a leader in producing renewable energy.
....
Claudio Stöckle, a Washington State University professor, addressed climate change during a panel discussion, "Harvesting Clean Energy 2020: A View to the Future." He said greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
...
"The climate change picture for this region is really not too bad," Stöckle said.
...
"For our region to move a little more south is not a bad thing," he said, speaking figuratively...

- Bishop Hill blog - Only one error in IPCC reports

A video of Rajendra Pachauri with some startling statements about the recent IPCC scandals. Apparently the Himalayan glacier melting thing is the only error in the IPCC reports. The other issues aren't errors at all. Oh yes, and it's OK to use non-peer reviewed literature in IPCC reports.

New Paper in Science: Sea level 81,000 years ago was 1 meter higher while CO2 was lower « Watts Up With That?

...historically, sea level was more than a meter above its present height. This data implies that temperatures were as high as or higher than now, even though the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was much lower.

SPECIAL REPORT: More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims - Challenge UN IPCC & Gore  

Climate Depot Exclusive: 321-page 'Consensus Buster' Report set to further chill UN Climate Summit in Cancun

Wednesday, December 08, 2010By Marc Morano  –  Climate Depot

Link to Complete 321-Page PDF Special Report

INTRODUCTION:

More than 1,000 dissenting scientists (updates previous 700 scientist report) from around the globe have now challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. This new 2010 321-page Climate Depot Special Report -- updated from the 2007 groundbreaking U.S. Senate Report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming “consensus” -- features the skeptical voices of over 1,000 international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC. This updated 2010 report includes a dramatic increase of over 300 additional (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the last update in March 2009. This report's release coincides with the 2010 UN global warming summit in being held in Cancun.

The more than 300 additional scientists added to this report since March 2009 (21 months ago), represents an average of nearly four skeptical scientists a week speaking out publicly. The well over 1,000 dissenting scientists are almost 20 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The chorus of skeptical scientific voices grew louder in 2010 as the Climategate scandal -- which involved the upper echelon of UN IPCC scientists -- detonated upon on the international climate movement. "I view Climategate as science fraud, pure and simple," said noted Princeton Physicist Dr. Robert Austin shortly after the scandal broke. Climategate prompted UN IPCC scientists to turn on each other. UN IPCC scientist Eduardo Zorita publicly declared that his Climategate colleagues Michael Mann and Phil Jones "should be barred from the IPCC process...They are not credible anymore." Zorita also noted how insular the IPCC science had become. "By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication," Zorita wrote. A UN lead author Richard Tol grew disillusioned with the IPCC and lamented that it had been "captured" and demanded that "the Chair of IPCC and the Chairs of the IPCC Working Groups should be removed." Tol also publicly called for the "suspension" of IPCC Process in 2010 after being invited by the UN to participate as lead author again in the next IPCC Report. [Note: Zorita and Tol are not included in the count of dissenting scientists in this report.]

Other UN scientists were more blunt. A South African UN scientist declared the UN IPCC a "worthless carcass" and noted IPCC chair Pachauri is in "disgrace". He also explained that the "fraudulent science continues to be exposed." Alexander, a former member of the UN Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters harshly critiqued the UN. "'I was subjected to vilification tactics at the time. I persisted. Now, at long last, my persistence has been rewarded...There is no believable evidence to support [the IPCC] claims. I rest my case!" See: S. African UN Scientist Calls it! 'Climate change - RIP: Cause of Death: No scientifically believable evidence...Deliberate manipulation to suit political objectives' [Also see: New Report: UN Scientists Speak Out On Global Warming -- As Skeptics!] Geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook, a professor of geology at Western Washington University, summed up the scandal on December 3, 2010: "The corruption within the IPCC revealed by the Climategate scandal, the doctoring of data and the refusal to admit mistakes have so severely tainted the IPCC that it is no longer a credible agency."

Selected Highlights of the Updated 2010 Report featuring over 1,000 international scientists dissenting from man-made climate fears:

“We're not scientifically there yet. Despite what you may have heard in the media, there is nothing like a consensus of scientific opinion that this is a problem. Because there is natural variability in the weather, you cannot statistically know for another 150 years.” -- UN IPCC's Tom Tripp, a member of the UN IPCC since 2004 and listed as one of the lead authors and serves as the Director of Technical Services & Development for U.S. Magnesium.

“Any reasonable scientific analysis must conclude the basic theory wrong!!” -- NASA Scientist Dr. Leonard Weinstein who worked 35 years at the NASA Langley Research Center and finished his career there as a Senior Research Scientist. Weinstein is presently a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Aerospace.

“Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself -- Climate is beyond our power to control...Earth doesn't care about governments or their legislation. You can't find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations. Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself.” -- Nobel Prize-Winning Stanford University Physicist Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1998, and was formerly a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

“In essence, the jig is up. The whole thing is a fraud. And even the fraudsters that fudged data are admitting to temperature history that they used to say didn't happen...Perhaps what has doomed the Climategate fraudsters the most was their brazenness in fudging the data” -- Dr. Christopher J. Kobus, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oakland University, specializes in alternative energy, thermal transport phenomena, two-phase flow and fluid and thermal energy systems.

“The energy mankind generates is so small compared to that overall energy budget that it simply cannot affect the climate...The planet's climate is doing its own thing, but we cannot pinpoint significant trends in changes to it because it dates back millions of years while the study of it began only recently. We are children of the Sun; we simply lack data to draw the proper conclusions.” -- Russian Scientist Dr. Anatoly Levitin, the head of geomagnetic variations laboratory at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“Hundreds of billion dollars have been wasted with the attempt of imposing a Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory that is not supported by physical world evidences...AGW has been forcefully imposed by means of a barrage of scare stories and indoctrination that begins in the elementary school textbooks.” -- Brazilian Geologist Geraldo Luís Lino, who authored the 2009 book “The Global Warming Fraud: How a Natural Phenomenon Was Converted into a False World Emergency.”

"I am an environmentalist,” but “I must disagree with Mr. Gore” -- Chemistry Professor Dr. Mary Mumper, the chair of the Chemistry Department at Frostburg State University in Maryland, during her presentation titled “Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming, the Skeptic's View.”

“I am ashamed of what climate science has become today.” The science “community is relying on an inadequate model to blame CO2 and innocent citizens for global warming in order to generate funding and to gain attention. If this is what 'science' has become today, I, as a scientist, am ashamed.” -- Research Chemist William C. Gilbert published a study in August 2010 in the journal Energy & Environment titled “The thermodynamic relationship between surface temperature and water vapor concentration in the troposphere” and he published a paper in August 2009 titled “Atmospheric Temperature Distribution in a Gravitational Field.” [Update December 9, 2010]

“The dysfunctional nature of the climate sciences is nothing short of a scandal. Science is too important for our society to be misused in the way it has been done within the Climate Science Community.” The global warming establishment “has actively suppressed research results presented by researchers that do not comply with the dogma of the IPCC.” -- Swedish Climatologist Dr. Hans Jelbring, of the Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics Unit at Stockholm University. [Updated December 9, 2010. Corrects Jelbring's quote.]

“Those who call themselves 'Green planet advocates' should be arguing for a CO2- fertilized atmosphere, not a CO2-starved atmosphere...Diversity increases when the planet was warm AND had high CO2 atmospheric content...Al Gore's personal behavior supports a green planet - his enormous energy use with his 4 homes and his bizjet, does indeed help make the planet greener. Kudos, Al for doing your part to save the planet.” -- Renowned engineer and aviation/space pioneer Burt Rutan, who was named "100 most influential people in the world, 2004" by Time Magazine and Newsweek called him "the man responsible for more innovations in modern aviation than any living engineer."

“Global warming is the central tenet of this new belief system in much the same way that the Resurrection is the central tenet of Christianity. Al Gore has taken a role corresponding to that of St Paul in proselytizing the new faith...My skepticism about AGW arises from the fact that as a physicist who has worked in closely related areas, I know how poor the underlying science is. In effect the scientific method has been abandoned in this field.” -- Atmospheric Physicist Dr. John Reid, who worked with Australia's CSIRO's (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) Division of Oceanography and worked in surface gravity waves (ocean waves) research.

“We maintain there is no reason whatsoever to worry about man-made climate change, because there is no evidence whatsoever that such a thing is happening.” -- Greek Earth scientists Antonis Christofides and Nikos Mamassis of the National Technical University of Athens' Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering.

“There are clear cycles during which both temperature and salinity rise and fall. These cycles are related to solar activity...In my opinion and that of our institute, the problems connected to the current stage of warming are being exaggerated. What we are dealing with is not a global warming of the atmosphere or of the oceans.” -- Biologist Pavel Makarevich of the Biological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“Because the greenhouse effect is temporary rather than permanent, predictions of significant global warming in the 21st century by IPCC are not supported by the data.” -- Hebrew University Professor Dr. Michael Beenstock an honorary fellow with Institute for Economic Affairs who published a study challenging man-made global warming claims titled “Polynomial Cointegration Tests of the Anthropogenic Theory of Global Warming.”

“The whole idea of anthropogenic global warming is completely unfounded. There appears to have been money gained by Michael Mann, Al Gore and UN IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri as a consequence of this deception, so it's fraud.” -- South African astrophysicist Hilton Ratcliffe, a member of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa (ASSA) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and a Fellow of the British Institute of Physics.

End Selected Excerpts

#

The rapidity of the global warming establishment's collapse would have been unheard of just two years ago. Prominent physicist Hal Lewis resigned from American Physical Society, calling "Global warming the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life." UK astrophysicist Piers Corbyn was blunt about what Climategate revealed: "The case for climate fears is blown to smithereens...the whole theory should be destroyed and discarded and UN conference should be closed."

Even the usually reliable news media has started questioning the global warming claims. Newsweek Magazine wrote in May 2010 about the "uncertain science" and how "climate researchers have lost the public's trust" from a "cascade of scandals" from the UN IPCC. Newsweek compared the leaders of the climate science community to "used-car salesmen. "Once celebrated climate researchers are feeling like the used-car salesmen" and the magazine noted that "some of IPCC's most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, newspaper articles...Just as damaging, many climate scientists have responded to critiques by questioning the integrity of their critics, rather than by supplying data and reasoned arguments." For full list of Climategate related scandals See: Climate Scandals: List Of 94 Climate-Gates -- 94 climate-gates total -- 28 new gates -- 145 links to reports with details

As the global warming edifice crumbled in 2010, the movement lost one of its leading lights due to the Climategate revelations. Dr. Judith Curry, the chair of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at GA Institute of Tech, explained her defection from the global warming activist movement. "There is 'a lack of willingness in the climate change community to steer away from groupthink...' They are setting themselves up as second-rate scientists by not engaging,” Curry wrote in 2010. Curry critiqued the UN IPCC for promoting "dogma" and clinging to the "religious importance" of the IPCC's claims. "They will tolerate no dissent and seek to trample anyone who challenges them," Curry lamented. "The IPCC assessment process had a substantial element of schoolyard bullies, trying to insulate their shoddy science from outside scrutiny and attacks by skeptics...the IPCC and its conclusions were set on a track to become a self fulfilling prophecy," Curry wrote. Curry called the Climategate fallout nothing short of a "rather spectacular unraveling of the climate change juggernaut...I immediately realized that [Climategate] could bring down the IPCC...I became concerned about the integrity of our entire field...While my colleagues seemed focused on protecting the reputations of the scientists involved and assuring people that the 'science hadn't changed." [Note: Curry is not included in the count of dissenting scientists in this report.] Also see: 'High Priestess of Global Warming' No More! Former Warmist Judith Curry Admits To Being 'Duped Into Supporting IPCC' - 'If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic'] [Note: There were many Cilmategate inquiries that sought to downplay Climategate, but they fell short of their goal and were labeled as nothing more than the "global warming establishment exonerating the global warming establishment." See here, here, and here. The InterAcademy Council (IAC) was the most competent of the inquires.]

As new data and science continued to call into question man-made global warming claims, one of the movements leading fear promoters shocked the world by beginning to retreat from his dire predictions. Green guru James Lovelock warned in 2007 that, "Before this century is over, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic." Lovelock illustrates how the climate of the climate change movement has been transformed in the last year. In May 2010, Lovelock shocked the world by announcing: "Everybody might be wrong. Climate change may not happen as fast as we thought, and we may have 1,000 years to sort it out." Lovelock went even father by noting how the science of global warming is in its infancy and "we haven't got the physics worked out yet." "The great climate science centers around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. If you talk to them privately they're scared stiff of the fact that they don't really know what the clouds and the aerosols are doing. They could be absolutely running the show. We haven't got the physics worked out yet," Lovelock explained. Lovelock now openly praises skeptics and worries that climate fear promotion is akin to religion. In March of 2010, Lovelock said: "The skeptics have kept us sane...They have kept us from regarding climate science as a religion. It had gone too far that way." [Note: Lovelock is not included in the count of dissenting scientists in this report.] [Note: Even the UN has grown more uncertain about the science. See: UN Fears (More) Global Cooling Commeth! IPCC Scientist Warns UN: We may be about to enter 'one or even 2 decades during which temps cool' -- Admits 'Jury is still out' on ocean cycle's temp impact!]

More woes for the movement were felt when left-leaning environmental activists began jumping ship. See: Left-wing Env. Scientist Denis Rancourt Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement: Declares it a 'corrupt social phenomenon...strictly an imaginary problem of the 1st World middleclass' & Meet the green who doubts 'The Science': Environmentalist Peter Taylor 'explains why he's skeptical about manmade global warming — and why greens are so intolerant' & Activists at green festivals expressing doubts over man-made climate fears. “One college professor, confided to me in private conversation that, 'I'm not sure climate change is real,'” according to a report from the New York Green Festival.

2010 saw the once vaunted UN IPCC now become the object of ridicule and scrutiny. In June 2010, Climate Scientist Mike Hulme took apart a key claim. Hulme noted that claims such as "2,500 of the world's leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate" are disingenuous. Hulme noted that the key scientific case for Co2 driving global warming was reached by a very small gaggle of people. "That particular consensus judgment, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies; other IPCC authors are experts in other fields." [Note: Hulme is not included in the count of dissenting scientists in this report.]

In another blow to the UN IPCC's carefully crafted image, was Scientist Dr. William Schlesinger admission in that only 20% of UN IPCC scientists deal with climate. Schlesinger said, “Something on the order of 20 percent [of UN scientists] have had some dealing with climate.” By Schlesinger's own admission, 80% of the UN IPCC membership has no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies. Also note, that climate requires a wide range of disciplines: See: 'There are more than 100 expert sub disciplines involved in climate change studies' & Science magazine confused about who is a 'prominent climate scientist' -- 'there is no specific climate discipline' & Claims of 'overwhelming majority' of scientists exposed as laughable! 'There are just 94 authors responsible for compiling the report in which...the [UN IPCC's] modeling case for alarm rests'

The notion of climate "tipping points", popularized by former Vice President Al Gore and NASA Scientist James Hansen, became the object of derision as well in 2010. See: 190-year climate 'tipping point' issued -- Despite fact that UN began 10-Year 'Climate Tipping Point' in 1989! Climate Depot Factsheet on Inconvenient History of Global Warming 'Tipping Points' -- Hours, Days, Months, Years, Millennium -- Earth 'Serially Doomed'

Once respected global warming stalwarts like NASA's James Hansen descended into political and ideological activism by being arrested multiple times protesting coal use. Hansen also endorsed a book which calls for '"ridding the world of Industrial Civilization". Hansen declared the author "has it right...the system is the problem." Hansen did this despite the fact that the book proposes '"razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine." The Grist eco-magazine writer David Roberts noted in August 2010: "'I know I'm not supposed to say this, but James Hansen managed his transition from scientist to activist terribly. All influence lost."

Energy Sec. Chu came under fire for claiming science told him what the world was going to be like 100 years from now. See: Obama's 'Climate Astrologer': Energy Sec. Chu claims he knows 'what the future will be 100 years from now'

Obama Science Advisor John Holdren found his knowledge of the science of climate change come under scrutiny after he issued a bizarre warning about the possible loss of WINTER sea ice in the arctic. See: Obama science advisor: John Holdren ridiculed for claiming Arctic could be ICE FREE IN WINTER!

The U.S. Congressional cap-and-trade bill collapse and the UN climate treaty failure has left disillusioned within the global warming movement. Gore has admitted to feeling "a little depressed." And it has left a spectacle of world leaders promising verbal non-binding agreements to limit the earth's temp have left modern society attempting to ape primitive cultures efforts to control the climate. See: Blaming all recent weather events on man-made global warming is akin to astrology & Climate Astrology -- 'It Has Been Foretold' of Extreme Weather: 'UN IPCC science has a status similar to interpretations of Nostradamus and the Mayan calendars'

In addition, the scientific underpinnings and the public support around the globe has dropped so significantly that there is now open talk of moving on to the "next eco-scare" Demoted: UN officially throws global warming under the bus: UN now says case for saving species 'more powerful than climate change' – May 21, 2010 & Time for next eco-scare already?! As Global Warming Movement Collapses, Activists Already 'Test-Marketing' the Next Eco-Fear! 'Laughing Gas' Crisis? Oxygen Crisis? Plastics?

The carefully crafted "consensus" of man-made global warming has unraveled. See:

Prominent Geologist Dr. Easterbrook Slams Geological Society of America's climate statement 'as easily refuted by data that clearly shows no correlation between CO2 and global climate change' & American Meteorological Society Members Reject Man-made Climate Claims: 75% Do Not Agree With UN IPCC Claims -- 29% Agree 'Global Warming is a Scam' & Meteorologists Reject U.N.'s Global Warming Claims: Only 1 in 4 American Meteorological Society broadcast meteorologists agree with UN

In 2009, the world's largest science group, the American Chemical Society (ACS) was “startled” by an outpouring of scientists rejecting man-made climate fears, with many calling for the removal of the ACS's climate activist editor.

A 2010 Open Letter signed by more than 130 German scientists urging German Chancellor to “reconsider” her climate views. See: 'Consensus' Takes Another Hit! More than 130 German Scientists Dissent Over Global Warming Claims! Call Climate Fears 'Pseudo 'Religion'; Urge Chancellor to 'reconsider' views – August 4, 2009 More than 100 international scientists challenged President Obama's climate claims, calling them "simply incorrect." In December 8 2009, 166 scientists from around the world wrote an Open Letter to the UN Secretary-General rebuking the UN and declaring that “the science is NOT settled.” On May 1, 2009, the American Physical Society (APS) Council decided to review its current climate statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. The decision was prompted after a group of over 80 prominent physicists petitioned the APS revise its global warming position and more than 250 scientists urged a change in the group's climate statement in 2010. The physicists wrote to APS governing board: “Measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th - 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today.” An American Physical Society editor conceded that a “considerable presence” of scientific skeptics exists.

Russian scientists “rejected the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming”. India Issued a report challenging global warming fears. International Scientists demanded the UN IPCC “be called to account and cease its deceptive practices,” and a 2008 canvass of more than 51,000 Canadian scientists revealed 68% disagree that global warming science is “settled.”

Scientific meetings are being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' & see full reports here & here - Also see: UN IPCC's William Schlesinger admits in 2009 that only 20% of IPCC scientists deal with climate ]

Despite these developments, global warming promoters have sought to cite a survey alleging 97% of climatologists agree with the "consensus" view. But the survey does not hold up to scrutiny. See: 'Consensus' claims challenged: Only 77 scientists were interviewed to get 97.4% agreement -- 'It would be interesting to learn who these individuals are' & Climate Con: 97% 'Consensus' Claim is only 76 Anonymous Self-Selected Climatologists

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This Climate Depot Special Report is not a “list” of scientists, but a report that includes full biographies of each scientist and their quotes, papers and links for further reading. The scientists featured in the report express their views in their own words, complete with their intended subtleties and caveats. This report features the names, biographies, academic/institutional affiliation, and quotes of literally hundreds of additional international scientists who publicly dissented from man-made climate fears. This report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and web links to their peer reviewed studies, scientific analyses and original source materials as gathered from directly from the scientists or from public statements, news outlets, and websites in 2007 and 2008.

The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including: climatology; geology; biology; glaciology; biogeography; meteorology; oceanography; economics; chemistry; mathematics; environmental sciences; astrophysics, engineering; physics and paleoclimatology. Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Gore. Additionally, these scientists hail from prestigious institutions worldwide, including: Harvard University; NASA; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the UN IPCC; the Danish National Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy; Princeton University; the Environmental Protection Agency; University of Pennsylvania; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the International Arctic Research Centre; the Pasteur Institute in Paris; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; the University of Helsinki; the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., France, and Russia; the University of Pretoria; University of Notre Dame; Abo Akademi University in Finland; University of La Plata in Argentina; Stockholm University; Punjab University in India; University of Melbourne; Columbia University; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.

Background: Only 52 Scientists Participated in UN IPCC Summary

The notion of "hundreds" or "thousands" of UN scientists agreeing to a scientific statement does not hold up to scrutiny. (See report debunking "consensus" LINK) Recent research by Australian climate data analyst John McLean revealed that the IPCC's peer-review process for the Summary for Policymakers leaves much to be desired. (LINK) (LINK) (LINK) & (LINK) (Note: The 52 scientists who participated in the 2007 IPCC Summary for Policymakers had to adhere to the wishes of the UN political leaders and delegates in a process described as more closely resembling a political party's convention platform battle, not a scientific process - LINK)

Proponents of man-made global warming like to note how the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) have issued statements endorsing the so-called "consensus" view that man is driving global warming. But both the NAS and AMS never allowed member scientists to directly vote on these climate statements. Essentially, only two dozen or so members on the governing boards of these institutions produced the "consensus" statements. This report gives a voice to the rank-and-file scientists who were shut out of the process. (LINK)

The NAS has come under fire for its lobbying practices. See: NAS Pres. Ralph Cicerone Turns Science Org. into political advocacy group: $6 million NAS study is used to lobby for global warming bill & Cicerone's Shame: NAS Urges Carbon Tax, Becomes Advocacy Group -- 'political appointees heading politicized scientific institutions that are virtually 100% dependent on gov't funding' MIT's Richard Lindzen harshly rebuked NAS president Cicerone in his Congressional testimony in November 2010. Lindzen testified: "Cicerone [of NAS] is saying that regardless of evidence the answer is predetermined. If government wants carbon control, that is the answer that the Academies will provide." [ Also See: MIT Climate Scientist Exposes 'Corrupted Science' in Devastating Critique – November 29, 2008 ]

While the scientists contained in this report hold a diverse range of views, they generally rally around several key points. 1) The Earth is currently well within natural climate variability. 2) Almost all climate fear is generated by unproven computer model predictions. 3) An abundance of peer-reviewed studies continue to debunk rising CO2 fears and, 4) "Consensus" has been manufactured for political, not scientific purposes.

Scientists caution that the key to remember is "climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables," not just CO2. UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London decried the notion that CO2 is the main climate driver. "As I have said, over and over again, the fundamental point has always been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically-selected factor is as misguided as it gets," Stott wrote in 2008. Even the climate activists at RealClimate.org let this fact slip out in a September 20, 2008 article. "The actual temperature rise is an emergent property resulting from interactions among hundreds of factors," RealClimate.org admitted in a rare moment of candor.]

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Read Full Report: Link to Complete 321-Page PDF Special Report:

More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

National Days of Action

Friday, 20 January 2012 18:27 JFAV

LOS ANGELES – More than 100 combined vets, widows, and advocates trooped to Senator Dianne Feinstein local offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco last January 18, 2012 to air public demand for equity that was denied for the last 65 years.

This is a part of the three day national day of actions from January 18-20, 2012 in form of legislative visits, emails, fax and letter writing campaign to legislators to gather support for HR 210 in the US Congress.

Army Corps Doesn't Play Shell Games with Turtle Protection

Newsbrief - Monmouth County

Written by JoAnne Castagna, Ed.D.

Friday, 20 January 2012 16:03

"Even though the District's knowledge, and past experience has shown us that impacts to these turtles in the northeast are very unlikely, we still go out of our way to protect them by continuously expanding our knowledge and improving our methods."

Napolitano admits the sound of her own voice is a "scary thought"

Cynthia Hodges

, Chicago Homeland Security Examiner

January 19, 2012 -

January 20, 2012   On Thursday afternoon, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano addressed law enforcement officials at the National Sheriffs’ Association’s winter conference in Washington, D.C. to hightlight the Department’s successful counter-terrorism collaborative efforts with state and local law enforcement, first responders, and key public-private partnerships.

Secretary Napolitano touted her department's success in implementing strategic policies designed to counter violent extremism and human trafficking, report suspicious activity, secure borders and enforce immigration laws, through training and information sharing initiatives. 

Napolitano agreed with critics who argue that the “If you see something, say something” campaign tactics are frightening and admitted that the sound of her own voice omnipresence in Washington, D.C.’s metro subway system is indeed “a scary thought.”

Since the “If you see something, say something” national terrorism awareness campaign was first rolled out at train stations, Secretary Napolitano has effectively formed partnerships with the owners of much of the country's eighty-five percent privately- owned critical infrastructure.  

 

In pre-recorded public awareness announcements at sports arenas, universities, shopping malls, airports and hotels, Secretary Napolitano's voice can be heard reminding U.S. citizens about the dangers of suspicious behavior such as unuattended packages. 

 

However, it is not Secretary Napolitano's voice that is makes civil rights advocates cringe, and public awareness reminders should not be viewed as alarming, but rather it is the rest of what she had to say that all American's should find down right frightening. 

 

Napolitano credited the nation's fusion centers for the department's 'extraordinary progress' in fighting the evolving terrorism threat.

"DHS intelligence officers working alongside their state and local counterparts to assess threats and share information" at fusion centers are a critical component of the department's strategy in protecting the homeland, according to Secretary Napolitano.

Since the creation of at least 72 fusion centers across the country, controversey has insued due to the massive amount of personal information secretly collected and shared. Civil libertarians argue that decisions on what constitutes suspicious activity is left to the discretion of often times poorly trained personnel. Reporting ill-defined suspicious activity to fusion centers has resulted in the names of innocent people being entered into terrorism databases.

 

Fusion centers were created in response to the 9/11 Commission report's recommendation to improve information sharing of terrorism intelligence across federal, state and local levels of government. The DHS funded centers are using federal grants to fight local crime.

 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released the findings of its latest report titled Relationships Between Fusion Centers and Emergency Operations Centers in which it states:

"Officials at Fusion Centers and Emergency Operations Centers we visited were not always aware of each other’s roles, capabilities, and information needs. In some areas, these officials had limited or no interaction, which could hinder response to natural or man-made disasters. Fusion Center and Emergency Operations Center officials also were not always aware of and did not always utilize federal guidance developed to address coordination and information sharing efforts. More than 83% of the locations visited were either unaware of or did not utilize federal guidance for Fusion Center and Emergency Operations Center interaction provided in Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 502."

 

Mike German, a former FBI counterterrorism agent and co-author of the ACLU fusion report wrote in 2008, that fusion centers are watching and recording the everyday activities of an ever-growing list of individuals.

" it is becoming increasingly clear that fusion   centers are part of a new domestic intelligence apparatus, German warned."

January 16, 2012

Food Security around the World

Food security is an increasingly critical global issue, affected by a complex and inter-related set of variables that influence the availability and access to food in each country. The political and economic stability of countries with a large proportion of the population living on less than US$1-a-day are particularly affected by food price inflation and limited availability of food stocks.

Maplecroft – the risk, responsibility and reputation specialist – has produced a global index of food security risk, which provides a quantitative assessment of the risk from lack of universal access to basic food staples in 162 countries. The unique Food Security Index (FSI) is comprised of 18 key indicators, which collectively form four sub-indices: first, the current nutritional and health status of the population, and second, the three factors which determine the intrinsic vulnerability of a country to food insecurity – availability, stability and access to food stocks. Key indicators of societal, environmental and macroeconomic risk provide a forward-looking approach to assessing food security risk.

The map highlights global hotspots of food insecurity as the countries which score in the ‘extreme risk’ category. These countries are situated predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of a few countries in the Americas and Asia, such as Haiti, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and North Korea. The table below lists the 15 countries most at risk of food insecurity by index score and ranking: Zimbabwe, Burundi, DR Congo, Eritrea, Yemen, Malawi, Somalia, Haiti, Liberia, Angola, Kenya, Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia.

CLF, EPA reach agreement on wastewater suits

Written by CLF Press Statement

CLF STATEMENT, released 8 p.m., Jan. 20: Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and the Buzzards Bay Coalition (BBC) have reached an agreement in principle with EPA to settle two lawsuits regarding nitrogen pollution on Cape Cod. CLF issued the following statement: “We are pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement in principle with EPA to settle the Section 208 and TMDL lawsuits aimed at cleaning up nitrogen pollution on Cape Cod,” said Christopher Kilian, vice president and director of Conservation Law Foundation’s Clean Water and Healthy Forests program. “We have filed a motion for an additional 120 day stay of the two cases and will report to the Court on our efforts to set the details down in writing within 90 days. Due to the ongoing nature of the negotiations, we will not comment on the agreement, but will focus instead on concluding the mediation in the proposed time frame.” The two lawsuits are at the center of an attack by a group of Congressional Republicans seeking to limit EPA’s authority and advance their anti-environment agenda. A letter from House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-FL), Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-OK), House Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Bob Gibbs (R-OH), and Senate Water and Wildlife Subcommittee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) was sent to EPA Administrator Jackson today (see full text here) accusing EPA of settling “activist lawsuits” like CLF’s as a “tactic for backdoor regulation.” In response, CLF issued the following statement from Christopher Kilian: “It is our experience that EPA has been a formidable opponent in clean water cases, and to imply that the agency is colluding with environmental organizations to expand its own authority is preposterous,” said Christopher Kilian, director of Conservation Law Foundation’s Clean Water and Healthy Forests program. “These are complicated cases, made more so by developing science and changing environmental stressors, and it is never an easy road to reach a resolution. The real issue is whether the parties are acting in the best interest of those who rely on the resource for their health and well-being. These Congressional leaders seem to suggest that EPA should take a hard line against the interests of citizens and the environment and protect the rights of polluters.”

