Free Republic

The data process used to arrive at the administration’s determination that greenhouse gases endanger “the public health and welfare” violated the Environmental Protection Agency’s own peer review procedure, a new report from the EPA Office of the Inspector General reveals.Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, requested this report in April, asking that the OIG determine whether the EPA “followed key federal and Agency regulations and policies in developing and reviewing the technical data used to make and support its greenhouse gases endangerment finding.” Now, Inhofe is calling for a series of...

No extreme hazards found in basement workshop that alarmed authorities MARLBORO— Victor Deeb, the retired chemist who stored hundreds of chemicals in his house, was allowed to return home yesterday after authorities spent three days dismantling his basement laboratory. None of the materials found at 81 Fremont St. posed a radiological or biological risk, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. No mercury or poison was found. Some of the compounds are potentially explosive, but no more dangerous than typical household cleaning products.

Frustrated by the sluggishness and inconsistencies of state regulation, 135 insurance companies, agencies, banks and financial services trade groups urged Congress yesterday to establish a federal regulator for the insurance industry. In a letter to Senators Richard C. Shelby, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Paul S. Sarbanes, the ranking Democrat on the panel, the insurers and bankers complained of the burden of having to comply with regulators in 50 states, saying it was a very costly system that "provides no advantage to the consumer." The shortcomings of state regulation have been underscored in the last year by...

Speaking before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics today, SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan said the commercial space industry will thrive but the current regulatory system is need of repair and nearly destroyed his program. Rutan was one a of a group experts in the emerging commercial space market to testify before lawmakers. Congress is attempting to define what role the government should or shouldn’t play in supporting entrepreneurial space progress. The potential of space tourism was made all the more real by last year’s successful suborbital flights by SpaceShipOne, the world’s first privately-built and human-piloted spaceship. Work is underway...