John Graham, who was confirmed as head of the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) amid a firestorm of protest, is beginning to use the immense power of his office -- which must give clearance to all agency rules and paperwork -- to shape policies and procedures across government, signaling a return to OIRA's activist past.

A coalition of non-profit environmental, health, and safety organizations wrote a letter to Senator Lieberman expressing concern over OIRA Administrator John Graham's apparent collaboration with industry lobbyists to develop a strategy to weaken dozens of environmental, health, labor and other regulatory protections.

President Bush, yesterday (6/18), submitted to Congress his proposal for the creation of a new Homeland Security Department. The detailed 35-page bill would transfer about 100 federal entities into a single cabinet agency with an annual budget of more than $ 37 billion and about 170,000 employees -- reportedly the biggest government reshuffling since 1947. Yet buried within this bill (in Section 204) is a single sentence that could create the largest single loophole in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), our safety net for right-to-know:

On June 5, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a watered down standard to guard against under-inflated tires -- which are linked to numerous deaths each year -- after its first attempt was rejected by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which must approve all major regulatory actions.