Job Title:Supervisory Auditor

Department:Department Of Commerce

Agency:Office of the Inspector General

Job Announcement Number:DOC-OIG-2012-003
2

SALARY RANGE:	to / Per Year
OPEN PERIOD:	Friday, January 20, 2012 to Wednesday, January 25, 2012
SERIES & GRADE:	GS-0511-15
POSITION INFORMATION:	Full Time - This is a Permanent Appointment.
PROMOTION POTENTIAL: 15
DUTY LOCATIONS:	1 vacancy(s) in the following locations: Denver [Includes Lakewood], COView Map
WHO MAY BE CONSIDERED:	U.S. citizens who meet any of the categories shown under the heading "Who May Apply" at the end of the Job Summary section below.

JOB SUMMARY:

We are seeking highly motivated people to join our multidisciplinary team of professionals. If you want challenge, diversity, and the chance to have a positive impact on government, take a look at the Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General (OIG).

Our mission is to improve the programs and operations of the Department of Commerce through independent and objective oversight.  With so many focuses, OIG is a magnet for professionals of all interests and backgrounds.

Serendipity 

Head out to Lake Shasta Caverns for an adventure into an underground paradise

Posted: Friday, January 20, 2012 12:00 am | Updated: 6:15 am, Fri Jan 20, 2012.

By Machelle Homer/News-Sentinel Staff Writer | 0 comments

Ahead of you lies an adventure 250 million years in the making — volcanic action, continual submersion, uplifting of the earth’s crust, all leading to the creation of a beautiful hidden underground paradise — Lake Shasta Caverns.

As you descend into the depths of earth’s sanctuary, the elegant flowing forms of stone and billowy crystal studded stalagmite and stalactite formations open up to you, creating living snapshots of time in the ever-changing landscape of our planet.

And if that isn’t excitement enough, it all begins before you even reach the cavern. Your adventure embarks with a 15-minute sailing cruise on a 65-foot catamaran across the McCloud arm of Shasta Lake. When you disembark on the other side, have cameras in hand. As you ascend 800 feet in your comfortable 10-minute bus ride, you may have the opportunity to see and photograph local wildlife — bald eagles, osprey, mountain lions, bobcats, black bears — who reside on this pristine mountain. And don’t forget to photograph the stunning views of the lake below.

Where: Lake Shasta Caverns, 20359 Shasta Caverns Road, Lakehead, CA 96051.

When: Daily tours scheduled for 10 a.m., noon and 2 p.m.

Cost: $24 for adults, $14 for juniors. Boat and bus tour only (no cave tour) is $14.

Information: Visit www.lakeshastacaverns.com or call 800-795-CAVE.

Considerations: During winter months, tours may be closed due to high winds, snow and ice, so call ahead. Groups prices and year-round passes are also available for purchase.

Contact newsroom assistant Machelle Homer at machelleh@lodinews.com.

California Magistrate Judge Upholds Removal Despite Abandonment Of Class

Posted by

LexisNexis® Mealey's™ Daily Legal News

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A plaintiff's decision not to pursue class certification does not destroy federal jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), a California federal magistrate judge ruled Jan. 13 (Christina Mitchell, et al. v. Skyline Homes, No. 09-2241, E.D. Calif.; 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4451). Full story on lexis.com

Tagged: agricultural trade, SURE, free trade agreement

News - Local

Friday, Jan. 20, 2012

Denham again questions fed funding for downtown LA courthouse project

Sun-Star staff

WASHINGTON, DC – Rep. Jeff Denham, chairman of the Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management, today responded to a letter from the General Services Administration (GSA) announcing their plans to move forward with the downtown LA Courthouse project. The $400 million dollar project has been proven unnecessary by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office; in fact, the two courthouses already built are sufficient space to house these judges, according to a news release from Denham's office.

“Somebody has to watch out for the taxpayer, since the Administration just wants to spend. This project is going to become the next spending mistake in a long string of unnecessary courthouse projects,” Chairman Denham said. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that there are a number of underutilized courthouses across the country in states such as, New York, Florida, Washington, D.C. and more. In 2010, the GAO concluded that over the last decade, 3.56 million square feet of unneeded space was built in courthouses, wasting $835 million taxpayer dollars plus $51 million annually in operating costs.

Brother, can you spare a dime: Just when we thought we couldn’t get any more worked up over Mitt Romney’s wiggly effort to keep his tax returns secret comes word that there’s something even worse amid his personal finances than the loopholes, carried interest scams and offshore accounts that already have come to light.

Turns out he’s not only sneaky and greedy, but also really, really cheap to boot, as demonstrated by the lovely kicker on a NYT yarn about Monsieur Megamillions, in which the great man screws the county of San Diego out of a few bucks on his sprawling La Jolla villa:

When billed for $134,909 in property taxes on their beachside home in San Diego in 2009, the Romneys appealed the assessment, according to an official at the city property assessor’s office.

Mr. and Mrs. Romney won the appeal. The bill was reduced by $9,617, for a total of $125,292.

