Everyone is looking forward to the three days of arguments next week in the Supreme Court on the individual mandate and the health care law. But regardless of that outcome, the court is well on its way to expanding the rights of corporations over the individual, and curtailing Americans’ access to the courts for redress. [...]

The Senate defeated several Republican amendments to the transportation bill yesterday, but the major ones all lost votes on the Democratic side. In fact, two got majority votes in the Senate, though they needed to cross a 60-vote threshold. The amendment to kill the EPA’s rule on limiting toxic emissions from industrial boilers failed 52-46; [...]

The surface transportation bill, which passed out of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee on a unanimous vote, has been mired on the Senate floor for close to a month. Senate Republicans have filibustered all efforts to wrap up work on the bill, mainly because they sought a series of bumper-sticker amendment votes to [...]

Sometimes it’s hard to find progress in public policy, especially in the energy sector, where a natural gas boom and new nuclear plant construction have been the big stories of late. But I am nothing if not a striver. So I’ve found the genuinely good news that ten more old, dirty coal-fired power plants will [...]

After weeks of apprehension, the Environmental Protection Agency will step in to supply drinking water to residents of Dimock, PA, a de facto acknowledgment that fracking led to contamination of the water supply in this town along the Delaware River Basin. On Friday, the agency announced it would bring tanks of drinking water to four [...]

I’m trying to figure out what happened in Dimock, Pennsylvania over the weekend. As you may know, Dimock, home to dozens of fracking wells and featured in the movie Gasland, experienced massive contamination with their water supply. For a time, Cabot Oil & Gas, the main fracking company in the region, provided free water to [...]

The “Occupy the Iowa Caucuses” movement on display in the kickoff primary state over the past several days shows that these protests can raise awareness and even make a difference without a physical space for occupation. Here are some of the more recent events: • Protesters demonstrated at Mitt Romney’s campaign HQ, demanding that he [...]

With the two-month stopgap put to bed, all eyes turn to the next round on the fight to extend a payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. Once this law is signed, lawmakers will have until the end of February to reach agreement on what they claim to want, a year-long extension on the above two [...]

The EPA has been under assault from the GOP for the past year, and this has led to some uncomfortable rollbacks and compromises. The Administration’s cancellation of new ozone standards was particularly galling. But today, the EPA came through with new rules on mercury and air toxics that will deliver massive public health benefits, in [...]

Congress has mostly left Washington, with no resolution on a host of year-end measures that, if allowed to expire, will result in an average $1,000 tax increase, the expiration of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, and a 27% rate cut in Medicare reimbursement. House Republicans left behind eight “conferees” for a conference on the [...]

Now that we know the state of play on the one year-end bill left outstanding, let’s redirect to the one that’s moving through the system currently. The House just passed the omnibus appropriations bill, funding all government agencies through the rest of the fiscal year, until September 30, 2012. It’s on to the Senate, where [...]