I have frequently expressed concern that the White House has been as deficient as the media in its lack of curiosity about what’s going in the bureaucracies that it oversees. Further confirmation of my fear comes from a recent headline in the Washington Post: “White House Orders Agencies to Identify (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 (more...)

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 (more...)

Who knew?  Turns out there’s an oil company called BP that is responsible for releasing petrochemicals into the environment without telling people.  James C. McKinley, Jr. reports in the New York Times on BP’s latest travesty in Texas (they’re good at creating disasters over in Louisiana, but in Texas they’ve (more...)

Is there a difference between an illegal immigrant and an illegal immigrant who has filed papers for residency status?  Immigration raids across the country have rounded up both categories of undocumented workers, and, as Julia Preston reports in the New York Times, Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division (more...)

Set aside some time to read Juliet Eilperin and Scott Higham’s insightful (and long) look in the Washington Post at the culture of permissiveness that developed over many years at the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency (now disbanded) that was responsible for overseeing mining and drilling of natural resources (more...)

A simple solution to a lethal problem could come with the stroke of a pen — and save lives.  It remains out of reach because the Food and Drug Administration’s unwieldy review process.  Gardiner Harris of the New York Times investigates something  basic and alarming — the misconnection of plastic (more...)

The Dept. of Energy still can’t seem to get stimulus money out the door (we’ve written about this problem here and here).  But the Washington Post‘s editorial board misses an opportunity in their look at the slow release of stimulus grants at DOE. (more...)

When the people whose very livelihood depends on the government say they don’t trust the government, we’ve got a lot to worry about. David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin report in the Washington Post that Gulf Coast shrimp fishermen, told by the Obama administration that they can start shrimping today (more...)

Jonah Lehrer looks in the Wall Street Journal at why, contrary to popular belief, people who are well-liked can rise to power, and how they often become less likable (and less competent) when they get the corner office.  He throws in perhaps a few too many different psychological experiments to (more...)