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The original Deepwater Horizon fire (Pic by Deepwater Horizon Response, via Flickr) According to a plan approved by the Coast Guard and obtained by the Associated Press, BP will no longer be responsible for the cleanup of any oil washing up on Gulf of Mexico shores, unless officials can prove it came from the BP well that blew out in 2010, killing 11 workers and sending more than 20 million gallons of oil into the gulf. Via the AP : About 90 percent of the Gulf coast has been deemed clean, according to officials. The plan spells out protocol for when an area still needs to be cleaned and when BP’s responsibility for that ends.

People with recently-acquired disabilities have been swimming through an endless sea of red tape to get the U.S. Department of Education to forgive their

Yesterday, Larry Summers -- former Harvard president and lauded economist -- announced he will leave his position as the head of the National Economic Council

That press release from the U.S. military in Iraq announcing that U.S. planes fired on Sons of Iraq militiamen who were planting roadside bombs? Note its

Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fla.) decried as wrong a New Yorker story that says the senator would have supported a cap-and-trade bill, but didn’t want to

In a reversal vote Thursday, the U.S. Senate voted to nix ethanol subsidies, much to the dismay of federal lawmakers who advocate for farmers and ethanol producers.

Here’s an interesting tidbit from The Washington Post’s story today on whether BP can rebrand itself following the massive oil spill in the Gulf: apparently

The Senate Armed Services Committee right now is in a brief recess, but the likelihood of getting information out of two invited witnesses formerly employed by

The Obama administration unveiled today a report that says the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s $100 billion investment in innovation will lead to a

This weekend’s news that inmates at the part of the prison at the U.S. Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan, run by Special Operations forces had suffered abuse

When it was launched in March, the Foreign Policy Initiative ’s mission was always to back robust, whatever-it-takes operations in Afghanistan. I see that FPI’s

Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice recently provided legal defense for a public bus driver who was fired for refusing to take a woman to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas back in January 2010. According to the lawsuit, he was “ concerned that he might be transporting a client to undergo an abortion.” # Edwin Graning, a bus driver and ordained Christian minister in Austin, has been awarded $21,000 from the Capital Area Rural Transportation System after being fired for refusing to do his job. The Center for Law and Justice has called the settlement “ a win for religious accommodation .” # The woman Graning was hired to transport did not mention she was having an abortion

The group that brought America Undercover at Planned Parenthood, a shaky, 11-minute video shot clandestinely by undercover anti-abortion-rights activists, is

Rep. Allen West, R-Fort Lauderdale (Pic by Debra Todd, via Facebook) Planned Parenthood’s new “Women are Watching” campaign features Allen West on its list of “chumps,” a designation reserved for congressmen and congresswomen with the lowest scores on women’s health policies.

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson says that the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden can open the door for climate change legislation in Congress

Four leaders of congressional agriculture committees sent a letter to congressional “super committee” members proposing $23 billion in agricultural cuts Monday. The cuts would come in the Farm Bill, which expires next year. The committee members hope the voluntary reductions, which they propose to put together in detail by Nov.

Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both California Democrats, said yesterday that they would soon introduce legislation on pipeline safety. The

Hot off the presses from the McCain campaign, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) sent out a mass email to McCain supporters announcing a new group, "Citizens for

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are set to answer

President Obama’s 2012 campaign has a new senior adviser — and he is a former lobbyist for the Keystone XL pipeline, according to the environmental group Friends of the Earth . The campaign hired Broderick Johnson of the lobbying firm Bryan Cave LLP, which lobbied on behalf of TransCanada, the owners of the proposed pipeline.

“My claim status says my claim is being reviewed, yet no one can tell me when or what stage it is in. If there are 45,000 claims in this stage am I number 15 or 41,000 in the line? one claimant wrote to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility.