If you haven't been reading RegWatch, our new regulatory policy weblog, here's a look at what you've been missing. Regulatory Policy Failures So what's the federal government doing to protect us from bio-terrorism?

• Weakening needed rules, after meeting with the food industry!
• Promoting a Bioshield program that is inadequate to the task!

But surely our nuclear facilities are being secured against terrorism threats. Right?

• Well, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission maintains that it is not necessary to safeguard nuclear facilities from attacks by planes, even though a leaked study reveals that nuclear facilities may be more vulnerable to such attacks than the NRC or the nuclear industry would like the public to believe.
• And the NRC allowed the nuclear power industry's own lobby to conduct terrorism preparedness tests!

Well, then, what's the government doing to protect the environment?

• Reducing the amount of habitat needed to protect a threatened species, the bull trout -- first by deleting all benefits from the cost-benefit analysis, then by concluding that the benefits don't outweigh the costs of protecting all the proposed habitat!
• Letting industry write its own rules in the regulations that are supposed to protect us from mercury, a powerful neurotoxin that is particularly harmful to children and pregnant women!
• Moving to weaken rules intended to prevent overfishing even though a new report reveals that overfishing is imperiling the oceans!
• Remaining idle as species after species of amphibians becomes extinct and male fish in the Potomac River have begun to produce eggs!
• Reversing a 30-year trend of environmental improvements!

And it doesn't stop there. There have been several high-profile retrospective reviews of the Bush administration regulatory record:

• Documenting how the administration leans in favor of oil and gas interests when making land use decisions,
• Revealing that agencies are "slow-rolling" needed regulatory protections in order to avoid alienating business interests during the election season, and
• Comparing this administration's track record of putting foxes in the henhouse against the Clinton record of hiring academics and public interest experts in regulatory agencies, in particular the Environmental Protection Agency.

What's the missing link between the power industry and the Bush administration's "energy policy" -- that is, its habit of distorting environmental and other regulatory policies to favor polluting power companies? Campaign contributions! The Heritage Foundation, of all places, has actually quantified the Bush administration's rollback of regulatory protections. Unsound Science The NIH finally addressed unseemly conflicts of interest, while the FDA seemed to move heaven and earth to suppress scientific conclusions unfavorable to the pharmaceutical industry in the cases of Vioxx and youth using antidepressants. Consumer Issues Consumer groups have joined together for a new agenda for consumer rights. The new agenda is a timely initiative. Consumer Reports released two reports on the failures of federal government agencies to ensure that unsafe products are removed from the market. Provocative Ideas Scholars continue to develop interesting ideas with relevance for regulatory policy.

• If current cost-benefit analysis policies had been applied in the 1970s to major environmental decisions -- like removing lead from gasoline -- that we now know have been unequivocally beneficial to us all, cost-benefit would have led us in the wrong direction.
• Some authors of now discredited anti-regulatory screeds have replied to critics of their flawed arguments, but a law professor analyzing those responses reveals that the replies only raise yet more questions of the dubious basis for the claim that regulation is irrational.
• What is biopharming? Imagine field after field of plants that have been genetically engineered as mini-factories. They should not enter the food chain, but a professor reveals that we are at great risk of contamination of the food supply because the government is failing to regulate.
• Is the current practice of recess appointments unconstitutional? A legal scholar argues that the Recess Appointments Clause permits appointments only for vacancies that arise during a recess -- and only intersession recesses, not the shorter intrasession breaks.
• The Defense Department's many contracts -- and lax supervision of them -- have been linked to the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal.