Free Republic

Millions in the third world die from malaria every year in large part because of a virtual ban on the controversial insecticide DDT. The removal of the unwarranted stigma from DDT and the saving of many future lives is now nearer at hand than it has been in the last 30 years thanks to the efforts of Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, who passed away on July 19 at the age of 85.

William D. Ruckelshaus, who resigned as deputy attorney general rather than carry out President Richard M. Nixon’s illegal order to fire the independent special Watergate prosecutor in the constitutional crisis of 1973 known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” died on Wednesday at his home in Seattle. He was 87.

Top environmental officials for four Republican presidents are telling Congress what many Republican lawmakers won’t: Action is needed on global warming. EPA administrators for Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan said Wednesday they hoped to inject reason into a debate that is increasingly colored by politics. …

Four former Environmental Protection Agency administrators who served under Republican presidents on Wednesday said climate change should not be a partisan issue. The former EPA chiefs told reporters that Republican lawmakers who believe the climate is changing should speak out because voters will be on their side. "This should not be a partisan issue," said William Ruckelshaus, the nation's first EPA administrator under President Richard Nixon and again under President Ronald Reagan. "And public demand for doing something may be able to break it apart." The problem, the four former EPA administrators said, is looking at climate change through a...

We have a scientific consensus around this issue. We also need a political consensus," said Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey Governor and first EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, who resigned her post after disagreeing with the White House's direction on pollution rules. Whitman was joined by William Ruckelshaus, the nation's first EPA administrator under President Richard Nixon, William Reilly, who led the EPA under President George H.W. Bush, and Lee Thomas, who was administrator under Reagan.

WASHINGTON - Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency — five Republicans and one Democrat — accused the Bush administration Wednesday of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems. "I don't think there's a commitment in this administration," said Bill Ruckelshaus, who was EPA's first administrator when the agency opened its doors in 1970 under President Nixon and headed it again under President Reagan in the 1980s. Russell Train, who succeeded Ruckelshaus in the Nixon and Ford administrations, said slowing the growth of "greenhouse" gases isn't enough. "We need leadership, and I don't think we're getting it," he said...

WASHINGTON -- Mark Felt, finally revealed as the "Deep Throat" who divulged the Watergate scandal, is wearing the hero's laurel 32 years later. But that designation comes across as peculiar to those of us who lived through the turbulent times. Felt deserves praise for breaking the rules as FBI associate director, providing Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post the guidance to determine whether they were on the correct path in uncovering the machinations of President Nixon. However, Felt was considered by reformers at the FBI to be part of the problem rather than the solution. He was...