An amendment introduced by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) would hogtie the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by forcing the agency to wait for public health crises to happen before it could act. "This amendment would require that consumers actually be harmed before FDA can take certain actions to protect the public health,” the agency said.

Environmental standards finalized under the Obama administration are expected to yield extraordinary benefits while imposing relatively small costs on businesses, according to a new paper by the Economic Policy Institute. “The combined annual benefits from all final rules exceed their costs by $32 billion to $142 billion a year,” the paper, Tallying up the Impact of New EPA Rules, concludes.

Today, the Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel submitted to the governor of West Virginia its report on the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine disaster that killed 29 men in April 2010. Liz Borkowski at The Pump Handle blog has a detailed summary. Be sure to read it, especially if you’re going to bypass the 126-page report.

The House of Representatives today passed a bill that sets ridiculous and dangerous deadlines for the approval of oil drilling permits. According to Earthjustice, “Sponsored by Doc Hastings (R-WA), H.R. 1229 requires the Department of Interior to decide whether to approve a drilling permit within 30 days after receiving an application and allows only two 15-day extensions of this deadline.”