"Despite their impressive gains last night, Republicans do not appear to have flipped enough seats to undo most of President Obama's environment and climate change agenda."
The growing number of threats and assaults against employees of federal land agencies in the West is certainly the public's business. But efforts to document it by High Country News using the Freedom of Information Act have been thwarted by the Bureau of Land Management's central FOIA office. Veteran journalist Ray Ring tells the sad tale in HCN.
The Society of Environmental Journalists wrote President Barack Obama October 23, 2014, urging him to take a strong position supporting legislation that would strengthen the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Bipartisan FOIA improvements may be one of the few pieces of legislation with a chance to clear the lame duck 113th Congress before control shifts to Republicans in 2015.
"News coverage on [National Forest System] lands is protected by the Constitution," wrote U.S. Forest Service Chief Thomas L. Tidwell in a November 4, 2014, memo to agency leaders, "and it is our responsibility to safeguard this right on the lands we manage for all Americans. Journalists provide a critical public service, and this agency will ensure their access in the pursuit of that public service."
"Florida's water war against Georgia advanced as the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear an interstate dispute on whether Atlanta's suburbs are sucking dry the river flow that feeds the oyster beds and fisheries of the northern Gulf Coast."
"The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission these days is drawing a crowd of companies promoting projects linked to the U.S. natural gas boom and protesters who say the agency blithely greenlights too many pipelines, export terminals and other gas infrastructure."
"In the largest-ever penalty for a violation of the Clean Air Act, the Korean automakers Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors will pay the federal government a combined $300 million as part of a settlement for overstating vehicle fuel-economy standards on 1.2 million cars, Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency officials said on Monday."
"Thirty years after the world’s most dangerous chemical plant disaster, we’re not much safer."
"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed listing the African lion as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, saying its analysis finds the lions are 'in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future.'"
"Federal appellate judges greenlighted yesterday U.S. EPA's implementation of a program to curb air pollution that drifts between states."
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