The Obama administration has launched a new version of Regulations.gov – the federally run website that allows users to comment on proposed regulations and find information in rulemaking dockets.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced yesterday that it may require more air quality monitoring devices to be placed around the country to calculate levels of airborne lead.

The Bush administration shuttered a potentially groundbreaking research project designed to examine the effects of cellphone use on driver safety, and it suppressed information that could have shed more light on the problem, according to documents uncovered by Public Citizen and the Center for Auto Safety.

During her Senate confirmation hearings, Judge Sonia Sotomayor defended her belief that cost-benefit analysis is an inappropriate decisionmaking tool for writing certain regulations under the Clean Water Act. As a member of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Sotomayor authored an opinion striking down an EPA rule that would have allowed power plants to suck in and kill millions of fish if operators could show that compliance costs outweighed ecological benefits.