Sarah Laskow

Ray LaHood biked to work today, which gave him [a nice excuse to talk about](http://fastlane.dot.gov/2011/06/biking-to-work-with-dot-commuters.html#more) the advantages of safe and well-marked bike infrastructure, and about the Department of Transportation’s commuter benefit for its biking employees. The DOT’s policy reimburses some commuting costs for cyclists. To encourage bike commuting, this policy is just as important as […]

Ben Smith [has a story this morning](http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56297.html) about Americans for Prosperity’s first whack at Obama on gas prices. This is Obama’s most vulnerable flank as 2012 approaches, and the more the right can pound into people’s heads that the president is responsible for high gas prices, the better off their candidates will be. AFP is […]

When I lived in DC, one of my favorite things to do on a weekend was wander down to the Mall and walk through the National Gallery. Sometimes I’d stay 15 minutes; sometimes I’d stay for an hour. It didn’t matter how long I stayed, because I didn’t have to pay for admission. Now that […]

Here’s another example of how House Republicans are working to undermine not only the environmental integrity of public lands but the most basic environmental laws we’ve got. Yesterday, during a series of votes on the homeland security appropriations bill, the House approved an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), that took away DHS’ ability […]

All along the Missouri river, residents and government agencies on all levels are preparing for flooding, and this, from The Wall Street Journal, is really incredible: Col. Bob Ruch, commander of the Corps’s Omaha, Neb., district, said engineers had been releasing water from the reservoirs at a measured pace to clear way for snowmelt. But […]

Near the end of 2010, the Interior Department tried to revive the idea that keeping public lands wild might serve the public interest. But House Republicans have made quick work of that idea. They defunded the policy in April, and although the Obama administration could have picked it back up again once the next fiscal […]

At the meeting of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group in Brazil, city leaders are trumpeting their efforts to fight climate change. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who’s a C40 chair, released a report yesterday on the carbon emissions of some of the world’s largest cities and took the opportunity to give his “you […]

I live in New York, but I also have some allegiance to New Jersey. My parents grew up there, and even though we moved around when I was kid, they’re both back there now. So both of my governors — the one whose election I had a say in, Andrew Cuomo, and the one who’s […]