On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a "discussion draft" of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 -- a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world's most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. Their detailed responses are posted individually on CPRBblog, but here are some highlights. Full text
Late last week, the EPA sent over to the White House a preliminary "finding" that greenhouse gas emissions are a threat to public health, and therefore subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. It's a simple conclusion, not hard to justify in terms of the science or the statute. But it's momentous, in its way, because unless the White House has a sudden change of heart and blocks it somehow, it will fairly commit the federal government to actually doing something about climate change, at last. Full text
CPR Member Scholar Thomas McGarity had op-eds over the weekend in three Texas newspapers -- the Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and Austin American-Statesman. His topic is Wyeth vs. Levine, last week's blockbuster case from the Supreme Court, in which the Court rejected the Bush Administration's multi-year effort to use the federal regulatory process as a backdoor method of shielding manufacturers from lawsuits brought by customers their products injure. (To read the entire blog entry, click on the headline.) Full text
Center for Progressive Reform media consultant Matthew Freeman blogs on President Obama's proposal to reinstate the long neglected polluter tax to fund -- and revivify -- Superfund. Full text
Center for Progressive Reform Media Consultant Matt Freeman blogs on Time Magazine's story on cost-benefit analysis and Cass Sunstein. Full text
CPR Media Consultant Matt Freeman on the news that two Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal reporters have won a prestigious journalism award for their 2008 reporting on BPA and FDA's handling of it. Full text
Pointer to Center for Progressive Reform's Nina Mendelson in New York Times "room for debate" on prospective EPA regulation of CO2 emissions. Full text
Over on Legal Planet, Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Holly Doremus of UC-Davis and -Berkeley posted a blog Sunday on an upcoming decision on whether to introduce the Suminoe oyster, native to China and Japan, to the Chesapeake Bay. Full text
CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee discuss their two books on federal preemption issues -- McGarity's The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries, and Buzbee's Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism's Core Question.' Third entry. Full text
CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee discuss their two books on federal preemption issues -- McGarity's The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries, and Buzbee's Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism's Core Question.' Third entry. Full text