Public

"Worried about her 2-year-old son and distrustful of government and TV reports that seemed to play down radiation risks, she scoured the Web for information and started connecting with other mothers through Twitter and Facebook, many using social media for the first time."

"The 41-year-old mother joined a parents group — one of dozens that have sprung up since the crisis — that petitioned local officials in June to test lunches at schools and day care centers for radiation and avoid using products from around the troubled nuclear plant.

"TALLAHASSEE -- An advocacy group will ask the state Supreme Court to reject a regulatory decision that would allow Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy Florida to collect about $282 million from customers next year for nuclear-power projects."

"The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, whose four fellow commissioners complained about him to the White House, saying that he had been withholding information from them and wielding too much power, drew a spirited defense on Wednesday from a predecessor at the agency."

"Angered that a riverside industrial waste pit leached potent toxins into the San Jacinto River for almost half a century, the Harris County [Texas] Attorney's Office is asking that those responsible be fined as much as the law allows -- $25,000 a day -- all the way back to the site's 1965 opening."

"MONTREAL -- Weapons-grade uranium is quietly being transported within Canada, and into the United States, in shipments the country's nuclear watchdog wants to keep cloaked in secrecy."

"Meant to create jobs and cut reliance on foreign oil, Obama's green-technology program was infused with politics at every level, The Washington Post found in an analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal ­e-mails. Political considerations were raised repeatedly by company investors, Energy Department bureaucrats and White House officials."

"When it comes to coal mining in the United States, environmentalists have a simple goal: End it. For the Obama administration, it's a little more complicated. Since taking office nearly three years ago, the administration has restricted coal-mining waste from being dumped into streams and imposed new pollution controls on coal-fired power plants. But on the fundamental question of whether the government should halt federal leasing, the administration's answer has been: not yet."

"On this day 38 years ago Richard Nixon signed into law the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a landmark moment in human development when we formally recognized that animals and plants—imperiled as "a consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation"—deserved to survive... and need our protection in order to survive.

The ESA has been embattled since its birth. But so is every advance in human thinking that expands the rights and humane treatment of nonhuman others."

As GOP primary candidates compete with claims over who can destroy more US government agencies, a small problem arises: they could not do what they promise.