USA Today calls for tighter regulation of mountaintop-removal strip mining for coal

The issue of mountaintop-removal coal mining kept gaining a higher national profile today, as USA Today, until recently the nation's largest-circulation newspaper, said in an editorial that "It's time to tip the scales the other way" in granting permits for mountaintop mines. "The administration would do well to block the worst of them and change regulations to make the permitting process much stricter," the editorial said. Hal Quinn of the National Mining Association disagrees.