Controversies
Radioactive Waste Decision Helps One Company, Riles Congress
On Wednesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) voted 3-1 to classify depleted uranium a low-level Class A waste, meaning that it is only hazardous for up to 100 years. Depleted uranium is a byproduct of uranium enrichment for nuclear power ... read more
Obama Justice Department Claims Cell-Site Records Not Protected by 4th Amendment
Writing for Wired, David Kravets takes note of a little-noticed surveillance-related case with wide implications for cell phone users. Following the lead of the Bush administration, the Obama administration is claiming that the Fourth Amendment pr... read more
Obama Administration Supports U.N. Decriminalization of Homosexuality
The Obama administration reversed the policy of the Bush administration by endorsing a French-sponsored non-binding United Nations declaration calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality. Homosexuality is currently outlawed in more than 85 ... read more
Judge Okays Using Banned Chemical on Navy Recruits
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon dismissed a lawsuit brought by naval police officers who had tried to stop the Navy form shooting pepper spray directly into the eyes of recruits. The plaintiffs had suggested that the Navy use less dangerous... read more
Obama Moves to Protect Rumsfeld in Torture Case
When he was a candidate for president, Barack Obama spoke forcefully in favor of granting habeas corpus rights to terror suspects. But now that he is president, he is taking a less-principled approach. In a brief filed Thursday, Justice Department... read more
Labor Secretary Solis Suspends Last-Minute Bush Rule Regarding Foreign Farm Workers
One week before Christmas, the Bush administration changed the rules to make it easier and cheaper for agricultural businesses to employ temporary foreign workers. On Friday, within hours of being sworn in as Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis announ... read more
Obama Hides Details of Proposed Treaty
Last week, the Obama administration refused to release copies of seven documents “in the interest of national security.” Did the documents have to do with torture, with warrantless wiretapping, with clandestine spy and antiterror activities? None ... read more
Outsourcing Food Inspections Doesn’t Work
One would think that with all the trillions of dollars the U.S. government spends, the least it could do is protect Americans’ food supplies. But the regulatory agencies in charge of inspecting food manufacturers has been so weakened over the past... read more
Hidden, Lost, and Unopened Benefits Letters at the VA
Veterans and their survivors are being cheated out of their money, as tens of thousands of unopened letters related to benefits claims are being stashed away, tampered with, or destroyed by employees of the Veterans Affairs Department, according t... read more
Deadliest U.S. Environmental Crime Goes to Trial
Five former executives of W.R. Grace & Co. appeared in court Monday morning in Missoula, Montana, for the opening day of the most important environment-related criminal trial ever filed against a corporation. For 27 years, W.R. Grace operated a ve... read more
427,000 Pounds of Uranium Missing (And Some Plutonium, Too)
The Department of Energy cannot account for significant quantities of nuclear materials at 15 of 40 licensed locations, according to a report released on Monday by the Department of Energy’s Inspector General, Gregory Friedman.
More than 100 a... read more
Who’s to Blame for China’s Pollution?
Although China has recently surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest CO2 emitter in 2007, new research shows that about a third of all Chinese carbon emissions are caused by the manufacturing of goods for other countries, particularly de... read more
The Ultimate Bureaucrat: Paid $150,000 to Do Nothing
Since July 16, 2007, the Department of Labor has paid Bob Whitmore $12,500 a month to not come to work. Whitmore is the director of the recordkeeping system of the Occupational Safety and health Administration (OSHA). More than a year and a half a... read more
Why are Presidential Helicopters Being Built in Italy?
President Obama faces a tricky decision regarding the construction of a new fleet of 28 state-of-the-art Marine One presidential helicopters, priced at $400 million per chopper.
The project was passed on to Obama from the Bush administration. ... read more
The Case of the Unwanted Non-Terrorists
Seventeen Chinese Muslims are still being held at Guantánamo even though the U.S. government has already declared them innocent of any threat to Americans and a federal judge ordered their release into the continental United States last October. O... read more
Latin American Leaders Call for End to Drug War
Representatives of nine Latin American countries, including ex-presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, have issued a report calling for a reevaluation of the “War on Drugs.” Among the other members of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and ... read more