Midday Open Thread

• Funny stuff: check out Rahm Emanuel Facts.
• The big news around the eco-blogs (and eco-diaries here at dailyKos) is:

  The EPA appeals board held up permitting for a contentious coal-fired power plant and said carbon-dioxide emissions need to be regulated, in AP. That is a big victory for environmentalists, and puts a dark cloud over the future of coal power, at Grist. And environmentalists may soon have another tool to fight global warming, if plans to use the Clean Water Act bear fruit, at Dot Earth.

• Over the years, there has been much discussion - but little research - regarding the health of Gulf War veterans:

  Even as possibly hundreds of thousands of veterans suffer from a collection of symptoms commonly called Gulf War illness, the government has done too little to find treatments for their health problems nearly two decades after the war ended, a panel commissioned by Congress said.

  The advisory panel of medical experts and veterans wants at least $60 million spent annually for research, calling it a "national obligation," according to its report, obtained by The Associated Press.
  
  The report, which goes to the Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake on Monday, said the Defense Department cut research money from $30 million in 2001 to less than $5 million in 2006. Both departments have identified some of their research as "Gulf War research" even when it did not entirely focus on the issue.

• Everybody has questions, recommendations, and high hopes for Barack Obama's administration. Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists has a short post on government transparency. Dozens of organizations:

  ... convened and led by OMB Watch, produced a 112-page volume (pdf) that addresses transparency, access, national security secrecy, freedom of information policy, and related topics. See "Moving Towards a 21st Century Right to Know Agenda: Recommendations to President-Elect Obama and Congress."

• Creepy news of the week: did you hear about the missing nuclear bomb found under the ice in Greenland? BBC News reported on their findings earlier this week, and an article in der Spiegel today says that it's not an isolated incident:

  In a 1968 plane crash, the US military lost an atom bomb in Greenland's Arctic ice. But this was no isolated case. Up to 50 nuclear warheads are believed to have gone missing during the Cold War, and not all of them are in unpopulated areas.