Articles by David Roberts

Tax-funded press release ‘highly partisan and political’

There's not much new info in Jim Motavalli's review of the infamous AP article and Inhofe's infamous response thereto. But I thought one bit was fairly remarkable. Recall that the Inhofe press release came directly from the Senate Environment and Public Works committee -- your tax money at work, as they say. Witness:

Marc Morano, a spokesperson for the Senate majority on the Environment and Public Works committee ... denied, however, that the press release was "an official government action," implying subpoenas or hearings. "This was not from a senator, but from the Republican majority," Morano said. "It's up to others to decide if it was unusual or not. I'd be surprised if there was no precedent, because many congressional committees are highly partisan and political."

(Morano, you'll recall, is a long-time Republican media thug.)

Notice that Morano implicitly concedes two things. The first is that he and his boss view global warming purely as a "highly partisan and political" issue. The second is that it's now scarcely noteworthy that Senate committees are used for the personal partisan vendettas of their chairs.

The moral and political bankruptcy of the gang in charge in D.C. is now accepted fact, one they don't even bother to deny.

Happy Independence Day, only without the happy part

(Obviously, this post was meant to be up yesterday.)

The obligation to deliver an uplifting message of hope about the real meaning of Independence Day hovers. But I just don't have it in me.

I said last Thanksgiving, "I am acutely conscious of the blessings I enjoy, my privileged place in a shrinking world." Every holiday my awareness grows more acute, as those blessings stand in starker and starker contrast to the disaster taking place on the world stage.

Two situations are reaching a crisis point.

Assault on the free press: a parable

To illustrate a point, let me tell a quick story:

On June 23 , The New York Times ran a story on SWIFT, the Bush Treasury Department's terror finance tracking program. Most of the information had been revealed in other publications, and insiders knew that the program was no longer producing much. The Wall Street Journal and the L.A. Times also ran stories on SWIFT.

Nonetheless, needing to change the headlines, Bush and his agents attacked the NYT. The official rhetoric was merely stern, citing unspecified damage to our national security. But Bush's most popular and enthusiastic defenders were not so circumspect. Charges of "treason" bounced around the conservative cable tv and blog circuit (again). You mean treason, like the high crime punishable by death? Says radio talk show host Melanie Morgan: "I would have no problem with [NYT editor Bill Keller] being sent to the gas chamber."

So, the NYT was accused of deliberately helping terrorists. Freaky enough. Then things took a turn for the Super Freaky.

Electric cars: Don’t call it a comeback

Though the snark against Who Killed the Electric Car? ("Who cares? It's history!") is bizarre and unwarranted, Joel Makower's post on the revival of electric cars and plug-in hybrids nonetheless contains a wealth of interesting information. I knew some efforts were underway to produce and market all-electric vehicles, but I didn't know how many.

It seems to me the only stumbling block is the development of light, economical, reliable lithium-ion batteries, and given that lithium-driven scooters are already on the market, I can't imagine they're too far away.

I predict the market will judge the Big Three American automakers' new push for flex-fuel vehicles harshly. Electric is the future, no matter how many subsidies the feds pump in other directions.