Obama halts all regulations pending review

One of President Barack Obama's first acts Tuesday was to put the brakes on all pending regulations that the Bush administration tried to push through in its waning days. The order went out shortly after Obama was inaugurated president, in a memorandum signed by new White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Former President George W. Bush's administration moved into overdrive in the last year or so on a host of new regulatory proposals. Now the Obama administration will review everything that is still pending. In doing so, the Obama administration is taking a page out of Bush's playbook from 2001. Within hours after Bush was sworn in, Bush advisers were seeking to reverse some late-term actions of President Bill Clinton, who in his final 20 days in office issued 12 executive orders, including directives on migratory birds and the importation of diamonds from Sierra Leone....