Free Republic

A power outage inconvenienced residents in Washington, D.C., and southern Maryland Tuesday.According to The Washington Post, much of the area briefly lost power due to a piece of metal coming apart at a power plant. This outage affected public and private buildings alike, including The White House, the Department of Energy, and the Department of State. Advertisement-content continues below As The Post reports, “a dozen people were trapped in stalled elevators passengers were left searching for exits in darkened underground Metro stations, and a building full of Department Energy employees and the main campus of the University of Maryland closed...

Last week I wrote that about the suppression of an EPA report identifying the locations of “high hazard” coal sludge sites. I questioned whether the federal government was giving another government entity favored treatment, in this case the TVA -- which was the source of the original massive spill. It appears this may have been so the case of the fatal subway crash in Washington DC. In a report in the Washington Post today, a NTSB Board member says Metro failed to heed the advice of federal regulators to either strengthen the cars or take them out of service. They...