In our editorial about military-related sites on Long Island, we talked about the Pentagon's track record of wriggling out of environmental responsibilities. Though the Army Corps of Engineers has taken positive steps to examine local sites for possible contamination, other communities have met daunting resistance in trying to get the military to clean up after itself.

The Washington Post reported in June on three military bases that the Environmental Protection Agency had flagged as contaminated with toxins—a potential threat to local water systems: Fort Meade in Maryland, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. The Department of Defense bucked the EPA’s orders, while also refusing to comply with requirements for remediating 12 other military sites on the Superfund list. In recent years, the Pentagon has also fought the EPA on safety standards for hazardous chemicals found to be prevalent in military areas.

Some lawmakers have blasted the Pentagon for shirking its duty to clean up some of the country’s most polluted spots.

Yet the military has also worked through official channels to skirt environmental mandates.

Over the past few weeks, about 457,000 people declined an exclusive offer for an expense-paid trip abroad. Nationwide, eight people did sign up for "Operation Scheduled Departure," the Department of Homeland Security's self-deportation pilot program. For others, though, the prospect of voluntarily abandoning their lives in America didn't seem worth the price of flying back on the government's dime.

Immigration authorities had hoped that the friendly approach would entice immigrants with outstanding deportation orders to just ship out, no questions asked.

Reform advocates predicted the initiative's failure, noting the vast numbers of undocumented immigrants who are firmly rooted in the economy and their communities. Groups like the National Immigration Forum say immigration policy should work within that reality, rather than continue to deny it in vain.

Yet the government is bouncing back from its folly by returning to kicking people out the old-fashioned way.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is drumming up controversy with a plan to tweak the rules for national security-related investigations. According to news reports, agents may soon gain greater leeway to pursue people based on suspicious characteristics, drawn from information like travel records or personal associations, as opposed to evidence of an actual crime.

The initiative folds into the bureau's effort to "harmonize" its investigative guidelines, melding its criminal law enforcement and new anti-terror roles. As Attorney General Michael Mukasey explained in a recent speech in Portland, Ore., the bureau wants to "shift its national security focus from investigating crimes after they occur to collecting the intelligence necessary to detect and prevent attacks before they occur."

Civil libertarians worry the planned changes will encourage guilt by association and racial or ethnic profiling--especially for the Muslim and Arab communities that have been targets of counter-terrorism probes. Members of Congress have called for a full public hearing on the changes before they are implemented.

Remember Harry and Louise? You know, that fictional couple featured in devastatingly effective insurance industry ads that spelled the end for Bill and Hillary Clinton style health care reform in the 1990s.

They’re baaaack.

This time Harry and Louise will star in ads slated to run during the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions. They’re coming to us this time courtesy of what’s described as a broad stakeholder’s coalition, of groups such as the American Cancer Society, the American Hospital Association, the Catholic Health Association, Families USA.

But Harry and Louise have had a change of heart.

Last time they were out to bury reform (at least the Clinton plan). This time they’re promoting it. Their message? No matter who becomes the next president, health care reform should be at the top of the domestic agenda.

The time’s they are a’changing.

Word that Plum Island was on Aafia Siddiqui's list of alleged possible terror targets got the editorial board talking about the island and its Animal Disease Center this morning. More specifically, we talked about the news that the center will probably be closed if a higher-risk-level facility is built elsewhere.

As the editorial board of a Long Island paper, we could take two approaches to this story. One is a purely parochial one: Preserve the research center, preserve the 220 jobs there, protect our turf. But we have to ask ourselves, is doing this kind of research the best use for this land?

With the whole state budget headed for a crash diet in next week's legislative session, health care for the poor has once again landed on the table.

Paterson’s proposed cuts would slice the growth in Medicaid spending by more than $500 million for the rest of this fiscal year, followed by about $1 billion in 2009-2010. The proposal would target funding for hospitals, nursing homes and medications, as well as public programs like Family Health Plus.

No one would deny that Medicaid costs a lot; the state spends more per person on Medicaid than many other states, and the governor estimates that spending increases will account for about one quarter of the budget shortfall for the 2009-10 fiscal year. But critics argue that there are better ways for Albany to save money than scrimping on health care for low-income people.

His White House tenure may be ebbing, but President Bush couldn't resist taking one final jab at environmental protections he has long bristled against.

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne wants to tweak the Endangered Species Act, the federal law that stands between many animals and total annhilation. The White House proposed "common-sense modifications" would basically free federal agencies of longstanding oversight procedures when they take actions that might harm endangered species.

