Just before the Senate voted to give Bush and Cheney everything they wanted on a new spying law (including telecom immunity), a top Democrat came up with another brilliant idea - give Big Oil everything it wants, too:A top U.S. Democratic senator said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday that he would consider supporting opening up new areas for offshore oil and gas drilling.
"I'm open to drilling and responsible production," Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin told The Wall Street Journal, adding that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could also support the move.
It's not that Big Oil doesn't have leases to drill on public lands - in fact, it has 91 million acres worth of those. It's just that it's not profitable enough to drill there. They want to be able to drill in places like the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, which would reap billions in profits. And what would we get out of the deal? Maybe a few cents off prices at the pump a couple of decades from now (PDF).
So what would ease our oil addiction? Federal legislation promoting clean, alternative energy and cutting global warming pollution would reduce our oil imports four times more than drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, off Virginia's beaches, and in the Rocky Mountains combined. But with such a narrowly-divided Congress, we're only seeing action on things one side caves on. Looks like Dems may cave on drilling, but the GOP remains resolutely against climate action. And gas prices continue to climb.
The Constitution is not a political football. It is shear cowardice like this that got us into Iraq.
Reasonable people cannot differ on this. Either the 4th Amendment means something or it doesn't. According to too many Democrats, it means nothing.
The 20 plus Democratic senators, Barrack Obama being one of them made a difficult political decision but the right one.
Why is it that Democrats are Sue Happy? That's their only recourse?
A company that does the Government's bidding during a time of war is compliant yes.... but compliant to an executive branch that was given (and took) power to prosecute a new kind of war.
Focus on getting a new and respectful (of the Constitution) Executive Branch and leave the whinning to the Republicans who will be out of office and removed from power.
As far as I know, the telecoms broke the law. I thought they were only supposed to respond to court issued search warrants. Now apparently a letter from the DOJ (which is full of Republicans thanks to their partisan hiring practices) is sufficient. What next?
I don't think this is indicative of a respect for the constitution. Obama is doing this, I can only guess, for political purposes to shield himself from the charge that he is soft on terror. This was incidentally the same thing that a lot of folks on here demonized Hillary for (i.e., being a typical politician).
You may defend this action as much as you like. But, however you slice it, Obama has lost the luster of being a new breed of politician. Let's hope that the charm factor still wins out in the end.
But don't get me wrong, I am still voting Democrat. I am still giving money. I may even volunteer again. I think we can all still call a spade, a spade though. What's a little spat among friends? I'm not having a fit over this. I already had my fit about this a while ago, and now that is gone. You can't hold on to negative emotions forever. Well, you can, but it isn't healthy.
The 20 plus Democratic senators, Barrack Obama being one of them made a difficult political decision but the right one.
No, they made an expedient political decision. They are like schoolkids that pre-emptively hand over their lunch or their cash to the local schoolyard bully -- they hope by doing so they won't be bulled any more in the future. They (the Democratic congressional leadership and consultants) have been so cowed by the establishment insider and conservative media culture into believing (or at least acting like) that acting tough necessitates breaking the law and giving up our freedoms and rights.
It's very sad to me, as someone that will vote for Barack Obama this fall, to see him so completely misunderstand the game. The Republican brand is completely trashed. Outside of the 30% of the population that are the true-believers, the rest of the country is no longer buying the straight up fear-mongering that the Republicans are selling. Although it explains a lot about why Democrats continue to lose elections when they have more popular ideas on virtually every set of issues, it surely doesn't mean that the political decision was tough. No, it was easy -- if they stood up and explained in no uncertain terms why the law should be above the President, and not the other way around.
Why is it that Democrats are Sue Happy? That's their only recourse?A company that does the Government's bidding during a time of war is compliant yes.... but compliant to an executive branch that was given (and took) power to prosecute a new kind of war.
FISA was written specifically the way it was -- creating criminal and civil penalties for all the bad actors involved -- as a means of ensuring that it was complied with. The telecoms are almost assuredly being paid our taxpayer money to provide the NSA with the source of the signals it needs to completely dragnet our communications. It is the ultimate bribe -- not only can they get the 'cover' of saying, "Hey, the President asked, so we were being patriots" when they so break the law, but they get paid enormous fees to do so. It's a double gutpunch to every American citizen. That is EXACTLY why civil penalties against telecoms that illegally provide intelligence capabilities to government actors were implemented -- to try and add another layer of penalties to prevent these abuses.
