Environmental Politics

President Obama picks Ignacia Moreno to be the nation's top environmental prosecutor at the Justice Department. Environmentalists criticize her background as corporate attorney for General Electric.

"President Obama will announce on Friday that he has chosen Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the New York City health commissioner, as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...."

"A Senate panel has approved President Barack Obama's nominee to head the troubled Food and Drug Administration."

"Republicans blocked President Barack Obama's pick for the No. 2 job at the Interior Department on Wednesday in a dispute over oil and gas development on federal lands, but Democrats vowed they would soon make a second attempt to win confirmation."

"The Senate confirmed Craig Fugate as administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday, hours after Sen. David Vitter, R-La., dropped his hold on the nominee."

A secret White House memo said a single federal agency complained about the cost of regulations that could result from an EPA finding that greenhouse emissions endanger health and the environment.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) has placed a "hold" on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to lead EPA's Air Office, saying EPA's proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare would lead to costly regulations of small business.

The natural gas industry yesterday launched a campaign against rules to control a drilling technology called 'hydraulic fracturing.'