Free Republic

Fifty eight years back, railcar loads of extremely hazardous equipment laden with finely divided particulate Plutonium dust were shoved by remote-control, into a 360' 10’ X 10’ repository, made of thick, treated wood beams. The box was later covered; top and sides with about ten feet of dirt. When it filled up, an additional an 1,700 feet of “concrete reinforced with metal” housing was added and “Pretty much” loaded. http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article149475209.html#emlnl=Breaking_News_Alerts

Lawmakers faced off in a Wednesday hearing on proposed legislation to approve a nuclear waste storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Many lawmakers at the hearing were concerned about the federal government defaulting on its legal obligations to dispose of used nuclear fuel. Even House Democrats acknowledged the sheer scale of this problem. “Courts have determined that DOE has breached contractual obligations under this statute,” New York Democrat Paul Tonko, ranking member of the subcommittee, said in the hearing. “DOE estimated that if it could begin to accept waste in the next 10 years, liabilities would total $29 billion dollars.”...

Former Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin told The Wall Street Journal Monday that bureaucrats within former President Barack Obama’s administration spun scientific data to manipulate public opinion. “What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I’d say, misleading, sometimes just wrong,” Koonin said, referring to elements within the Obama administration he said were responsible for manipulating climate data.

There are actually a few scholars in academia who not only are familiar with the Constitution but can answer the question, "Where did we go wrong?" "The main improvements in the Constitution are the end of slavery and voting rights," John McGinnis, of Northwestern Law School, said at the annual meeting of the Philadelphia Society in Dallas last weekend. "What has declined is the ability of the government to deliver essential services without threatening our liberties." John Grant, of Hillsdale College, essentially agreed. "Our Constitutional decline comes from government interfering in things it should not be doing, for example, affirmative...

The U.S. Department of Education has proselytized in our public schools on behalf Islam for many years through its "Access Islam" program. Federally funded, it is directed at children in grades 5 through 12. The Christian Action Network recently demanded that President Trump's recently confirmed Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, terminate the program.According to an article at Breitbart, a predecessor program began during the Bush administration in 2005. It "simply taught students about the traditions, culture, and holidays of Islam. Then, it became greatly expanded under the Obama administration. It has continued to develop, and now has had a greater, broader outreach.” According to the...

A supervisor at the Energy Department’s international climate office told staff this week not to use the phrases “climate change,” “emissions reduction” or “Paris Agreement” in written memos, briefings or other written communication........News of the DOE office’s word ban drew criticism from one green group.

PRESS RELEASE: U.S. Department of Education Indoctrinates Students Into Islam Christian Action Network (CAN) has sent a “Letter of Demand” to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) mandating that it cease its Islamic education program for the nation’s public schools. The DOE Islamic education program is currently being presented to the nation’s schools and teachers through the PBS LearningMedia website. If the conditions of its “Letter of Demand” are not met within 60 days, CAN will bring a federal lawsuit against the DOE challenging the constitutionality of the federally funded program. CAN is also issuing a “Letter of Demand” to...

Gail Heriot is a law professor at the University of San Diego, member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and potentially, the next leader of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Last month the due process advocacy group Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) started circulating a letter supporting Heriot for the job, which oversees Title IX compliance on college campuses, and it drew more than 240 signatures from mostly academics in various fields. The signed letter was shared with some members of Congress and Donald Trump’s transition team before the inauguration, but was published last...

Congratulations to Secretary DeVos....It is time to resuscitate the Constitution of the United States vis-à-vis the responsibility for education. [huge snip] In 1866, Congressman Andrew J. Rogers, a Democrat representing New Jersey's 4th Congressional District, spoke eloquently against a bill to establish a federal Department of Education. Mr. Rogers declared that the bill: ... proposes to put under the supervision of a bureau established at Washington all the schools and educational institutions of the different States of the Union by collecting such facts and statistics as will warrant them by amendments hereafter to the law now attempted to be passed,...

Republican congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced a bill to abolish the Department of Education on the very same day that Betsy DeVos was confirmed as the Department’s new secretary. Arguably one of the more succinct bills in the Congressional history, the bill consists of a single sentence reading: “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”

The Senate confirmed Betsy DeVos on Tuesday as education secretary, approving the embattled nominee only with the help of a historic tiebreaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence. The 51-to-50 vote elevates Ms. DeVos — a wealthy philanthropist from Michigan who has devoted much of her life to expanding educational choice through charter schools and vouchers, but has limited experience with the public school system — to be steward of the nation’s schools.

President Donald Trump has disputed climate change, pledged a revival of coal and disparaged wind power, and his nominee to head the Energy Department was once highly skeptical of the agency’s value. What this means for states’ efforts to promote renewable energy is an open question. States that are pushing for greater reliance on wind and solar power are not quite sure what to expect as Trump takes over. Many of them depend heavily on federal renewable-energy tax credits, grants and research, much of which comes from the Energy Department. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Trump’s pick to lead the...

WASHINGTON — When President-elect Donald J. Trump offered Rick Perry the job of energy secretary five weeks ago, Mr. Perry gladly accepted, believing he was taking on a role as a global ambassador for the American oil and gas industry that he had long championed in his home state. In the days after, Mr. Perry, the former Texas governor, discovered that he would be no such thing — that in fact, if confirmed by the Senate, he would become the steward of a vast national security complex he knew almost nothing about, caring for the most fearsome weapons on the...

Report: Schools Are Teaching Kids To Hate America Under The Guise Of ‘Civics’ The New Civics sweeping colleges and K-12 teaches that citizenship means looking for grievances, then agitating for bigger government to address them. Joy Pullmann By Joy Pullmann January 16, 2017 U.S. civics education, if it exists at all, is being transformed into a political machine to push left-wing causes, undermine American government, and incite civil unrest, finds a 525-page report from the National Association of Scholars. The “New Civics” uses attractive, bipartisan-sounding words like “civics” and “service learning” to trick Americans and their representatives into allowing progressive...

The Obama administration fired a scientist, intimidated staff at the Department of Energy, and allegedly ordered officials to obstruct Congress – all in order to push its climate change agenda, a House committee report asserted. The Washington Free Beacon detailed Tuesday a report released by the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which is chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, charged senior Obama administration officials retaliated against the scientist, Dr. Noelle Getting, who was manager of a radiation research program, and devised ways to block a congressional inquiry into the radiation research. "Instead of providing the type of scientific...

Department of Energy (DOE) officials withheld information from Congress to advance President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan and fired an employee who honestly and thoroughly answered legislative staff’s questions, a congressional committee investigation found. DOE officials, including Noelle Metting, met with staff from the House Science, Space and Technology and Senate Energy and Natural Resources committees in October 2014 to discuss pending legislation the agency opposed. DOE wanted to suppress information to kill support for the bill, science committee Republicans revealed in a report Tuesday.

A new congressional investigation has determined that the Obama administration fired a top scientist and intimidated staff at the Department of Energy in order to further its climate change agenda, according to a new report that alleges the administration ordered top officials to obstruct Congress in order to forward this agenda. Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, released a wide-ranging report on Tuesday that shows how senior Obama administration officials retaliated against a leading scientist and plotted ways to block a congressional inquiry surrounding key research into the impact of radiation....

Democratic senators want federal investigators to open probes into whether President-elect Donald Trump’s team broke the law when it asked the Department of Energy to identify climate change warriors on staff. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and nine of his colleagues, wrote a letter Friday to the Office of Special Counsel demanding to know whether a questionnaire sent by the Trump team to the DOE Dec. 9 “violated long-standing federal laws designed to protect civil servants against coercion for partisan purposes.”

Democratic senators are calling on federal prosecutors to start an investigation into the president-elect's mishandling of the Energy Department's transition, saying the Trump team broke the law by singling out employees involved in climate change work. A group of nine senators, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel, the government's independent investigative and prosecutorial agency, saying a questionnaire sent by the Trump team to the Energy Department a week ago "violated long-standing federal laws designed to protect civil servants against coercion for partisan purposes."

Timothy O’Connor, who works on California climate change policies at the San Francisco headquarters of the Environmental Defense Fund, dejectedly told the Los Angeles Times, “We have seen the federal government as a partner in research and development.” But with Rick Perry as the next Secretary of Energy, he moaned, “This may mean we have to do more of it ourselves.”