Articles by David Roberts

Fuel Security and Consumer Choice Act

This is pretty cool:

U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar today joined Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Barack Obama (D-IL) in introducing the Fuel Security and Consumer Choice Act. This bill would require all U.S. marketed vehicles to be manufactured as Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) within ten years. FFVs can use both regular gasoline and E-85 renewable fuel (motor fuel with 85 percent ethanol content). This capability would ensure access to an important alternative to foreign petroleum in the future as the nation's renewable fuels industry continues to expand rapidly.

...

The bill would require 10 percent of vehicles sold in the U.S. be FFVs within 18 months of passage. The requirement would increase by 10 percent for each subsequent model year resulting in all new vehicles being FFVs within ten years.

CBS fills Sunday-night hackery gap left by FOX

While Fox moves toward sanity, the rest of the news biz moves toward Fox.

Exhibit A: On Sunday, while Fox is educating its viewers on global warming, CBS's 60 Minutes will be producing a breathless piece of hype on "Eco-Terror's Growing Threat."

Growing according to who? Why, the FBI, of course, and far be it from a group of journalists to do anything but pass on the FBI's latest talking points.

Eco-terrorists have never killed or even hurt anybody, so it's a bit tricky to try to make them look like the nation's biggest threat. Here's one way to do it: Dig up some fruitloop who says they ought to kill people.

A spokesman for extreme animal rights groups believes killing humans is justified. "I think people who torture innocent beings should be stopped," says Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a California trauma surgeon. "If they won't stop when you ask them nicely, they don't stop when you demonstrate to them what they're doing is wrong, then they should be stopped using whatever means are necessary."

Eco-terrorists: The Nation's Biggest Hypothetical Threat!

Ask yourself this: If you put white-supremacy groups up against "eco-terror" groups and compared property damage done, lives lost or hurt, and willingness of spokespeople to say batshit crazy things on TV, who do you think would come out ahead? Why do you think the FBI is focused so intensely on one and not the other?

Could it have something to do with whose interests are threatened?

Fox runs non-BS documentary on global warming

Check out this hilarious article on the right-wing news site CNS News. It seems the wingnut faction is upset that Fox News is running a documentary on global warming -- and it's not even pretending the science is controversial! They're only presenting the "liberal" -- that is, scientific -- side! Worse yet, there are some actual environmentalists involved.

A Fox News Channel documentary on "global warming," set to air Sunday night, provides only the liberal take on the controversial issue and was approved after environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. reportedly "dragged" Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes to a lecture by former Vice President Al Gore, "kicking and screaming."

Love the scare quotes around "global warming."

It seems that Laurie David got to Roger Ailes, Fox News president (as revealed in our own Amanda Griscom Little's article in Outside). Amazingly, he seems to have seen the light on warming.

Even his own producer is a bit confused:

Congress strips Arctic Refuge drilling from budget legislation; still has to delay vote

Let me make us the last political blog on the planet to note events in the House yesterday, wherein an outbreak of spine among moderate Republicans triggered an almost total meltdown of the Republican command structure.

Empowered by Democratic unanimity, Rep. Charles Bass (R-NH) led a group of 25 moderate House R's (anybody got a list of these folks?) in demanding that Arctic Refuge drilling be stripped from the budget-reconciliation bill.

Bass' group is insisting the deal last "through conference," meaning they won't vote for it if it reemerges from conference committee with drilling reinserted.

But remember, for some in the House, refuge drilling is the white friggin' whale. It's Moby Dick. So of course a group of Ahabs put their foot down when they heard their precious whale might escape.

Thus, even after this pained concession, Republican leadership and unity broke down and the vote was delayed until next Tuesday.

(Meanwhile, in the Senate, Olympia Snowe put the kibosh on the Bush administration's treasured extension of tax cuts for dividends and capital gains.)

Fireworks will resume next week. It's been pretty good drama so far, but if these House moderates stay strong, and the budget reconciliation bill dies, it will be a major story -- a very public knee to the groin of the House Republican leadership, legendary for its ability to twist arms.

You know how it works for a bully -- once he gets his first ass kicking, he can never recapture the old mystique.

Stay tuned.

(Good thoughts from Carl Pope, Matt Yglesias, and Mark Schmitt.)