Obama Overrules the Overruling of State Laws

Staff unearths years of shelved proposals

(NEWSER) - More than a dozen environmental initiatives that stagnated under former President Bush are moving forward under Obama, the Washington Post reports. In most of those cases, the decisions were based on reports drafted over several years that, in the face of opposition, were placed on the back burner to await new bosses. “It is kind of how government works, at its best,” said an environmental advocate. More»

(NEWSER) - Interior chief Ken Salazar isn't quite ready to drill, baby, drill. Salazar said today that a last-minute Bush initiative opening up millions of offshore acres to oil drilling would be shelved pending a 6-month review, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The policy affects much of the East and West coasts. Salazar, who denounced the Bush move as a "headlong rush of the worst kind," plans meetings with the oil industry and environmentalists alike. More»

Bush administration pushes through midnight regulations

(NEWSER) - With the Bush White House pushing through a raft of last-minute rules, the nonprofit journalism group ProPublica offers a running list, with the status of each:

• Business-friendly safety regulations would loosen restrictions on exposure to toxic chemicals in the workplace.
• Local police would get increased surveillance ability.
• Loaded guns would be allowed in some national parks.

A look back at the retiring defense secretary's career

(NEWSER) - With Robert Gates, who has served eight presidents over four decades, about to retire, the Washington Post looks back at how Gates operated in the Pentagon. He’s been “careful, conservative, and consensus-oriented,” writes Greg Jaffe, and he’s “earned a reputation as the most ruthlessly efficient defense secretary in decades.” So what can we learn from his tenure?

• Buy time. Defense Department reviews following troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan gave Presidents Bush and Obama a sense of the military’s trajectory—and they bought time against critics calling for quick drawdowns.

Case questions birth country of Jerusalem-born American

(NEWSER) - The Supreme Court is about to take on a case that tangles Israeli politics with questions of congressional and executive power. It will hear an appeal from the parents of an American born in Jerusalem—a city the US doesn’t recognize as belonging to Israel—who wants Israel listed as his birthplace on his US passport instead of "Jerusalem," as is currently the policy. State department officials have denied the request of Menachem Zivotofsky’s US-born parents, who moved to Israel in 2000; both the district court and an appeals court ruled that it had no authority to consider the claim. More»