Tag: Obama administration

Even as passenger rail proponents and opponents in Colorado pick over the details of a high-speed rail feasibility study (pdf) released this week, criticism continues to swirl around the Obama administration’s $8 billion in stimulus funds meant to kick-start the nation’s languishing passenger rail network.

The moment that the House of Representatives passed the health care reform bill, 10 Republican state attorneys general were ready for it. Early Monday morning, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced plans to sue on the grounds that the federal government was abusing its “power to regulate interstate commerce” by passing a personal mandate for health care. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum agreed, calling the mandate an attempt “to fine or tax someone just for living.” On the surface, conservative opposition to universal health care had dusted itself off and charged right back into the fight.

Quietly, free of headlines and fanfare, the Obama White House is toning down the bellicose “war-on-drugs” position that has defined U.S. narcotics policy for the last 25 years. In Vienna last week for the 53rd annual United Nations meeting on global drug policy, administration officials shifted from attacking drug use as a crime to be penalized and moved toward a strategy of tackling addiction as an illness to be treated, a number of health and human rights advocates who attended the event said.

Apparently one of the favorite Tea Party pastimes is hanging out with a few thousand of your best, most conservative friends and flooding the...

Environmental attorneys were encouraged by the tone of a final 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing on the controversial 2001 Clinton Roadless Rule in Denver Wednesday. Representing a coalition of conservation and wildlife groups, lawyers for the firm Earthjustice are arguing for the court to reinstate rules put in place by Pres. Clinton to protect more than 58 million acres of largely roadless public lands nationwide, including more than 4 million acres in Colorado.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a prepared statement Thursday that he won't seek the Colorado governor's office being vacated by Gov. Bill Ritter...

State Sen. Al White (R-Hayden) has scrapped plans for a bill this session that would have set up a state medical marijuana growing and...

ExxonMobil’s acquisition of natural gas giant XTO Energy – the hot topic in the gas-field communities of Colorado’s Western Slope this week – has...

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, is accusing the Obama administration of playing politics by rushing three rail shipments of depleted uranium from Cold...

President Obama’s attempt to shame top bankers on Monday convinced no serious observers that lending will suddenly flow freely and financial institutions will quit...