Year: 2017

Categories
Government

But his emails…

Social media is abuzz with the proof of Donald Trump Jr’s collusion with Russian officials. He actually released the emails containing the proof on Twitter, but only because the New York Times was about to release content from the emails.

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Categories
Environment Legal, Laws, and Regs

The DC Courts Yank Pruitt’s Leash

The EPA operates under very strict guidelines regarding its decisions related to rules and regulations. The guidelines were in play when the EPA released a rule to cut methane emissions in May 2016. These guidelines also worked to save the rule when Pruitt’s EPA moved to arbitrarily halt its enforcement.

In a 2-1 decision in the DC Court of Appeals today the justices rejected the EPA’s assertion that its decision to ‘stay’ the methane rule for two years was not a final agency action, and therefore not subject to court overview.

The imposition of the stay, however, is an entirely different
matter. By staying the methane rule, EPA has not only concluded that section 307(d)(7)(B) requires reconsideration, but it has also suspended the rule’s compliance deadlines. EPA’s stay, in other words, is essentially an order delaying the rule’s effective date, and this court has held that such orders are tantamount to amending or revoking a rule. As we explained in a very similar situation, where an agency granted an application for interim relief from a safety standard while it reconsidered that standard: “In effect, the Administrator has granted a modification of the mandatory safety standard for the entire period of time that the petition is pending. There is no indication that the Secretary intends to reconsider this decision or to vacate the grant of interim relief. Thus, the Secretary’s decision represents the final agency position on this issue, has the status of law, and has an immediate and direct effect on the parties. Therefore, we have no difficulty concluding that the Secretary has issued a final decision . . .

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Categories
Environment Legal, Laws, and Regs

Several groups sue on reversal of Arctic Drilling ban

On May 3rd, several groups including Earth Justice, Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and others joined with Alaska Native groups to sue the Trump administration for its reversal of the Arctic drilling ban.

The complaint states there is no Constitutional authority for Trump to reverse a Section 12(a) withdrawal, the authority President Obama used to ban Arctic drilling. In the complaint, the claim for relief states:

In reversing President Obama’s Arctic and Atlantic Ocean withdrawals, President Trump acted in excess of his authority under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and intruded on Congress’s non-delegated exclusive power under the Property Clause, in violation of the doctrine of separation of powers.

The lawsuit is in preliminary stages, and so far, no group has asked to intervene on behalf of the government, though I expect this to change.

Categories
Technology

Integrating WordPress’ Multisite support

In the past, I’ve skipped between supporting multiple sites and only having a single site, here at Burningbird.

I like different domains and sites so that people can focus primarily on the topics they like. For instance, tech people may get a bit tired of my political writings, and those interested in the political writings may not care for in-depth overviews of JavaScript.

The main issue with multiple sites, though, is the amount of work to maintain the software for each site. In fact, that’s been a real pain in the past, and the reason I took down the individual sites.

Thankfully, WordPress has very good multisite support now. I can support different sites with different domain names, and you all have no idea it’s all fed by the same WordPress installation. More importantly, if I decide to subscribe to a security system for my site, such as Wordfence, I only need one subscription. Considering how much my site gets hammered on a daily basis, I’m definitely interested in increasing my security. However, security API keys are not cheap. They’re too expensive to get one for every domain.

I’m also eliminating all statically generated web pages. I just wiped out the old weblog.burningbird.net site. I thought about keeping some of the old content but then realized people have enough stuff to read, they don’t need to see stuff that’s 15 years old. In addition, I’m adding newer statically generated content into WordPress, in preparation for converting everything over to the secure version of HTTP, HTTPS.

As I add active content to new sites, I’ll post a note linking to them. Right now, I have active content here and at One Lawsuit.

Categories
Just Shelley

Bubbling pipes

The sewer district system engineer is coming out this morning.

It isn’t normal to have the problems we’re having. And last night, I didn’t sleep at all because the pipes, toilets, and plumbing were bubbling all night.

I know this is nothing compared to people’s homes flooding, but it wears you down. Especially if these types of rain events are going to become more common.

We suspect we know why the previous owners decided to sell…