shenanigans

Massey incest redux

So, remember how two justices on the W. Va. Supreme Court have recused themselves from the Massey case? One was photographed frolicking on vacation with Massey CEO Don Blankenship on the French Riviera. The other has publicly criticized Blankenship. The latter fellow said that a third judge — Justice Brent Benjamin, who received $3.5 million […]

WV Supreme Court to get out of bed with Blankenship, reconsider his case

A while back, loathsome mountaintop-mining outfit Massey Energy was hit with a $50 million judgment in a West Virginia court, in a ruling that they had illegally driven other area mining companies out of business. They appealed to the W. Va. Supreme Court, which overturned the ruling in a vote of 3-2. Later, pictures turned […]

Boxer releases notes on secret EPA material

This just in: Sen. Barbara Boxer today released notes her staff took on some of the materials the Bush administration has tried to suppress regarding the decision to reject California's effort to enforce its greenhouse-gas standards for vehicles.

These documents back up published reports that EPA chief Steve Johnson rejected the advice of his staff. More here.

More shenanigans from the EPA on the Cali waiver

Thurday will be an interesting test of the ability of Congress to crack a Bush administration coverup of a rotten and likely illegal action: its decision to reject California's effort to enforce its greenhouse-gas standards for motor vehicles.

Sen. Barbara Boxer will put EPA Administrator Steve Johnson in the box to explore not only his indefensible decision, but his efforts to withhold information from Congress and cover up the truth about his pro-car company action.

You will recall that right before Christmas, Johnson nixed the California request in a hastily called news conference where he tried, dishonestly, to spin his way out of a looming Washington Post exclusive.

The lies continued last week as the EPA -- on the Friday of a holiday weekend, in an effort to minimize attention -- sent Boxer a letter and portions of various materials she sought. Boxer noted much of the relevant information was "whited out," as EPA Associate Administrator Christopher Bliley literally invoked the Nixon Watergate coverup as justification.

Eco-conscious White House may have destroyed evidence

Who says the White House ain’t green? It’s been busily recycling backup tapes of old emails, “consistent with industry best practices,” and may have destroyed evidence related to the CIA leak in the process. And who knows what else. Gooooo recycling! Yeah!

EPA staff say they were excluded from waiver decision; suspect Cheney’s involvement

Reporting in the L.A. Times, Janet Wilson confirms (as Juliet Eilperin did earlier) that EPA staff unanimously recommended granting California’s waiver, and that they were shut out of the final decision: [EPA staff] advised him to either grant the waiver outright or give California a temporary one for three years. Instead, three sources said, Johnson […]

Henry Waxman weighs in on Bush admin. efforts to suppress climate science

The House Oversight committee has released its official report (PDF) on White House efforts to interfere with climate change science, and its conclusions are ... well, totally predictable. To wit:

The Committee's 16-month investigation reveals a systematic White House effort to censor climate scientists by controlling their access to the press and editing testimony to Congress. The White House was particularly active in stifling discussions of the link between increased hurricane intensity and global warming. The White House also sought to minimize the significance and certainty of climate change by extensively editing government climate change reports. Other actions taken by the White House involved editing EPA legal opinions and op-eds on climate change.

The sheer volume and magnitude of chicanery, when laid out in nearly 30 pages of detail, betrays a remarkably fastidious program of misinformation.

I suppose it's in the nature of things that many of the sub rosa efforts to tamper with the findings of real scientists would leak to the press and the Congress. After all, it's only Bush appointees who take an oath -- explicit or otherwise -- to uphold the president. The scientists who work in those appointees' agencies, on the other hand, were apparently pretty upset about all of this.

The problem with 150 amendments

The Senate convened today at noon, and Republicans raised a stink about it. Why so late? Important business to attend to!

It had to do with the 150 amendments that EPW committee Republicans brought with them to the markup hearing. The long and short of it is that, by Senate rules, any senator can object to the continuance of any committee meetings that continue beyond the first four hours that the Senate is in session.

If the committee meeting and the floor session had, as usual, started close to the same time, the markup might have ended at 1 pm. This buys them two-and-a-half additional hours at least -- a helpful gesture from the Senate leader in the face of this sort of obstructionism. His floor statement and an unofficial transcript of this morning's proceedings are reprinted below the fold:

Senate Republicans vow to filibuster energy bill

The E&E headline sums it up: "Senate GOP plots ‘war’ over House energy plan" (sub rqd). It sounds like Pelosi has done her job, restoring to the bill most of the provisions greens have been stumping for, including the RES and removal of some tax breaks from the oil industry: House Democratic leaders today said […]