Nine grand? Seriously, Mitt? With gazillions in the counting house, you pay a lawyer to go down and sit at the Assessment Appeals Board to save nine grand?

Next up: Romney leaves a 5% tip for his Early Bird dinner tab at Denny’s.

It’s not you, it’s me: The decision by Jon Huntsman, every Democrats’ favorite Republican, to pull the plug on his barely-breathing campaign came just one day after The State, South Carolina’s largest and most influential newspaper, delivered its much-coveted primary endorsement to him.

In response, State editor Cindi Scoppe, who had written the enthusiastic endorsement, got a bit overwrought, describing the matter in terms that no doubt led to much gagging and eye-rolling around the city desk:

“It is rather like having gone through a courtship for some period of time and finally making love with a man, for him to suddenly turn around and say, ‘you know what, I think I’m gay’.”

(Reuters) - New York state prosecutors have "a devastating case" against former American International Group Inc Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, whom they accuse of fraud over a reinsurance transaction 10 years ago, the presiding judge said in court on Tuesday.

During oral arguments, New York State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos did not rule on Greenberg's motion last week to dismiss the case or the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's request for summary judgment.

Greenberg's attorney David Boies argued that much of the attorney general's case relies on hearsay disputed evidence regarding two conversations the former AIG chief had with onetime General Re Corp Chief Executive Ronald Ferguson that purportedly sealed the deal.

The judge told Boies that David Ellenhorn, a lawyer in the attorney general's office, "has put together a devastating case, a very strong case, and we both know it. I am very, very much focused on those two conversations Mr. Greenberg had with Mr. Ferguson."

Brought in 2005 by former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the case involves a 2000 reinsurance transaction with General Re, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc, that boosted AIG's loss reserves by $500 million without transferring risk.

"This transaction is material because it was designed to, and did in fact, mislead investors about AIG's reserves," Ellenhorn told the court.

He said that when he deposed Greenberg two weeks ago, 90 percent of his answers were "I don't know," despite the now 84-year-old Greenberg's fame for knowledge and attention to detail.

"He drills down so deep, to the Arctic ice, and yet he tells us he doesn't know the details of what he discussed with Ferguson," Ellenhorn said. "It's ridiculous."

Greenberg is trying to rehabilitate his reputation and settle lawsuits over the transaction and his ouster from AIG in March 2005.

Former AIG Chief Financial Officer Howard Smith also was charged in the civil lawsuit, which seeks to hold the two former executives of the giant insurer liable under New York's powerful securities law, the Martin Act.

Federal prosecutors have obtained five criminal convictions and two guilty pleas of former General Re and AIG officials over the transaction, including a conviction of Ferguson.

Last August, Greenberg agreed to pay $15 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges that he altered AIG's records to boost results between 2000 and 2005.

Three months later, Greenberg and AIG resolved years of litigation that followed his exit. AIG agreed to reimburse him and others for as much as $150 million of legal expenses.

Investigators have questioned Buffett about the General Re transaction. The billionaire was never accused of wrongdoing.

The case is New York v. Greenberg et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 401720/2005.

Basics

Return to First Principles

The American Founding

The Founding is where it all begins. The great men who established this country first articulated the foundational principles that still define America. Here are three must-reads and some basic Q&As to get a handle on the American Founding. When you're ready for more, read the primary sources yourself and explore the Founding in greater depth.

Must-Reads

• Why is America Exceptional? by Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
• Independence Forever: The 225th Anniversary of the Fourth of July by Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
• The Nature of Rights in American Politics: A Comparison of Three Revolutions by Charles Kesler, Ph.D.

Questions and Answers

What is the Founding and who are the Founders?

What was the purpose of the Declaration of Independence?

What does the Declaration of Independence mean by equality? How does the contemporary understanding of equality differ?

When the Declaration of Independence speaks of “all men,” are women included? Are blacks?

What does the Declaration of Independence mean by liberty?

What are rights and where do they come from? How is the Founders’ understanding of rights different from contemporary conceptions of rights?

What does it mean to say that our rights are “unalienable”?

What are the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that the Declaration of Independence appeals to?

Are human rights the same as natural rights?

What is the difference between natural rights and civil rights?

What is the right to property?

What is religious liberty?

What is the purpose of government according to the Declaration of Independence?

How does government secure our rights?

What is “the consent of the governed” and how is it obtained?

When can the people exercise their right to revolution and throw off the government?

How can America’s founding principles be just if the country did not abolish slavery?

Did the Founders really think that blacks were worth three-fifths of a white person?

How do you account for the fact that the same Founders who proclaimed the equality of men owned slaves?

Weren’t all the Founders deists or atheists?

Did America have a Christian founding?

Is America an exceptional country? If so, what does that mean?

Constitutional Government

The Constitution translates the principles of the Founding into a framework of limited republican government that remains central to the American way of life. Here are three must-reads and some basic Q&As to get a handle on constitutional government. When you're ready for more, read the primary sources yourself and explore the Constitution in greater depth.

Must-Reads

• The Meaning Of The Constitution by Edwin Meese III
• The Formation of the Constitution by Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
• How to Read the Constitution: Self-Government and the Jurisprudence of Originalism by Keith Whittington

Questions and Answers