The 2005 trees falling in the forest awards

CJR brings us five great stories that, basically, nobody read in 2005.

One of the stories regards the terrifying tale of global warming -- a looming catastrophe that is continually ignored and/or ridiculed by far too many policy-makers.

I was thinking about just such stories today; not those necessarily the result of great journalism, but those news stories which fell out of the sky with no one paying much attention. What were some of the most shocking, disturbing pieces of news that emerged this year, and went, for the most part, completely unreported? And I'm not talkin' fantastic adventure tales like"Able Danger" here, people.

Here's a few that come to mind.

Lax testing of genetically engineered crops.

The Department of Agriculture has failed to regulate field trials of genetically engineered crops adequately, raising the risk of unintended environmental consequences, according to a stinging report issued by the department's own auditor.

The report, issued late last month by the department's Office of Inspector General, found that biotechnology regulators did not always notice violations of their own rules, did not inspect planting sites when they should have and did not assure that the genetically engineered crops were destroyed when the field trial was done.

In many cases, the report said, regulators did not even know the locations of field trials for which they granted permits.

The regulatory branch "lacks basic information about the field test sites it approves and is responsible for monitoring, including where and how the crops are being grown, and what becomes of them at the end of the field test," the report said.

The audit results are likely to renew calls by environmental groups for tighter regulations. "Over all, I thought the report was devastating," said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington.

Critics say genetically engineered crops could cause environmental harm, if, say, a gene for herbicide resistance spread to weeds, making them harder to kill.

In addition, the critics say, there could be harm to public health if a crop genetically engineered to produce a pharmaceutical or industrial chemical, for instance, accidentally found its way into the food supply.

Obviously, in the U.S., a newspaper editor doesn't want to be branded as a looney Luddite European, braying about "Frankenfoods." Nevertheless, this report strikes me as a very big deal; a threat to the nation's food supply would be, well, significant. Certainly more significant than the attention it's been getting.

The press reports that the Cheney administration had agreed with McCain's anti-torture amendment...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After months of opposition, the White House agreed Thursday to Republican Sen. John McCain's call to ban torture by U.S. personnel.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Virginia, and McCain, R-Arizona, met with President Bush to discuss the deal, which Warner said he expects to be finalized by the end of the day.

After the meeting with President Bush, McCain said "this is a done deal."

Only to ignore his evisceration of the McCain amendment.

The President signed the Defense Appropriations bill on Friday. In his signing statement he did at least two notable things…

Most importantly, as to the McCain Amendment, which would categorically prohibit cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees by all U.S. personnel, anywhere in the world, the President wrote:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

Translation: I reserve the constitutional right to waterboard when it will "assist" in protecting the American people from terrorist attacks. [UPDATE: Or, as Matthew Franck eagerly puts it over at the National Review, "the signing statement . . . conveys the good news that the president is not taking the McCain amendment lying down."]

The inability of Democrats and the press to look beyond Alito's positions on Roe v Wade to see what is really at stake here: Bush's attempt to stack the court with jurists prepared to annoint him War King.

Surely there's more. Drop a comment if you think of something that I'd missed or forgotten.