EPA deal calls for haze-reduction at Western coal plants
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 20th, 2011 4:35 am by HL
EPA deal calls for haze-reduction at Western coal plants
BILLINGS, Mont. — Aging coal-fired power plants across the West could be forced to install costly pollution-control equipment under an agreement between federal regulators and environmentalists aimed at jump-starting a delayed clean-air initiative.
Many utilities already cut emissions sharply over the past decade to meet federal health standards. Next up are even deeper cuts, to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas by clearing the air of pollutants that cause haze.
The reductions are required under the Clean Air Act. First announced more than a decade ago, they have yet to be widely enacted.
U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan counters Karzai’s criticism
KABUL — The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, in unusually blunt and personal comments Sunday, responded sharply to President Hamid Karzai’s escalating denunciations of American and NATO forces and aid efforts in Afghanistan.
After an upbeat speech about Afghanistan’s future prospects to university students in the Western city of Herat, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry added remarks that he said were “spoken from my heart.” He complained bitterly about American forces being “compared to occupiers” and being “told that they are only here to advance their own interests,” suggesting such comments could lead the United States to give up on Afghanistan.
Michele Bachmann, others raise millions for political campaigns with ‘money blurts’
In the ever-evolving world of campaign fundraising, some politicians have stumbled on yet another way to bring in buckets of cash. Let’s call it the “money blurt.”
Here’s how it works: An up-and-coming politician blurts out something incendiary, provocative or otherwise controversial. The remark bounces around the blogs and talk shows and becomes a sensation.
And in the midst of it all, the politician’s fundraisers are manning the phones and raking in the donations.
McConnell: Short-term raising of debt ceiling possible if comprehensive deal isn’t reached
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday that if congressional negotiators and the White House don’t work out a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan this summer, Congress could vote to raise the debt ceiling for only a few months – and then return to the issue in the fall.
“The president and the vice president, everybody knows you have to tackle entitlement reform,” McConnell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “If we can’t do that, then we’ll probably end up with a very short-term proposal over, you know, a few months, and we’ll be back having the same discussion again in the fall.”
Alito, Sotomayor give voice to court split
The Supreme Court’s two former prosecutors sit on opposite ends of the court’s long mahogany bench, and they take very different views of the criminal justice system.
Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Sonia Sotomayor have emerged in their relatively short time on the bench as two of the court’s most outspoken members on criminal justice issues. Sometimes they speak in unison, but when they disagree they often represent the court’s ideological divide.
Alito, a former career lawyer at the Justice Department and New Jersey’s U.S. attorney from 1987 to 1990, is wary of petitions from the convicted complaining of defects and worried about lawyers exploiting loopholes to try to free the guilty. “Public safety” is his bottom line and a phrase often repeated in his writing.