This has all happened before, and FISA was an attempt to put a meaningful check on domestic government intelligence operations to prevent the abuses that the Church committee unearthed. By immunizing this conduct, the Congress is ripping the teeth out of this law and ensuring that Americans will never be able to fully access their rights of due process to ensure that their liberties have not been compromised by illegal acts that contravene the FISA structure and the 4th Amendment. Now, the courts may not play along with this grossly unconstitutional legislating, but it is still wrong nonetheless.
In order to obtain intelligence on American citizens, there are specific procedures set up by FISA that must be complied with in order for the intelligence request to be legal. The telecom companies that broke this law know fully well what these guarantees are, and a note from GW Bush is not good enough. The executive branch can never police itself, that is damned clear by now.
If you want a country without courts to enforce your rights, then you want a country where there is no check on the executive and where you therefore would have almost no rights.
It's not whining to expect our government to follow the law.
More domestic oil may not reduce the price at the pump, but it could surely aid to keep it affordable in the future. Remember's Lowell's explanation of the vertical demand curve? By 2015 we should expect the gap b/n capacity and demand to narrow. If this happens as some predict, the future price for crude will skyrocket thru the roof. By that time, with some added domestic production, perhaps we will only see $10/gallon instead of $20/gallon. At a price like $20/gallon by 2015 or something similar, the net result would be complete demand destruction, creating a dependency for other resources, such as natural gas, which would lead to more shortages and near economic collapse. With a near collapsed economy, who can afford to meet energy transition goals by the 2025-2030 timeframe?
The natural gas industry is already seeing worldwide demand rise, and excess U.S. natual gas capacity, which had kept prices low, are being shipped away keeping prices up. New robust exploration occuring today, this is preventing the price for natural gas from running away like crude.
Furthermore, allowing our dependency on foreign oil to increase w/o any new domestic effort under such circumstance mentioned above, would be a very dicey policy and too troublesome for the national leaders to bear, Obama included.
While not all oil exploring companies are equal, time limits should be placed on leases, without a doubt. Use it or lose it. A leaseholder nextdoor could probably use those rights to drill. Like large building developers, major oil fields and their producers do not operate on smaller parcels. Major exploration by bigger oil would require larger lease areas to ensures success. Similarly, one doesn't see a large commercial developer buying a small parcel of land to build one corner of a skyscraper or housing development, then seek to purchase the adjacent parcel(s) next to it to finish the project. The free market requires more land. I say find a way to make it happen without any recklessness regards to the environment.
Being against new coal plants, new gas exploration, new nuclear power, and new gas power plants, while expecting the economy to be vigorous enough to afford the energy transformation from fossil to clean, is a complete pipedream. No presidential candidate would consider this. Don't hold your choice for president with those expectations. Its only 2008. The transition period will take us to ~2025. The country (and the world) is still growing and demand is rising, while current capacities are declining. Turning off the spigot for new resources in 2008 doesn't make the year 2025 arrive any sooner.
Corker said whatever legislation comes out of the bipartisan group, it will likely include language expanding offshore oil drilling, developing onshore oil shale, promoting plug-in hybrid vehicles and giving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission the tools it needs to better monitor energy futures markets.
Here's the plan: Drill, drill, blast apart mountains. Drill, drill, blast apart mountains. Oh yeah, and "promote plug-in hybrids" which will be powered by...yeah, you guessed, it COAL-fired power plants! Oh yeah, and the utterly meaningless gesture of "giving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission the tools it needs to better monitor energy futures markets."
Total. Complete. Cluster****.
I do believe we should hoard our own oil reserves against unknown future needs, meanwhile using the petroleum resources of other countries; we should also run an inventory of our domestic petroleum resources, continue to develop and improve extraction from oil shale and other tar sands in Canada, and meanwhile develop and implement every other alternative energy source we can think of, way beyond natural gas, coal gasification, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, tidal turbines, and do it starting now. Drill, drill, drill is on a par with bomb, bomb, bomb Iran: childish whining combined with macho ego tripping...