Weeds are growing faster and stronger due to increased CO2 levels and global temperatures.  You might think this is the one global warming issue that doesn’t affect you beyond your front lawn, but millions of acres of grassland in North America are losing the native plants that livestock prefer, and kudzu is moving up from Florida and may be in Michigan before too long.  Tom Christopher writes in the New York Times Magazine about how much better life will be for weeds with global warming — and how much worse for us.  But there are solutions if citizens and governments are ready to commit to projects like "replanting the prairie . . . [which] would require as much effort as the 19th-century pioneers gave to taming the prairie habitat."  Hardy weed species may lead to food grains that can survive higher temperatures.  And kudzu roots are "50 percent starch by weight" making them potentially "ideal for ethanol production."  So if you want a chicken in every pot, get ready for a weed whacker in every garage. -NH

That’s the message today from the Wall Street Journal’s Avery Johnson and Ron Winslow. The reporters document grousing of pharmaceutical executives who say the oft-criticized Food and Drug Administration has been overly cautious in approving prescription drugs for the market.

They might just have a point: last year the FDA approved just 19 new medicines, the fewest in 24 years. Medicines to help with obesity and heart problems are now being held up in the approval process.

At the same time, it’s hard to blame the FDA, which lawmakers have blasted for not thoroughly inspecting drugs and dealing with problems like food poisioning, for erring on the side of caution. All of this points to one imperfect, but damn helpful solution: give the agency more money to both approve safe drugs and disapprove unsafe ones.-MB

Sometimes Understanding Government can be downright negative when it comes to assessing the federal government’s role in Iraq during the Bush administration. But those days may be over thanks to the New York Times’ Andrew E. Kramer’s uplifting report about the State Dept. lending a helping hand to the Iraqi oil ministry.

State Dept. officials anonymously told the Times that they did, indeed, advise the oil ministry in their allocation of no-bid contracts to a coterie of U.S. and Western European oil giants. But, hey, they were "only helping an understaffed Iraqi ministry with technical and legal details of the contracts."

It’s easy to blast the Bush administration’s efforts to help rebuild Iraqi government and civil society. But this is one heartwarming tale of altruistic assistance that even the most jaded Bush administration would have trouble faulting. It’s also nice to see Exxon Mobile getting something out of the bargain.-MB

That’s part of the take away from Mark Mazetti and David Rohde’s sprawling New York Times piece on the Bush administration’s failure to eviscerate Al Qaeda. The jist of the article is that due to diverting reources and attention to Iraq, Al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistani tribal areas, and is now as strong as it was Sept. 10, 2001.

But the CIA hasn’t helped matters by never developing a coherent planning operation in Pakistan. Battles between field officers and the agency’s counterterrorist center in America have stalled intelligence operations. Of course, that the administration and military has judged the fight against Al Qaeda passe for the past six years hasn’t helped.-MB

The Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton has a nice piece this morning on the Pentagon flouting environmental clean-up rules set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency. At three Pentagon military bases, dumped chemicals are said to pose an imminent danger. EPA has the right to make the Pentagon clean up the contaminants. But the Pentagon is not recognizing that right.

This is yet another instance of how EPA, from (not) regulating greenhouse gas emissions to ozone standard setting, is getting pushed around by other federal agencies. But it’s also about the arrogance of the Pentagon– the nation’s biggest polluter.-MB

The New York Times’  Ron Nixon reports that the Democratic-controlled Congress pledge to cut earmarks, the money tacked on to legislation by individual lawmakers for pet projects, is not being heeded. Earmarks in this year’s labor and health spending bill making going through Congress currently total $618 million. About $277 million was spent on earmarks in last year’s bill.

Earmarks are a popular target for government reformers, but how do they affect the behavior of the federal agencies that must carry out the earmark projects? For instance, James E. Clyburn, the no. 3 Democrat in the House, has set aside millions for an Army Corps of Engineers construction project on two lakes in his home state of South Carolina. How much does such work strain Army Corps of Engineers resources and divert the agency from projects the they’ve judged most important?

In terms of government waste, there are budget items far, far worse than earmarks (like billions on Pentagon weapons systems that don’t work and are never used). But at a time when much of the federal government is unable to perform important, primary missions the return of earmarks would seem to be a big headache.-MB

That’s the assesment of Democratic leadership in the House Energy and Commerce Committee after the Food and Drug Administration spent $8 million, or 29 percent, more than last year on employee bonuses. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.), a committee member who’s taken the lead in FDA oversight, said that these bonuses aren’t going "to the men and women in the field who FDA struggles to retain."

This is a really interesting story (it was picked up by the Washington Post from Bloomberg News). But the piece doesn’t make clear if the bonuses in the notoriously cash-strapped agency are going to Bush political appointees with a foot out the door– which would be truly  egregious. They could instead be going to  career senior officials ostensibly trying to get the FDA back on track– which would be more of a unwise use of scarce resources than a scandal.-MB

It’s not the News & Commens section’s M.O. to cite pieces from www.consumerffairs.com. But Joseph S. Enoch deserves a link for laying out a compromise apparently hashed out by the House and Senate last night over the Consumer Product Safety Commssion Reform Act. The bill to rescue the grossly under-resourced Consumer Product Safety Commission passed the Senate in March, but has been stalled since.

Enoch lays out 21 different provisions that signal a much stronger, if still flawed, CPSC. These include a publicly searchable database of consumer complaints, whistleblower protections, and an increased cap for civil penalties against nefarious or negligent industry. Also tucked in, however, may be a "preemption provision" that prevents consumers from suing in state court about a defective product if CPSC has deemed that product safe.

The bill likely won’t be agreed upon in its final form until after the 4th of July Congressional recess. Stay tuned.-MB

The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Pasztor and Christopher Conkey show little mercy to the Federal Aviation Administration in a A1 piece blasting the aviation agency’s bureaucratic failures. FAA hasn’t forced the airline industry to make a safer refueling tanker– 12 years after a tanker explosion killed 230 people on TWA Flight 800.  FAA also hasn’t modernized its air traffic control system. It hasn’t instituted the technology needed to prevent colliding aircraft. And FAA hasn’t tackled pilot fatigue.

Overall, it’s a very good piece of preventive journalism, even looking at the agency’s entire history. But it seems that the fact plane-related fatalities keep going down needs to be mentioned higher. There are certainly reasons to be worried about whether the FAA is doing their job. But if you look at the most important quantitative measure, the agency is actually doing well.-MB

The New York Times’ Felicity Barringer takes a look today at California’s new plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Acting on a 2006 law, the state seeks to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels through a cap-and-trade system involving state utilities and factories.

Oh, and the state will cap greenhouse gas emissions in automobiles — even though the Environmental Protection agency denied them a waiver in December to police tailpipe emissions. But California is suing the EPA, whose administrator Stephen Johnson has been unceasingly hammered by state legislatures, Congress, enviros and his own employees for denying the waiver.

The state is confident they can win the case and start the work of mitigating the global warming disaster. Good for them.-MB