The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finally disclosed the chemical identities of the ingredients of the dispersants being used on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Until now, the public was only provided the limited information available in the dispersants' material safety data sheets (MSDS). The MSDSs for the dispersant, known as Corexit, were produced by the dispersant's manufacturer, Nalco Company. The MSDSs provide very little information, hiding chemical identities by labeling them "proprietary" or omitting them entirely.

In his recent blog post detailing his agency's latest Monthly Budget Review (MBR), Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf opens by remarking, "The federal budget deficit was $941 billion during the first eight months of fiscal year 2010." To some, that number is a bewildering reminder of what they see as a dysfunctional and wasteful federal government. To others, it's a sign of how badly the Great Recession has affected the economic health of our country, and, after digging deeper into the numbers, shows that more – not less – needs to be done.

White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator Cass Sunstein issued a memo Friday that could expand public access to rulemaking documents. The memo encourages agencies to align their paper rulemaking dockets, housed in agency offices and difficult for most citizens to access, with their online dockets on Regulations.gov.

As Congress gears up for its annual budget process, parochial-minded members are drawing their customary battle lines around administration-targeted programs. One of those is the C-17 transport plane, which the Pentagon has been trying to kill for several years because it deems the military to have ample airlift capacity. Last week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch highlighted a press conference held by four congressional Missourians who, claiming to know better than the Pentagon, declared that they were going to fight the plane's proposed cancellation.