At a Senate committee hearing earlier this week, safety advocates told lawmakers that federal agencies need to do more to make the country’s natural gas and hazardous materials pipelines safer.

This week, Regulations.gov released new enhancements to the site as part of a continuing redesign and improvement effort. There are more changes to come, but the latest features make rulemaking dockets easier to navigate and understand.

Last Thursday, Cass Sunstein, the former administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), argued that “cost-benefit analysis has become part of the informal constitution of the U.S. regulatory state” and that this represents a “stunning triumph.”  While it’s true that cost-benefit analyses are being applied to rulemaking across an array of laws and programs, we believe that this represents the triumph of a flawed analytic tool and is not a triumph for American citizens. It is simply not appropriate to apply cost-benefit analysis to many aspects of policymaking, and the results from such analyses should not be the final determinant of the value of many proposed standards or safeguards.

On Aug. 22, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that cantaloupes from Chamberlain Farms in Indiana are being recalled because of Salmonella contamination, which has infected 178 people in 21 states, causing 62 hospitalizations and 2 deaths.