Laws & Regulations

Food companies are paying inspectors who find fatally contaminated food safe to eat. People are dying as a result. It's perfectly legal.

"Oil industry groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are asking a federal court to overturn new Securities and Exchange Commission rules that will force oil, gas and mining companies to disclose their payments to foreign governments."

"Mitt Romney's campaign opened an attack on the Obama administration's climate change policies yesterday by warning farmers that greenhouse gas regulations could hike fuel prices. He also suggested that President Obama might pursue a carbon-pinching cap-and-trade program if he wins the election."

"MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Republican Senate candidate John Raese filled in wetlands and damaged more than 2 miles of streams when he rerouted them to create waterfalls on a private, 18-hole West Virginia golf course that federal regulators say he built without the required permits."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- Chevron [Tuesday] lost its U.S. Supreme Court bid to block global enforcement of a $19 billion judgment by an Ecuadorean court in a long legal fight over contamination of the Amazon rainforest."

"A high-profile Kentucky environmental enforcement action involving hundreds of alleged clean-water violations at dozens of mining operations in Eastern Kentucky apparently is coming to a close."

"BANGKOK -- Organised crime trade worth billions of dollars is responsible for 50 to 90 percent of illegal logging in parts of the Amazon basin, Central Africa and Southeast Asia, with implications for deforestation, climate change and the well-being of indigenous people, said a report released Thursday."

"BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- With each steady stroke, John Lipscomb inched the canoe deeper into an infamous urban waterway. The water surrounding the boat grew increasingly murky; the sulphuric stench more offensive."

The Army Corpts of Engineers changed the operating schedule for the Clearwater Dam on the Black River in Missouri in the 1990s in response to requests by Missouri farmers. On October 3 Arkansas is going to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the Corps action has damaged the 23,000-acre Black River Wildlife Management Area 115 miles downstream. What's more, the state is arguing that the Corps should compensate it under the "takings clause," a favorite conservative legal weapon.