The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe looks at the Consumer Product Safety Commission one year after Congress granted CPSC more money and power to set product safety standards. O'Keefe reports that recalls of dangerous products are down slightly this year compared to last year. That's good to know -- ...

By Marci Greenstein If it's the holiday season, it must be time for scary stories about toys.  Usually they're brought to you by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal agency that is supposed to protect our kids from dangerous toys. Just look at its current list of ...

Time to get nervous, parents! The Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton looks at a report released by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group on toy safety with the holiday shopping season coming up. PIRG sent fifteen toy products to an independent ...

The New York Times' Leslie Wayne investigates the proverbial white whale of federal product safety regulation -- All-Terrain Vehicles, which kill about 900 people a year. Wayne looks at how ATVs are being regulated after a bill was passed last year to strengthen the Consumer Product Safety Commission. They are now mandatory, not voluntary, standards for how ATVs have to be designed to be legally sold in the U.S. But a stronger CPSC seems to be essentially canceled out by the proliferation of Chinese-manufactured ATVs. These ATVs are cheaper, aimed at children and it is hard to ascertain liability when a dangerous product is made. I wrote a report for Understanding Government on the history of CPSC and I think that Wayne's reporting comes down a bit hard on the Chinese.

The Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton reports on the under-covered topic of what the Food and Drug Administration and Consumer Product Safety Commission have been up to in the Obama administration. George W. Bush and a Republican Congress eviscerated funding for both regulatory agencies and Bush appointed members to FDA ...

Good news. Barack Obama released a memo yesterday (pdf -- via the Wall Street Journal) that appears to reverse the Bush administration doctrine of preemption -- that a consumer protection or environmental regulation by a federal agency preempts a state from writing its own safety regulation. Preemption was ...

The Washington Post's Zachary Goldfarb, Binyamin Applebaum and David Cho report that the Obama administration is giving an old idea a new look: a financial products safety commission, a watchdog on behalf of consumers with credit cards, mortgages, mutual funds and ...

The Senate looks like it will easily confirm Margaret Hamburg, the former New York City public health commissioner, to head the Food and Drug Administration. Yesterday at a Senate hearing Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah and Richard Burr of North Carolina each sang their praises for Hamburg. But the ...

Barack Obama has named a chairman for the Consumer Product Safety Comission, reports the Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton. She is South Carolina schools superintendent Inez Moore Tennenbaum, who -- if confirmed by the Senate -- must ensure the ...

Melanie Trottman of the Wall Street Journal reports: "The head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission said she would allow retailers of youth-model all-terrain vehicles to unload their older inventory despite new restrictions on lead content that prohibit sales. But it ...