The Obama administration’s high-level gun-control task force, established Wednesday, will be navigating tricky legal terrain reshaped by Supreme Court conservatives.
Some state and local gun-control measures already have died over the past four and a half years, done in by the high court’s 2008 ruling that recognized expansive constitutional protections for firearm ownership. Similar Second Amendment restraints will limit the ambitions of the Obama gun task force and its Capitol Hill counterparts.
Supreme Court rulings limit options of gun-control task force
At the edge of the carbon cliff
The most important number in history is now the annual measure of carbon emissions. That number reveals humanity's steady billion-tonne by billion-tonne march to the edge of the carbon cliff, beyond which scientists warn lies a fateful fall to catastrophic climate change.
With the global total of climate-disrupting emissions likely to come in at around 52 gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes) this year, we're already at the edge, according to new research.
The only 'meaningful contributions' the NRA has ever made to public safety have been malignant ones
Global outrage over the Newtown massacre, including at the role played by a gun that no civilian should possess, has forced the National Rifle Association to speak publicly, instead of privately in the halls of Congress.
America’s mighty proponent of deadly weaponry here, there and everywhere, including in bars and kindergartens, announced that on Friday, “The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.”
Don’t get your hopes up.
Five Fatal Flaws in California's New Fracking Regulations
Proposed regulations meant to govern fracking in California would do little to protect the state's environment, wildlife, climate and public health, according to an analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity. Fracking — currently unmonitored in California — uses huge volumes of water mixed with dangerous chemicals to blast open rock formations and extract oil and gas.
Hundreds of wells have been fracked in California in recent years. Today's draft proposal by California's Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources was supposed to be the first step in explicitly regulating this controversial practice.
Civilian analysts gained Petraeus’s ear while he was commander in Afghanistan
Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts, put their jobs at influential Washington think tanks on hold for almost a year to work for Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
Provided desks, e-mail accounts and top-level security clearances in Kabul, they pored through classified intelligence reports, participated in senior-level strategy sessions and probed the assessments of field officers in order to advise Petraeus about how to fight the war differently.
Their compensation from the U.S. government for their efforts, which often involved 18-hour workdays, seven days a week and dangerous battlefield visits? Zero dollars.
Indefinite Detention Protection Provision Mysteriously Stripped From DefenseBill
Congress stripped a provision Tuesday from a defense bill that aimed to shield Americans from the possibility of being imprisoned indefinitely without trial by the military. The provision was replaced with a passage that appears to give citizens little protection from indefinite detention.
The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 was added by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), but there was no similar language in the version of the bill that passed the House, and it was dumped from the final bill released Tuesday after a conference committee from both chambers worked out a unified measure.
Coal to equal oil as world's top energy source within 10 years
The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that coal will catch up with oil as the world's leading energy source by 2022. In a report, the Agency says that increased demand from India and China are fuelling the push.
Natural gas offers the best hope of reducing carbon emissions in the short term the report concludes. It comes as the European Union acknowledged that it has been unable to fund a single project to capture and store CO2.
Toxic Train Wreck Exposes Weakness in Federal Chemical Policy
In late November, while other parts of New Jersey were recovering from the superstorm, the quiet town of Paulsboro was blindsided by a very unnatural disaster. A train derailed while crossing a local bridge, sending freight cars tumbling into the water below and releasing a toxic swirl of the flammable gas known as vinyl chloride, used to make PVC plastics.
In the following days, chaos ensued as residents hurriedly evacuated. Authorities struggled to manage the emergency response, leaving people confused and frustrated by a lack of official communication about hazards.
Bob Alexander: A Confederacy of Dunces (with apologies to John Kennedy Toole for stealing his title)
Last Saturday my wife, son, and I, were sitting in a church … voluntarily. As far back as I can remember … this Had Never Happened before. We were there because we’d read in the paper that this was THE place to be for the best Christmas Chorale Music.
Well … not so much. Another typical religion “bait and switch.” They promised traditional Christmas music but instead trotted out a Christian Extravaganza. The church must have some Big Donors because this was a Big Budget Production.
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