Cass Sunstein to Leave Top Regulatory Post - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON — Cass R. Sunstein, who wielded enormous power as the White House overseer of federal regulation, came to Washington to test his theories of human behavior and economic efficiency in the laboratory of the federal government. Now he is departing with a record that left many business interests disappointed and environmental, health and consumer advocates even more unhappy.
We don't even get a grade?
Deputies with the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department were rousted from a quiet Thursday afternoon in their Newport, Vt., office this week by a car alarm – from their own parking lot.
Two deputies bolted for the door. In the back lot, they found five cruisers, one transport van and another department vehicle crushed on the concrete like soon-to-be-recycled cans.
They also saw a large tractor rumbling down the road and out of sight.
When computerized stock trading runs amok, as it did this week on Wall Street, the firm responsible typically can jump in and hit a kill switch.
Various reforms are needed if the America of four years from now is to be a moral, solvent country governed by the rule of law. And neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney will implement them.
The US is retreating from years of solid public support for Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, in a major shift that suggests Washington's concern at continued bloodletting in the Democratic Republic of Congo now outweighs western guilt over the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
That summer, as the [2008] presidential campaign heated up, the accepted explanation for why gasoline had hit $4.11 a gallon was that there was a problem with the world oil supply. In a classic example of how Republicans and Democrats respond to crises by engaging in fierce exchanges of moronic irrelevancies, John McCain insisted that ending the moratorium on offshore drilling would be "very helpful in the short term," while Barack Obama in typical liberal-arts yuppie style argued that federal investment in hybrid cars was the way out.
But it was all a lie. While the global supply of oil will eventually dry up, the short-term flow has actually been increasing. In the six months before prices spiked, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the world oil supply rose from 85.24 million barrels a day to 85.72 million. Over the same period, world oil demand dropped from 86.82 million barrels a day to 86.07 million. Not only was the short-term supply of oil rising, the demand for it was falling — which, in classic economic terms, should have brought prices at the pump down.
So what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess.…
For most people navigating the sidewalks of New York, the corrugated-cardboard bundles that stores put out for recycling are either an obstacle or nothing at all – invisible stitches in the city's zippy visual drapery.
But for a subset of underground scavengers, they represent a drool-inducing resource, something to be urgently carried away to a recycling plant in exchange for cash money.
A defining gap: Seniors for Romney, Millennials for Obama
The hubbub over the U.S. Department of Agriculture's retracted tweet supporting "Meatless Mondays" continues.
Last week, Republican Iowa senator Chuck Grassley's made a tongue-in-cheek promise to compensate for the recommendation by eating an extra helping of meat. PETA responded with a death pool, taking bets on how long it would take for Grassley to "succumb to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, or some other meat-related disease."
COLLEGE STATION, TX—Following the NCAA’s decision Monday to vacate all of Penn State’s wins from 1998 through 2011, thousands of Texas A&M students and fans poured onto campus in a frenzy of excitement to celebrate what has now been ruled as a victory for their team in the 1999 Alamo Bowl.
EVERGLADES CITY, Fla. – A Florida airboat captain whose hand was bitten off by a 9-foot alligator faces charges of feeding of the animal.
Collier County Jail records show 63-year-old Wallace Weatherholt was charged Friday with unlawful feeding of an alligator and later posted $1,000 bond. His next court date is Aug. 22.
See if you can find our intrepid Midwest Bureau chief. He's standing in this picture, waving (next to the elusive but powerful M).
