"Robert Lee High School's typically lush, green field is bone-dry and dusty this year, on account of punishing drought. In a place where football is a religion, locals do all they can to save the sod."

"U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was planning to set a stricter nationwide limit on ground-level ozone when the White House axed the plan last month, the 468-page rulemaking package prepared by the agency yesterday shows."

"A century-old federal program that compensates counties straddling huge tracts of nontaxable national forests has expired, and House Republicans are using its reauthorization to push for opening the land to more logging and mining."

"A chart of 'key components of the climate change denial machine' has been produced by Riley E. Dunlap, regents professor of sociology at Oklahoma State University, and Aaron M. McCright, an associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University. The diagram below (reproduced here with permission) is from a chapter the two researchers wrote on organized opposition to efforts to curb greenhouse gases for the new Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society."

"Critics claim the leading breast cancer research group is in the pocket of its BPA-happy sponsors."

"President Obama's plan that calls for shipping interests to pick up more of the tab for channel-deepening projects and repairing and upgrading locks and other infrastructure along waterways is facing fierce industry opposition."

"Top White House officials debated the political implications of President Barack Obama’s May 2010 visit to Solyndra, just before his trip to the California solar company, after hearing from one of Obama’s top 2008 fundraisers, according to internal email excerpts released Monday by House Democrats.

Steve Westly, a prominent California venture capitalist and a member of Obama’s 2008 national finance committee, raised warning flags to senior Obama advisers regarding the solar company’s finances.

"The effort to reduce the rising pollution levels in Silver Springs could become the model for improving the health of freshwater springs statewide. Recently, Marion County commissioners approved an agreement with state environmental regulators that permits the county to lead the process to determine the ceiling for contaminants at the fabled site."

"With the Obama administration about to decide whether to green-light a controversial pipeline to take crude oil from Canada’s oil sands to the United States Gulf Coast, e-mails released Monday paint a picture of a sometimes warm and collaborative relationship between lobbyists for the company building the billion-dollar pipeline and officials in the State Department, the agency that has final say over the pipeline."

The multi-billionaire Koch brothers have financed a big part of today's conservative surge in U.S. politics, and they have a penchant for secrecy. As a result the U.S. news media have reported their opposition to government regulation -- but not the fact that Koch companies have used bribes to win business in Africa, India, and the Middle East, and that they have "sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism."