The editors at Post Investigations have scoured the nation's top in-depth and investigative reports and selected their most interesting finds for this week. Drumrolls, please:

Report: Bush Administration Weakened EPA » The Bush administration informally amended the Environmental Protection Agency's mission to protect business interests, according to a four-part series, "Smoke and Mirrors: The Subversion of the EPA." Pro-industry regulations were drafted, a pliant agency chief was installed, a flawed voluntary program to fight climate change was instituted and air pollution recommendations from its own scientists were discarded. — Philadelphia Inquirer

Delay Likely Cost Journalist His Life » A two-day delay of a August 2007 raid on a bakery at the center of a police investigation in Oakland, to "accommodate the vacation schedules of two senior SWAT commanders," likely cost longtime journalist Chauncey Bailey his life. During the postponement, between Aug. 1 and Aug. 3, a masked gunman linked to the Muslim bakery's leader, Yusuf Bey IV, shot Bailey to death. — Chauncey Bailey Project

Report Shows 'Blunders' of Iraq Reconstruction » An unpublished federal narrative laying out the American-led reconstruction of Iraq shows a "effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country." The $100 billion plan was hindered by "bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure," the report found. — New York Times and ProPublica

Best of the Rest

» Mayors' Report Asks For Billions in Pork-Barrel Funding (CNN)
» Standardized Test Scores Show Unlikely 'Miracle' At One School (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
» Long Island Railroad Board Rarely Met (New York Times)