Devin Castles

In his June climate speech, President Obama promised to tackle one of the biggest items on environmental groups’ wish lists: regulating new and existing power plants. Here’s a look at what kind of impact new regulation could have, what barriers stand in the way of imposing those regulations, and what authority the administration has to […]

The extraordinary oil and gas boom the U.S. has experienced in the last few years has led to growing concerns over how the government should protect and manage its public land, including the 38 million acres currently being leased to oil and gas companies for drilling. While the president has opened up 6.5 million acres […]

How helping the poor becomes top-down class warfare.

Just what the heck is a “reverse mortgage,” anyway?

Earlier this month, Josh Marshall gave his much-cited take on the basic dividing lines for people on the surveillance state in general, and the Snowden leaks in particular. If for some reason you haven’t read it yet, you should, but here is a key passage that has gotten a lot of attention: Here is I […]

Semilla Luz – Flickr CC License In Brazil, what started as a small protest over bus and subway fare hikes has blossomed into much larger nationwide demonstrations over a longer list of issues, including high taxes, poor schools and public services, extravagant spending for the upcoming Olympics and World Cup, and a seemingly out-of-touch and […]

Even though the nation’s capital enjoys a rich tax base and a comparatively booming job market, it still hasn’t avoided the aging infrastructure woes plaguing much of the country. On Tuesday, a piece of concrete fell and broke through a sewer line, halting traffic, and creating a 15-foot-deep sinkhole in downtown DC at 14th and […]

After months of Republican pot-banging (and altering emails), conservatives have successfully turned the media’s eye back toward the Benghazi affair, forcing the Obama administration to answer a daily barrage of questions from the press corps about Benghazi talking points. And new revelations about inappropriate targeting by the IRS and the DOJ’s best Big Brother impression […]

The New York Times may have shuttered its Green Blog, but the on the reporting side of things, it continues to cover the depressing environmental news of the day. On Friday we learned that the daily level of atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million. The Times reports: The best available evidence suggests the […]