It hasn't won the merest fraction of the coverage enjoyed by the London Olympics, but last week's massive Chevron oil refinery fire in Richmond, Calif., sent hundreds of people rushing to hospitals, darkened the skies over East Bay, and has gasoline prices headed back up towards $4 a gallon. AP notes this "was just the latest pollution incident at the facility that records show has increasingly violated air quality rules over the past five years. The refinery is one of three such facilities near San Francisco that rank among the state's top 10 emitters of toxic chemicals, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory. Chevron's Richmond refinery...has been cited by San Francisco Bay area regulators for violating air regulations 93 times in the past five years."

The Supreme Court of Montana on Aug. 10 ruled that its state's November ballots may include Initiative 166, a nonbinding policy statement that would direct the state's congress to support an amendment to the US Constitution asserting that corporations are not people and money does not qualify as speech. The goal of the endeavor is to counteract the 2010 US Supreme Court decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows corporations to spend and contribute unlimited and unrestricted money in political campaigns. The court's majority made clear, however, that its decision was limited only to whether the initiative complied with constitutional requirements regarding its proper submission to electors, and that it did not consider the "substantive legality of the issue, if approved by voters." The dissent echoed this distinction, labeling Initiative 166 as "simply a feel-good exercise exhibiting contempt for the federal government and, particularly, the US Supreme Court."