The leading cause of railroad-related deaths is not collisions or derailments, but trespassing, explains a neatly argued new issue brief from the Congressional Research Service. See Rail Safety Efforts Miss Leading Cause of Fatalities, CRS Insights, April 2, 2015.
Other new and newly updated CRS reports that Congress has withheld from public distribution include the following.
Net Neutrality: Selected Legal Issues Raised by the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order, April 6, 2015
Ballistic Missile Defense in the Asia-Pacific Region: Cooperation and Opposition, April 3, 2015
An Overview of Unconventional Oil and Natural Gas: Resources and Federal Actions, April 7, 2015
U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production in Federal and Non-Federal Areas, April 3, 2015
Marijuana: Medical and Retail — Selected Legal Issues, April 8, 2015
Social Media in the House of Representatives: Frequently Asked Questions, April 2, 2015
The No Fly List: Procedural Due Process and Hurdles to Litigation, April 2, 2015
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.