Free Republic

As part of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package, “the Energy Department has begun releasing more than $6 billion in stimulus money to clean up 18 nuclear sites from New York to California, more than doubling the typical yearly funding for the program,” a May 18 Washington Post story recounts. The sites were involved in Cold War-era nuclear weapons production, and the cleanup will deal with radioactive and chemically hazardous waste. But it is another type of waste that is causing a concerned reaction and prompting “sharply worded warnings from some government officials and lawmakers who say the stimulus funding is...

Clearly pandering to the green lobby, President Barack Obama proposed on May 19 “the highest auto fuel efficiency standards ever attempted in the United States,” according to an Environment News Service story posted online that same day. “A senior administration official told reporters Monday night that Obama's national program for higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy, CAFE, standards is scheduled to start in model year 2012. If the proposal is enacted, by 2016 the fleet average requirement would be 35.5 miles per gallon, said the official, who declined to be named. Currently the CAFE standard is 27.5 mpg for cars and...

"Fossil Ida: extraordinary find is 'missing link' in human evolution," ran the Guardian headline on May 19. The media was abuzz with excitement over the find. As the website of New Scientist magazine pointed out in “Why Ida fossil is not the missing link,” even "Google's homepage evolved, incorporating an image of the new fossil — nicknamed Ida — into the company's logo.” The fossil was nicknamed Ida by the paleontologist from Oslo University who assembled the scientific team to study it, Dr. Jørn Hurum. The Guardian mentioned that “Hurum chose Ida's nickname because the diminutive creature is at the equivalent...