Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The Environmental Protection Agency has revoked a water permit for a mining project issued in 2007 by the Army Corps of Engineers. It blocks $250 million in investment and costs 250 jobs. It is in the coal-mining area of West Virginia and involves removal of a mountain top. EPA, as is its custom, says science required the revocation. Other firms wonder if their permits will be revoked. This revocation is in line with EPA’s regulatory excess and its anti-energy bias. EPA is among the most imperious of the regulatory agencies, arising from the vagueness of Congress’s laws and orders, and Congress’s having abrogated oversight of the regulatory process. But if Congress is reforming, there are ways to rein them in, according to The Wall Street Journal January. 14 editorial. One is to enact the “ Executive In Need Of Scrutiny (Reins) Act ,” proposed by Senators DeMint and Davis. Among these unelected agencies, scarcely a week goes by without EPA’s regulatory carcinogen witch-hunt to re...

In the spook business, what comes in is every bit as important – sometimes more so – than what goes out. Spies, since the Washington administration, have always shaped political behavior. One of the reasons Washington was able to prevail over the British was that New York spy John Honeyman was a loyal and accomplished spook. The danger is that the bad spies (theirs) are able to manipulate the good spies(ours) if one of the good guys, for whatever reason, jumps the fence and joins the bad guys. In the spy business, you are what you know. And what you know, and don’t know, is furnished by intelligence gatherers that are, or are not, trustworthy. Got that? You may think you’ve got it. Perhaps you have been attentive over the years to the thrilling spy novels of the post Cold War period. But you have not got it unless you have read “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,” by Tim Weiner, a real-world account of how the Soviets for eight years manipulated U.S. intelligence -- surely an ox...

By Gerald and Natalie Sirkin c2007 A front-page story on PCBs in the March 9 News-Times is just wrong. The first thing to know about PCBs is that they never killed a single person nor did they ever cause cancer. The second is that although they are invariably called “cancer-causing,” that designation comes chiefly from a single rat study. The third thing is that the subject rats were exposed daily for 21 months to 100 parts per million (ppm) of PCBs containing 60% chlorine. (The 100 ppm was about 5,000 times the tolerable daily intake of PCBs set by FDA in 1973.) When rats were exposed to PCBs containing less chlorine, they developed no cancers. The fourth, that when the exposed rats were allowed to live out their lives, they had fewer cancers and lived longer than the unexposed rats. PCBs is a family of chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls. PCBs contain chlorine ranging from 12% to 70%. They were used in two General Electric plants that manufactured electrical equipmen...

The Sirkins are commentators whose articles have appeared in various newspapers and magazines. By Gerald and Natalie Sirkin* Prolific and invaluable investigative reporter Bill Gertz of The Washington Times has just published another blockbuster. Enemies, How America ’s Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets—and How We Let It Happen (N.Y.: Crown Forum, pp. 290, $26.95) exposes the shocking incompetence of the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, and our other intelligence organizations. The facts are virtually unknown to the American public. We doubt that many have heard of Katrina Leung or her FBI code name, “Parlor Maid.” Yet Leung is rated as one of the most damaging spies ever to penetrate the U.S. Government. Leung came to the U.S. from China with her parents in 1971 when she was 15. In college she joined the student movement that supported Communist China. Soon she was working with the Chinese intelligence service. Leung was recruited by FBI Agent J. J. Smith, though he knew of her reco...