Local officials in California are going head to head with federal authorities over a program requiring local law enforcement to cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency’s attempts to deport undocumented immigrants. (more…)

Steve Daniels of Crain’s Chicago Business reports that Aurora, Illinois-based Old Second Bancorp Inc. will stop paying dividends to the Treasury Dept. under the TARP program. The arrangement highlights how non-Wall Street firms are still reliant on TARP and also the continued — questionable– generosity shown to even medium-sized banks. Old Second Bancorp was burned by real estate loans, and in January 2009, the Treasury Dept. propped up the bank with the purchase of $73 million in preferred shares. The bank continued to take a nose dive, losing $60.6 million in the first half of 2009. (more…)

Bill McMorris of Illinois Statehouse News reports that the Dept. of Energy is experiencing a communications breakdown with two rural Illinois towns about plans for “FutureGen 2.0,” a less ambitious version of DOE’s plan for a commercial scale “clean coal” power plant.  Basically, DOE pencilled the towns in for big projects without telling them beforehand. (more…)

The EPA’s new regional administrator, Jared Blumenfeld,  joined California officials deep inside an otherworldly realm of deadly caustic waste deemed the most toxic place on earth, reports Peter Fimrite of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Iron Mountain Mine lies nine miles from the city of Redding at the north end of the Sacramento Valley. It was first tapped in the 1890s as a source of sulfuric acid and later for copper.  When miners uncovered vast deposits of pyrite, exposing it to oxygen, water and bacteria, it began breaking down and creating poisonous runoff. (more…)

Disturbing fact unearthed by William Neuman of the New York Times:  the miserable, filthy conditions at the Iowa egg farms that were the source of salmonella bacteria were investigated for the first time after the salmonella was discovered.  New rules for inspecting egg farms were written “well before the current outbreak, but went into effect only last month.”  It appears that the FDA only got around to inspecting these plants after they were already too far gone.

You might have missed this one over the summer, but it’s worth a look:  The Nation‘s Christian Parenti looks at one way government can quickly and easily move the economy greenward.  He calls it the Big Green Buy, and the idea is simple:  Instead of looking for breakthrough environmental technologies (which are up against massive obstacles we often ignore), the federal government should use its purchasing power to support green technologies that already exist and start saving energy and money. (more…)

The Environmental Protection Agency has started to regulate coal ash, a toxic byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity.  However, Micah Maidenberg of Progress Illinois suggests that the initial regulations are too limited. EPA did not deem coal ash as a hazardous material fit for regulation until December 2008, when 5.4 million cubic yards of ash spilled through the retaining wall of an Eastern Tennessee power plant. The sediment destroyed nearby homes and seeped into the Emory River, producing elevated levels of lead and thalium. (more…)

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has spent the last year dealing with, among other problems, the Supreme Court overturning the city’s gun ban and a media focus on ineffective city law enforcement. However: the Department of Homeland Security absolutely loves the city’s cameras. (more…)

Obama administration lawyers have asked the US Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by eight states including California, New York City and three land trusts six years ago, seeking tougher restrictions on carbon dioxide releases by utilities than those set by the federal government, according to the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Bob Egelko.

Justice Department lawyers argue that federal primacy, in the form of recent EPA regulations, give the federal agency and Congress the sole power to regulate greenhouse gases. (more…)

An old-fashioned case of housing discrimination based on race is emerging in Chicago. (more…)