Under existing ESA regulations, agencies must consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to provide scientific review and oversight of wildlife protection measures. The Interior Department argues that eliminating this layer of review would "reduce the number of unnecessary consultations" and would result in "a process that is less time-consuming and a more effective use of our resources.”

From an ecological standpoint, when it comes to protecting species on the verge of being wiped off the face of the planet, you might wonder what would be a more effective use of public resources besides ensuring that the soundest technology and science are employed in the effort. Well, one thing the administration seems to spend a lot of time and resources on these days is preventing government from taking decisive action to stem climate change.

Seven years after the anthrax attacks of 2001 sent a spasm of panic throughout the country and may have helped pave the political path toward the Iraq war... the chill of the threat still lingers, alongside mounting questions about the surrounding government investigation.

Today, a federal district court unsealed key documents in the case against Bruce Ivins, the government scientist who killed himself after the FBI began closing in on him as a suspect. But the documents tracing the FBI's investigation aren't likely to dampen the pointed skepticism that has surfaced in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere.

In the 1980s, AIDS exploded as a national issue, as people recognized that the crisis loomed larger, and closer to home, than we originally thought--not just relegated to "fringe" segments of society. Today, it seems, medical science and greater awareness have helped overcome the worst of the epidemic in the United States, while the government turns its attention to fighting the disease in other countries.

The Bush administration recently signed into law an unprecedented investment in the global effort to address HIV/AIDS: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief provides $48 billion toward worldwide treatment and prevention programs for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

But while the President's initiative was lauded as a major step against AIDS on a global scale, other news raises questions about how far we are from stemming the epidemic at home.

A new congressional report traces a harrowing pattern of American deaths in Iraq. Military personnel were killed suddenly by an electric jolt, sometimes when they least expected to encounter danger -- in their own living quarters.

The suspected culprit? Kellogg Brown Root, one of the main contractors involved in the Iraq reconstruction efforts.

In one case probed by the investigators, Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth was electrocuted in the shower because of a water pump malfunction, which KBR had been warned about previously:

"After an investigation of Staff Sergeant Maseth’s death, the Defense Contract Management Agency reported to its director on February 25, 2008, that 'KBR failed to correct known deficiencies.' In an extensive e-mail chain, top DCMA officials acknowledged that they should have done more to address the electrical deficiencies in Staff Sergeant Maseth’s building. Less than two weeks later, however, DCMA reversed its position and agreed with KBR that the company was not required to perform the repairs."

The congressional probe is spurred by families demanding answers from a company that has prospered enormously from the alignment between the military and the private sector. KBR has also historically been tied to Halliburton and Vice President Dick Cheney's business operations.

Despite a diplomatic freeze between the United States and Cuba, a merger in the brewing industry is spilling a frothy trail from Belgium to Missouri to Havana, and possibly the White House.

Budweiser loyalists have protested the pending sale of Anheuser-Busch to Belgium’s InBev, maker of Stella Artois. Though InBev has promised fans of the quintessential American brewery that their product will stay pure, Bud-lovers are understandably a bit stung by the foreign takeover.

The global beer marriage (net weight: 65 billion pints per year) is even raising eyebrows on the campaign trail, due to InBev's links to one of America’s least-favored nations in the Western Hemisphere. The company does business with Cuba, which has for decades been isolated from most U.S. commerce under an economic embargo. Some legal hubbub has emerged over whether InBev’s Cuba ties would interfere with Bud’s heartland-based management operations.

And now, some speculate the power shift in the Bud empire could spill messily into the presidential race.

Squeezed by political and environmental tumult, the oil flows that buoy the country are now sputtering, and the public is paying for it dearly at the pump. “You can’t drill your way out” is becoming a popular cliché in Washington. Yet that hasn't stopped us from trying.

The Washington Post today examines a phenomenon that consumers barely contemplated until the current gas-price crisis hit: oil fields around the world are simply drying up. Geologically, experts worry that demand for oil is fast outstripping supply. Not to mention the political hazards of sucking the stuff out of conflict-ridden lands.

“... many oil experts warn that the world's production will hit a peak soon if it hasn't already. With the exception of Iraq's, most of the ‘easy oil’ in large reservoirs close to the surface is gone.”

The Bush-era Environmental Protection Agency has often been deeply disappointing. But the EPA is taking a smart step to protect our food and our farm workers.

In 2006, the EPA said it would cancel registration of the pesticide carbofuran, because it has nasty effects on people and is lethal to birds. But the manufacturer went to court to block that cancellation. Now, the agency proposes to revoke regulations that allow residues of this pesticide in food. This revocation will pretty much mean that carbofuran won't be able to be sold in the domestic market.

This pesticide is extremely deadly to birds. The American Bird Conservancy estimates that it has killed millions of wild birds since it first entered the market in 1967. It's also not so healthy for the farm workers who have to apply it and those who buy food or drink water contaminated with carbofuran residue.

On other occasions, we've criticized the EPA for not doing what it should. So it's our pleasant duty to tip our hat to the agency now for doing the right thing.

The three branches of government got into a bit of a tangle yesterday on Capitol Hill: the White House called on lawmakers to restrain the judicial system's authority to hear the cases of people the president has deemed America's enemies.

Responding to a recent Supreme Court decision on the rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees to judicial review, Attorney General Michael Mukasey told the House Judiciary Committee that Congress should pass legislation to restrict court access for the so-called unlawful enemy combatants.

While the Supreme Court affirmed detainees' constitutional right to challenge their detentions, Mukasey argued that allowing detainees to press their cases through the regular federal court system would threaten national security and counter-terrorism efforts.

Newsday reports today that the Federal Aviation Administration couldn't require commercial airliners to carry a system to prevent explosions like the one that doomed TWA Flight 800 until the technology became light enough, small enough and cheap enough. This happened after two "eureka" moments for researchers in 2002. Then came years of wrangling with the airline industry.

Fortunately all was settled in the nick of time, as the 12th anniversary of the TWA crash was about to roll around.

The acting FAA administrator, Robert Sturgell, greeted the new regulation on the day before the anniversary as "another step forward on what has been a long journey of investigation, discovery, innovation and cooperation."

His boss, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, welcomed the FAA's achievement with a crash victim's brother at her side, as "a memorial to the victims and a tribute to dedicated public servants who have spent their lives making flying safer."

You can't complain about the outcome, but you might wonder about the timing and these folks' dedication to our safety.

Since the research was ready six years ago (perhaps on the anniversary of no significant event) and the parties had years to work out a deal, might the regulation have been ready to go, say, three days before the anniversary? Two months before? Seventeen months before?

Wouldn't federal and industry officials committed to the safest possible skies want to rush such a regulation into effect as soon as it was available? Why risk even one more midair explosion?

We've become so accustomed to the news being packaged for consumption and timed for maximum impact and availability of related video that nobody is even asking these questions.

Over the past few days, the news has been awash with word that the mortgage crisis has finally rammed the most insulated attic in the subprime house of cards. It seems that to observers of the economy, corporate bigwigs and regulators, the crumpling of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae has been both disturbing and predictable.

The groundwork was laid years ago, according to the New York Times, with the gradual erosion of regulatory oversight.

Now, Fannie and Freddie are sitting atop a crisis that may amount to an estimated $1.6 trillion in losses. And Congress may soon step in to cushion the fall of the two mortgage-backing giants.

So for those of us who don't think of our finances in terms of trillions, what do Fannie and Freddie's money troubles mean for homeowners and taxpayers?

What’s a life worth? Apparently not as much as it used to be.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the value of a “statistical life” is $6.9 million. That sounds like a lot — even for something that is, in many ways, priceless — until you find out that the comparable figure five years ago was $7.8 million. That’s what the Associated Press discovered when it reviewed 12 years of cost-benefit analyses from the EPA, admittedly a less-than-flawless methodology.

Why is the EPA putting a dollar value on human life? When considering a proposed regulation, government agencies calculate how much it would cost if implemented and weigh that against the value of the lives that would be lost if the regulation isn’t imposed. If the cost is more than the benefit, then the proposed reg is deep-sixed.

Regulators are right to weigh cost versus benefit. They have to draw the line somewhere on how much money businesses or taxpayers should be made to pay in exchange for some marginal improvement in, say, air or water quality. Still, you have to wonder if the notoriously regulation-averse administration of President George W. Bush has stacked the deck in order to keep new regulations off the books.

The AP reported that, “according to the EPA, people shouldn’t think of the number as a price tag on a life.” But isn’t that just what it is?

As the bill to expand presidential spying powers sailed through the Senate by a wide margin yesterday, it was trailed by some colorful verbiage from critics: "capitulation," "compromise," "bow," "cave," and so on.

Many in the "netroots" opposition lambasted Barack Obama for reversing his earlier course and supporting the legislation, which grants legal immunity to companies that cooperated with government spying efforts and changes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act system to grease the path for more wiretapping of private communications.

