The Obama administration issued a new executive order Friday evening, a favorite time to release material while everyone is otherwise distracted or not paying attention.  The Hill reports a unilateral move by the White House to establish a new working group intended to further regulate and control exploration and extraction of natural gas deposits using hydraulic "fracking": President Obama signed an executive order Friday establishing a high-level task force charged with coordinating federal oversight of domestic natural-gas development. The task force is charged with ensuring that rapidly growing efforts to tap vast natural-gas supplies in the country's shale formations, which require advanced drilling techniques including "fracking," are "safe and responsible." The task force is to be composed of "deputy-level representatives" from the Defense, Energy, Interior, and Commerce Departments as well as from the EPA and other federal agencies.  It will be run out of the...(Read Full Post)