By Elaine Donnelly
Extending sexual misconduct to combat units
On a party-line vote, a key Senate committee on Thursday approved the nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a significant step forward for the controversial nominee and one that ends, at least temporarily, a bitter fight between Republicans and Democrats.
Two of President Obama's second-term personnel picks that have attracted conservative and business opposition moved a step closer to confirmation Thursday.
As he struggles to find momentum in his second term, President Obama is setting a dubious record for the slowest pace in assembling a new Cabinet.
Gina McCarthy's already bumpy road to becoming Environmental Protection Agency administrator took another detour Thursday morning when Senate Republicans boycotted a committee vote on her nomination, blocking it for now.
The researcher who exposed former EPA chief Lisa P. Jackson's private email account is now taking aim at her potential successor — and is expanding the inquiry into the world of mobile phone text messages, which are shaping up as the next frontier in open-records legal battles.
With the Environmental Protection Agency set to play the central role in President Obama's second-term climate change agenda, would-be agency chief Gina McCarthy on Thursday tried to calm Republican fears that she would continue the perceived "war on coal" and other harsh regulations under her predecessor.
President Obama's pick to be the next chief of the Environmental Protection Agency told Congress on Thursday that she never has used private emails or instant-messaging to try to avoid open-records laws, and promised to crack down on those within the agency who do.
President Obama's pick to head the Energy Department offered something for everyone during Senate confirmation hearings.
The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that it will retrain all employees on how to comply with open-records laws and acknowledged that it needs to do better at storing instant-message communications, after the agency came under severe fire from members of Congress who say it appears to have broken those laws.
Two of President Barack Obama's top appointees to oversee energy and pollution policy will take center stage this week at Senate confirmation hearings that should add new detail about the administration's second-term regulatory agenda.
Top Environmental Protection Agency officials used computer instant messages to try to circumvent open-records laws, according to a lawsuit filed by a researcher who has been hounding the agency to comply with the law.
Internal EPA emails released Tuesday show an agency hostile to new energy production in the U.S. and an effort at "shaming" states into complying with Obama administration environmental priorities, according to the top Republican on the Senate environment committee.
There will be no breath of fresh air at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On March 4, President Obama introduced Gina McCarthy, a veteran of the EPA bureaucracy, as his choice to run the 17,000-employee agency during his second term.
In fulfilling expectations that he would tap Gina McCarthy and Ernie Moniz to fill out his energy and environment team, President Barack Obama let it be known that he's seeking practicality over green purity.
She said at one point that she couldn't have used computer instant messages to circumvent open-records requests because she doesn't know how to use the EPA's IM program.
Feds hide behind potential text message loophole in sunshine law →
Ms. McCarthy also said that "environmental protection is not a partisan issue," a notion she repeated several times during the hearing.
'War on coal' may burn EPA nominee; GOP senators question Gina McCarthy's record →
