National Park Service (NPS) superintendents now must adhere to agency-prescribed "talking points" when speaking with the media. According to a May 12 press release by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the talking points try masking budget cutbacks by painting a rosy picture of national parks under the Bush administration.

As of June 1, there is still no budget resolution, even as the appropriations process is scheduled to begin.

When authorities in Philadelphia found a motion sensor along some railroad tracks, they worried terrorists might be installing triggering devices to launch an attack against trains along the busy eastern rail corridor between Boston and Washington. But they soon found out terrorism concerns overshadowed the real problem of employee misconduct.

The House of Representatives voted to pass five bills, four of which threaten workplace safety while the other threatens regulatory safeguards across the board. The anti-regulatory bill, H.R. 2432, authorizes a study of "regulatory budgeting," a project that could ration protections of the public health, safety, and environment by setting an artificial cap of regulatory "costs" that can be imposed. An amendment proposed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) would have established a panel to study the politicization of science, but it was defeated just before the House voted to pass the bill.