From Think Progress: UNDER THE RADAR

ADMINISTRATION -- BUSH REWARDS IRAQ WAR LOYALISTS WITH PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM: On Monday, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino announced that "President Bush will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, and former Prime Ministers Tony Blair of the United Kingdom and John Howard of Australia." Perino noted that the three leaders have been loyal to Bush foreign policy, stating, "All three leaders have been staunch allies of the United States, particularly in combating terrorism." Support for the Iraq war has become a good predictor of whether one will receive the president's highest honor. Past recipients include Norm Podhoretz (2003), L. Paul Bremer (2004), Gen. Tommy Franks (2004), Gen. Richard Myers (2005), George Tenet (2004), and Gen. Peter Pace (2008). Given this standard, there are no better recipients than Howard and Blair. Howard joined Bush's Coalition of the Willing and kept a large number of Australian troops in Iraq until his defeat last year.  Similarly, Blair, derided in Britain as "Bush's poodle," had been Bush's strongest Western ally and helped push the invasion of Iraq. Uribe also joined Bush in contributing forces to the Coalition of the Willing.

ENVIRONMENT -- EPA INACTION CONTRIBUTED TO TENNESSEE COAL ASH DISASTER: On Dec. 22, a billion gallons of toxic coal sludge burst through a retention wall in eastern Tennessee and spread across 300 acres, causing massive property and environmental damage. The New York Times reports today that the Tennessee dump and more than 1,300 other similar dumps across the United States are "unregulated and unmonitored," as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has refused to act after facing push-back from the Big Coal. "The lack of uniform regulation stems from the E.P.A.'s inaction on the issue, which it has been studying for 28 years," the Times reports. "In 2000, the agency came close to designating coal ash a hazardous waste, but backpedaled in the face of an industry campaign that argued that tighter controls would cost it $5 billion a year." Regulation is essential, however, as "environmentalists, scientists and other experts say that regulations could have prevented the Tennessee spill." In fact, in 2000 the EPA "came close to prohibiting ash ponds" like the one in eastern Tennessee, but never acted. "We're still working on coming up with those standards," said Matthew Hale, director of the office of solid waste at the EPA. "We don't have a schedule at this point." Yesterday, a coalition of environmental groups announced it would sue the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on behalf of 40 families, "arguing TVA broke federal law by not fully disclosing the extent of spill contamination."

ECONOMY -- PENCE CHALLENGES AMERICANS TO 'CHECK' HIS FACTS: GUESS WHAT? HE'S GOT THEM WRONG: Appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal yesterday, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) repeatedly claimed that the solution to the economic crisis was to "do what Ronald Reagan did" and implement "across-the-board permanent marginal tax reductions." Towards the end of his interview, however, a caller challenged Pence's idea, saying that deficits exploded under Reagan, forcing the first President Bush to raise taxes. Pence replied that the caller was right that Reagan "saw deficits and the national debt grow," but he claimed it was the fault of spending in Congress because Reagan's tax cuts "resulted in more than a doubling of the revenues." Pence then asked viewers to "check me on this" because "people can check things easily on the Internet these days." As Media Matters noted, revenues did not get close to doubling under Reagan. "According to the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), when adjusted for inflation to constant fiscal year 2000 dollars, receipts (revenues) increased from $1.077 trillion to $1.236 trillion during Reagan's term in office." Additionally, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has found that income tax "receipts grew noticeably more slowly than usual in the 1980s, after the large cuts in individual and corporate income tax rates in 1981." In contrast, "income tax collections grew much more rapidly in the 1990s," when "marginal income tax rates at the top of the income spectrum were raised," according to CBPP.