WHARNCLIFFE, W.Va. -- It's been two years since Sen. Joe Manchin (D) and other West Virginia politicians gathered near here to break ground for and sing the praises of what they said would be the first U.S. plant to turn coal into gasoline -- and create hundreds of jobs on a former strip mine near the Kentucky line. Engineering and site preparation followed the pep rally, but there's not much to show for the effort in Mingo County, one of several CTL projects struggling in the face of expanded stores of cheap domestic petroleum and heightened environmental scrutiny.

If environmental groups want a "BLM fracking rule" more to their liking, they'd better get out their pens and start writing.

After a slow start this year, tornado season made a deadly debut Wednesday night. An estimated dozen tornadoes touched down in north Texas. The damage included at least six people killed and whole houses that were suddenly yanked off their foundations to join the airborne debris.

With Gina McCarthy's nomination to head U.S. EPA finally out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) yesterday said Republicans led by ranking member David Vitter (R-La.) are weighing three options for floor action.

Wall Street is betting a half-billion dollars that consumer demand will continue rising for rooftop solar panels that allow home and business owners to generate their own on-site power and possibly even sell a few unused kilowatt-hours back to their neighbors.

U.S. EPA acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe came under fire this morning from Republicans concerned that his agency is contributing to "a culture of anti-conservative attitude" within the Obama administration. Earlier this week, the free market group the Competitive Enterprise Institute charged that EPA regularly uses Freedom of Information Act review and fee waiver decisions to make it more difficult for limited-government groups to access public records from the agency.

In the obscure world of federal rulemaking and administrative law, yesterday's gathering of progressives at American University was about as close as you could get to an old-fashioned revival meeting.

The Arctic Council added China and five other countries as official observers yesterday, expanding the focus of the organization and underscoring the complicated politics created by newly open waters in the north because of climate change.