Articles by David Roberts

We watch and cringe

Right now a massive $70 billion tax-cut bill is working its way through the Senate.

(You will recall that Congressional Republicans split the budget bill in two, so the first bill would be pure spending cuts -- thus getting them coverage in the press for "courageously" cutting spending to rein in the deficit -- and the second pure tax cuts, to please all their normal constituencies. The latter being much larger than the former, the net result is a massive expansion of the deficit.)

Energy prices being what they are, Congresscritters feel pressured to Do Something. Rather than any substantive changes in energy policy -- kind of blew that chance with the grotesque energy bill -- they're settling for symbolic smacks to the wrist of Big Oil.

I won't get too far into the weeds of various proposals, since none of them will survive House-Senate conference committee and none would make a very big difference if it did. I'll just do the bloggy thing and extract a few absurdities from the press coverage.

Here's one from The Wall Street Journal:

Manson retires

Assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks Craig Manson, whose memorable interview with Grist put our readers in full frosh, has resigned. Lord only knows how they'll be able to replace him.

Global warming: A way for rich people to kill poor people

According to a study by the World Health Organization appearing in this month's Nature, global warming is responsible for 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses a year, primarily in poor countries that contribute very little to it.

Nailing Connole because of his politics was the whole point

So how about this stuff with Josh Connole?

For those who haven't been following: In 2003, about 125 SUVs at SoCal car dealerships were burned and vandalized. Slogans like "Fat Lazy Americans" and "ELF" were left behind.

Of course, as we all know this is not mere property destruction, not mere crime, but "eco-terrorism."

So the FBI was brought in and they starting looking for likely suspects. They found a vegan, commune-living, Iraq-war protesting, electric-car driving, fossil-fuel hating activist, and arrested him. Except, oops:

"So they immediately started following him around and then when they arrested him they said, 'You've got some red paint on your pants and we think it matches (the paint used in the attacks)," [Connole attorney John] Burton said. "So they took his pants and flew them back to FBI headquarters for analysis, where it turned out to be catsup."

In the meantime, Burton said, Connole spent four days in jail, often chained to the floor and repeatedly urged by FBI agents to confess.

Meanwhile, the guy who really did it wrote a letter to the L.A. Times, mocking the feds for getting the wrong guy.

Now, from the tone of the coverage, I think the idea is that we're all supposed to be upset that the feds are surveilling people based on their political activity -- and in fact, that Connole was arrested based purely on his politics.

But that slightly misses the point.