Noting that Hillary Clinton voted against the bill, Kos on DailyKos tries to contextualize Obama's support:

"It wasn't an ideological decision (i.e. a "move to the center"), but a tactical one. It was a strategic retreat....

".... at the end of the day, he's a politician, with all the triangulating goodness that's become a hallmark of our presidential candidates. That has cost him some intensity of support, some bad headlines, a new avenue of attack for Republicans (even though McCain didn't even bother showing up for the vote)..."

The leaders of the world’s richest democracies didn’t appear to feel the pain of the world’s hungry when they got together in Japan this week to talk about the global food crisis. With the price of food soaring, millions of people are being pushed precariously to the brink of starvation, and food riots are roiling scores of hardscrabble places around the globe. There was plenty for the affluent leaders to discuss.

G8 members didn’t let any of that get in the way of a good meal. In the first day of the summit the VIPs chowed down at the “blessings of the earth and sea social dinner.” Eighteen dishes were reportedly served in eight courses, including caviar, smoked salmon, Kyoto beef, truffles, sea urchin and tuna. The repast was washed down with champagne, sake and a variety of other wines. African leaders who had taken part in the talks — and whose countrymen figure prominently among the hungry — were not invited to the dinner.

Gosh, where are those war powers when you need them?

A commission led by two former secretaries of state, James A. Baker, III and Warren Christopher, just released a report urging a revision of the War Powers act.

That legislation, enacted amid the public fury over the Vietnam War, has enabled (or limited) the executive branch to wage war abroad for up to 90 days without a green light from Congress. In theory, the intention was to strengthen the balance between the constitutional powers of Congress (purse strings) and the president (military command).

In practice, Congress has historically wielded its "war powers" rather meekly, and presidents have used their commander-in-chief authority to launch into combat without seeking a formal go-ahead from Congress. Meanwhile, the question of what war powers the constitution actually grants lawmakers has never really been settled in the courts. (Not that people haven't tried: just this May, a group of peace activists filed a lawsuit in New Jersey challenging the constitutionality of the Iraq War.)

Could a rewrite of the War Powers Resolution reconfigure the political landscape for deciding matters of war?

If corporate personhood is a pillar of US law, then mega-contractor KBR shouldn’t be left alone with your kids. Having sopped up well-larded government contracts to provide food, construction help and other services at home and abroad, news is leaking out about the Houston-based firm's ill-gotten gains.

The Times recently reported on Charles M. Smith, who says the Army fired him from his oversight position for trying to cut off payments to KBR after an audit revealed over $1 billion left unaccounted for.

But the whistleblower’s ouster folds into a bigger pattern of KBR (an offshoot of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton empire) milking federal coffers with abandon.

XM and Sirius (the companies that brought us the on-air talents of Howard Stern and Martha Stewart, among others) are gunning to clinch their grasp over the protean digital ether of satellite radio.

As the proposed merger winds its way through the federal regulatory regime, it has sparked outrage from media reformers, who see it as another monopoly that will further squelch diversity in the media. It’s also ruffled the feathers of the old guard, including the National Association of Broadcasters, which grumbles that the merger would give an unfair advantage to their new-school rivals.

But the deal isn't just about modern trust-busting. It touches on a complex relationship between media ownership and cultural and ideological diversity in the public sphere. When one company controls an entire medium, what happens to the array of voices channeled through it? On a local level, critics warn, consolidation kills pluralism by definition.

Chronic joblessness, slumping growth and a reeling stock market. If you didn't know any better, that might look a bit like a recession to you. But if White House officials seem determined to keep that word out of the popular lexicon, there's got to be a reason, right?

Whatever you want to call it, the new labor statistics showing 5.5 percent unemployment, accompanied by soaring oil prices, are feeding economic anxieties. And even mainstream economic analysts are starting to murmur the R-word.

President Bush and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao have tried to quell recession fears with another political buzzword. "A surge of new young entrants into the job market," they say, is skewing up the unemployment rate--evoking images of teens mowing lawns and guarding pools, as opposed to middle-aged auto workers.

The Framers of our Constitution had this quaint idea for resolving differences between Congress and the president over legislation: If the president didn't like a bill that Congress had passed and sent to the White House, the president could veto the bill. If Congress didn't like the presidential veto, it could override it and make the bill law anyway, if it mustered a two-thirds majority in each house.

But presidents invented a new solution of their own: presidential signing statements, issued when a president signs bills. Sometimes, the signing statements were little more than happy rhetoric to accompany the distribution of pens used to sign the legislation. On other occasions, though, the president would sign the bill, but use a signing statement to say he had no intention of enforcing some objectionable section of the law. As The Constitution Project points out, this is a really bad idea. One big question is what impact the statements have on the executive agencies that are supposed to be carrying out the intent of Congress, but answer to the president. Nobody really knows, but the Congressional Research Service did a study of that and other aspects of the issue.

Other presidents before George W. Bush have used signing statements to take issue with sections of laws they were signing. Bush's father was one example. So was Bill Clinton. But no one has used this device more than Bush. He used it so often that Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for writing about signing-statement abuse.

Now a Republican congressman from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Walter Jones, is sponsoring legislation designed to ride herd on the statements.

You know the race is tight when Appalachia ranks as the hottest battleground on the electoral map. But can well-heeled mainstream politicians learn anything about themselves from the tussle over the votes of just plain folk?

This campaign has spawned some gingerly worded overtures toward talking about race (or talking about talking about race, or talking about ignoring race). But class issues apparently lack this elliptical media-porn magnetism, and the struggles of rural working-class people seem stubbornly locked in a black-and-white context.

Dee Davis at Salon analyzes the Democrats’ tendency to both downplay and denigrate alienated white voters in Kentucky and West Virginia. This could take the form writing them off as inbred, Bible-thumping bigots—a caricature that conservatives may ultimately throw back at “elitist" liberals. Or those snobby Dems might simply ignore “mountain people” as a constituency—driving a self-fulfilling prophecy of voters gravitating toward conservatives who seem marginally more interested in shaking their hands and kissing their babies—for a few pivotal weeks, anyway. He writes:

Nationally prominent Democrats have often come into the mountains of eastern Kentucky, where I live, to see and to be seen. Perhaps that's because the idea that government should keep an eye on people who were not prospering was once part of the essence of the Democratic Party. Or perhaps it's because they know there are votes here. …

But lately, other than Edwards, we haven't had many visitors. Maybe the party that once welcomed Appalachian coal miners and hillside farmers has moved on. The national Democratic Party has become younger, richer, hipper and far less interested in preserving an identity forged in the Great Depression.

In the end, Davis argues, it’s not about stooping to rednecks versus taking the high road; politicians can campaign effectively without condemning certain groups to political insignificance for their seeming backwardness. The question is whether political leaders are mature enough to reach, and understand, politically isolated communities in the right context—race, class or otherwise—and recognize their relevance in the broader discussion on where the nation is headed. The prospects for a Democratic White House, and the general vitality of the country’s political arena, may hinge on that challenge.

For the polar bear and its friends, it was one of those classic good-news-bad-news days.

The big bad news, of course, is that the Arctic ice continues to melt, which makes life increasingly tenuous for ursus maritimus. The good news is that the Bush administration, well past deadline and acting under court order, finally noticed the melting and got around to listing the polar bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. But--sorry, more bad news, bears--the administration handled it oddly.

Even though the Department of the Interior acknowledged the melting of polar ice as a key threat to the species, the listing seems to say that federal agencies don't have to take into account the impact of global warming on the bears. Huh?

Sen. John McCain is promising local Republicans that he won't forget about New York, says Suffolk GOP Chairman Harry Withers. According to Withers, state Republican Party Chairman Joseph Mondello says that McCain has assured him that he will campaign here.

Republican presidential candidates tend to write off New York, putting their resources where they have a better chance. But a recent poll says that McCain is no more than 6 percentage points behind either Democrat.

The local party needs the jolt McCain's star turn could bring. The Republicans lost every statewide post to the Democrats in the last election. And the GOP majority in the state Senate is hanging on by a whisper. McCain's reassurances must be music to Mondello's ears.

McCain's promise is surely a way of saying "thanks" to his big campaign donors here. Saying anything else at this point might cost the Arizona senator loyalty and cash. But can he keep his word this fall, when the pressure is on to win big swing states?

Let us hasten to reassure you. The bombs of the title are only virtual bombs. But they're a good way to visualize the lethality of child-killing cluster bomb munitions, which will be an increasingly visible issue as this year goes by.

Cluster munitions are a particularly nasty form of weaponry that leaves thousands of unexploded little bomblets behind. They look like toys to children, who pick them up with tragic results, and they are scattered over a wide area. To see what the pattern of bomblets over your own area would be, go to this Web site maintained by the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker lobby. Choose one of two types of cluster munitions, enter your street address, and click Go. You'll get a map showing you what the typical dispersion of the bomblets would be in your neighborhood. It's a chilling exercise.