Lisa Murkowski

Is the proposed clean energy agency a dirty deal for taxpayers and the environment?

Will the proposed clean energy agency become a slush fund for nuclear power?U.S. lawmakers are considering legislation that would create a new independent federal agency to promote government investment in clean energy. But watchdogs are raising questions about whether the way the proposed agency is structured is unfair to taxpayers and bad for the environment. […]

Senate votes in support of species protections

The U.S. Senate on Thursday stood up for endangered-species protections. In the waning days of the Bush presidency, the administration pushed through two species-related rules, one that scaled back scientific reviews for endangered species and another that limited protections for the polar bear specifically. The Obama administration wants to undo those rules, and congressional leaders […]

Alaska Senator defends young constituent against Limbaugh’s attacks

Those of you who don’t read the comments under our posts may have missed this. Two days ago Nathan Wyeth brought news that talk radio gasbag Rush Limbaugh has been mocking a young Yup’ik Eskimo from Alaska who came to testify to Congress about the accelerating loss of her people’s traditional way of life due […]

Drilling for oil is good for climate change — see how!

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) explains why drilling in the Arctic Refuge will help us fight climate change: Won’t drilling for more oil make global warming worse? What some might perceive as the contradiction in further drilling, when we take into account the mean estimate of what we take from ANWR, it will be the […]

Alaska’s Ted Stevens gets desperate for ANWR

A while back, I noted with some bafflement that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) of all people was proposing a boost in CAFE standards. Now his fellow Senator is hopping on board the green train too: [Alaska Sen. Lisa] Murkowski on Tuesday endorsed Stevens’ bill and introduced a companion measure to create tax credits for alternative […]

We’d Do Anything for Love (But We Won’t Do That)

Republican gas-price pander disgusts even pander-lovin’ American people Hollywood producers like to say that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people. Hollywood producers, meet Senate Republicans. Their latest gas-price gambit, coordinated by Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) — a legislator who puts the “less” in “hapless” — seems to have […]

Scandal reaches Interior

I keep meaning to look more closely into the Abramoff scandals, particularly since they're now creeping into the Department of the Interior, where they look set to burn once-lobbyist, then-Deputy Secretary of Interior, then-lobbyist-again Steven Griles, who never received quite the full-throated demonization from green groups that he deserved.

If all the ins-and-outs confuse you, Carl Pope has provided a cogent summary. It ends thusly:

You read it here first -- despite the still unfolding news about Senate Majority leader Bill Frist's blind trust and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski's denial of a conflict of interest in building a "bridge to nowhere" near land her family owns -- the maze of money exchanges and influence buying at the Interior department may turn out to be the biggest financial scandals of the Bush administration. I'm guessing they lie somewhere within the as yet barely probed innards of the Department. And if my hunch proves correct, I'll bet it won't just be Indian gaming that's involved -- Alaska's oil wealth will be somewhere in the picture.

Another Teapot Dome scandal appears to be brewing.

Everything coal is new again

Congress seeks tax money to make defunct “clean coal” plant dirty again For aficionados of government pork, the energy bill that recently passed the House is the gift that keeps on giving. The latest gem uncovered is a provision that would offer $125 million in loan guarantees to a “clean coal” power plant in Alaska. […]

The real meaning of “roadless”

While shilling for drilling during last week's Senate debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) claimed that oil development would have a negligible effect on the area: "When we talk about the roadless areas we have available for exploration, we mean it. We do mean that we are going to put down an ice road that will disappear when the summer comes."

Bizarrely, as Felicity Barringer of The New York Times points out, roadless might not mean what you think it means.  

"[T]he term 'roadless' does not mean an absence of roads," Interior Department officials wrote in a recent environmental impact statement about drilling in another region of Alaska. "Rather, it indicates an attempt to minimize the construction of permanent roads."

The sheer inventiveness of the Bushies' Orwellian contortions is awe-inspiring.