If you're following the mountaintop mining story, check out Marketplace's report on the proposed new Bush rules. I heard it last night and it's an excellent recap of the situation: namely, that the Bush administration would like to relax the rules on the controversial practice so that it can expand and continue. The New York Times also spells out the plans here, for those who prefer print (and good for you if that's you!)

Mountaintop mining, which is big in West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia, entails blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the resulting rubble into sstreams and valleys.

Fellow blogger and West Virginia native Tim Wheeler tells me that the town where his dad was born is no more, thanks to this practice. It's buried under debris. This is Audubon Magazine describing the place in 2001: "The farms are gone; the church is gone; the school is gone; the town--all 800 houses--is gone; and the mountains to the west and north are gone."

Baltimore filmmaker Catherine Pancake, also a West Virginia native, made a well-received movie on the subject : Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal and The Fight for Coalfield Justice. I think it still comes around occasionally at small screenings.