"WASHINGTON -- Storied manufacturer Gibson Guitar Corp. will pay $350,000 and improve its import controls in exchange for the government deferring prosecution of environmental crimes, the Department of Justice announced Monday."

"Cass Sunstein, a top adviser to President Obama who functions as a gatekeeper on federal regulations, is leaving the White House to return to Harvard Law School."

"After a historic committee vote to advance legislation that would overhaul the country's chemical regulations, it remains unclear whether there is a path for the bill to clear the full Senate -- let alone the House -- before the end of the year."

"On Thursday, the wind industry convinced a key Senate committee that green can be good politics in red states as well as blue ones."

A recent EPA shutdown of its effort to gather basic information on livestock feeding operations may make it impossible for the agency to regulate water and air pollution from the manure they generate.

"Democrats, environmentalists and clean energy backers hope GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's solidified opposition to a key wind energy tax break helps motivate voters in closely contested, windy states to tip the election toward President Obama."

A Senate Environment Committee hearing on climate science Wednesday only exemplified the political deadlock that keeps the United States from basing policy on established science.

"The lines are now drawn on a political hot button in Iowa: a lucrative tax break for wind energy. Mitt Romney is against it, President Barack Obama favors it — opposing stances that could have political and economic implications in Iowa, which has more wind energy jobs than any other state in the nation."

"A Senate committee passed a bill on Tuesday authorizing the transportation secretary to bar U.S. airlines from complying with a European Union law that would require them to pay for carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe."