Sarah Laskow

Ah, waste, fraud, and abuse. Nobody likes those, do they? Of course not! That’s why the Obama administration is going to eliminate it. A lot of it. Just don’t ask exactly what. Or how. The White House [rolled out](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/06/13/white-house-launches-campaign-cut-waste-vice-president-take-making-gover) its Campaign to Cut Government Waste this morning with a video that might have been advertising […]

On Friday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar [introduced](http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/165811-salazar-queries-congress-on-wilderness-protections) the Obama administration’s much-reduced plan for conservation of public land. Late last year, the administration [was arguing](http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=03&year=2011&base_name=republicans_dont_even_think_ab) the the government should consider conservation—leaving land wild, even for a little while—as a possible use of public land. Now the only lands that will be left wild will be the […]

Conor Friedersdorf argues this morning at The Atlantic that the right and its talk radio hosts are not doing conservatives any favors by pushing the conversation on climate in a way that will allow only conservative candidates who disavow climate change to get the nomination. (Rick Santorum argues a leftist conspiracy is using a happenstance […]

Sometimes, it’s good to be Harry Reid. You get to announce that the Department of Energy is loaning your state $350 million to create a geothermal power plant, which draws energy from water heated deep in the earth. It also creates jobs! (OK, not too many jobs, but 330 temporary construction jobs and more than […]

Casey Neistat got a $50 ticket for riding outside of a bike lane in New York and made an amazing video in which he demonstrates why, exactly, a cyclists might venture outside of the lines. (Skip ahead to 1’10” or so to see him crashing into stuff.) Neistat got his ticket around the time the […]

The Clean Air Act, which has been taking a beating lately, falls under the EPA’s jurisdiction, but in some ways, it’s really a law about public health. Its goal is not to keep the air clean solely for the sake of atmospheric purity: polluted air exacerbates conditions like bronchitis, asthma, and heart disease. One of […]

A real, live political consequence of Anthony Weiner’s personal problems is that Alec Baldwin may run for the New York mayoralty. (Weiner had been considered a front-runner, and now…not so much.) Baldwin’s qualifications for office are essentially the same as Mitt Romney’s were, when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, or Michael Bloomberg’s when he […]

Whenever liberals want to raise taxes on millionaires or businesses, conservatives start saying that if we raise taxes, those people will take their money elsewhere. This argument came up in New York, when Gov. Cuomo rejected a millionaire’s tax in favor of a budget that cut funding for schools, homeless shelters, and a slew of […]

State parks all over the country are losing their funding. This has been true for awhile, but the New York Times noticed today and looked at a few creative mechanisms parks are using to stay open, including opening up their land to gas and oil extraction. So far, as funding for state parks has dropped, […]

The Tidewater Pipe Line Company began building the first long-distance oil pipeline in 1878. The 110-mile project, which ran across Pennsylvania, was a bid to run around John D. Rockefeller’s all-powerful Standard Oil Company. Standard Oil had a range of tricks to fight against Tidewater, including bribing Maryland legislators to bar the pipeline from their […]