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Senate Leader Marc Basnight said he and House Speaker Joe Hackney will appoint a commission to study the potential benefits and risks of drilling for oil off the coast of North Carolina.
The legislature has no power to stop the federal government from authorizing offshore exploration, and federal officials have asked for public comment on drilling off the coast of Virginia.
Basnight, a Manteo Democrat, said he strongly opposes drilling, because he said it would provide a relative pittance of oil while risking damaging or destroying the costal ecosystem and economy.
"If the study were to come back and say we have this incredible find and it is larger than anything man has seen, I'd have to look at that," Basnight said.
Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, November 19, 2008; Page A06
The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing new air-quality rules that would make it easier to build coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and other major polluters near national parks and wilderness areas, even though half of the EPA's 10 regional administrators formally dissented from the decision and four others criticized the move in writing.
Documents obtained by The Washington Post show that the administration's push to weaken Clean Air Act protections for "Class 1 areas" nationwide has sparked fierce resistance from senior agency officials. All but two of the regional administrators objecting to the proposed rule are political appointees.
The proposal would change the practice of measuring pollution levels near national parks, which is currently done over three-hour and 24-hour increments to capture emission spikes during periods of peak energy demand; instead, the levels would be averaged over a year. Under this system, spikes in pollution would no longer violate the law.
In written submissions, EPA regional administrators have argued that this switch would undermine critical air-quality protections for parks such as Virginia's Shenandoah, which is frequently plagued by smog and poor visibility.
One of my favorite internet political tools is OpenCongress.org. I refer to this site constantly for information on members of Congress, the status of legislation and how various issues are being covered in the blogosphere. OpenCongress also provides tools that allow me to share bill status with readers of my blogs as well as with friends and fellow bloggers.
Today, OpenCongress introduced a new feature called My Political Notebook which I think that you might like.
The following is from the OpenCongress team:
Hi everyone,
As Congress returns today for its last session of the year, we are excited to announce "My Political Notebook". It's a new way to save and share your favorite political content, from OpenCongress and around the web.
"My Political Notebook" allows you to create a personal page of everything you're following in politics: news articles, blog posts, web videos, important files, and more. You can add content with one click using a handy bookmarklet for your web browser, or directly from pages on OpenCongress.
For example, one of the biggest issues in the news is whether Congress will include a bailout of the Big Three Automakers in a new economic stimulus package. "My Political Notebook" gives you a way to collect the best info about this developing story in one place, add your own notes & tags, and share it all with your friends.
To read more about "My Political Notebook", visit our blog announcement today ::
Finally, our friends Jay & Ryanne of RyanIsHungry.com recently made a great video tutorial on how to use OpenCongress to track all the bills and issues you care about::
This week is Congress' last chance until January to take action on the economy, so there's a lot at stake. On this story and others, "My Political Notebook" gives you a new place to save and share what's really happening in Congress. Let us know what you think!
We now know the place and the approximate time of the Wednesday visit by President Bill Clinton on behalf of Jim Martin, the Democratic candidate in the U.S. Senate runoff.
The place is Vivian W. Henderson Gymnasium at Clark Atlanta University — which bespeaks a strategic emphasis on turning out African-American voters on Dec. 2.
Doors open at 4 p.m. No word yet on when the actual program starts — last week's Saxby Chambliss rally opened at the same time. But former Republican presidential nominee John McCain didn't show until 5:30 p.m.
WASHINGTON - The federal government on Thursday made its first move toward oil and natural gas exploration off the coast of Virginia -- just northeast of the Outer Banks.
The U.S. Department of Interior issued a call for public comments as it begins to consider the potential environmental effect of offshore drilling. The environmental work is the first step in opening 2.9 million acres of waters to a lease sale scheduled for 2011. The area under consideration is at least 50 miles offshore.
The agency's move will be followed closely by environmental groups and states in the Southeast, along with business groups eager for more energy development.
"In some ways, North Carolina is the next place after Virginia that ... the federal government would like to go," said Michael Gravitz of Environment America, a coalition of state environmental organizations. "Virginia is the first chink in the Atlantic Coast armor."
To submit a comment to the US Dept of the Interior go to:
During his 2002 Georgia Senate race, current US Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) ran the following political ad about his opponent, disabled, decorated Viet Nam war veteran former Senator Max Cleland.
Due in part to this ad Saxby Chambliss won that election in what most media outlets reported as a "surprise upset".
Here's how PBS' NewsHour reported the Chambliss win:
" The victory follows a heated campaign characterized by ugly campaign ads during the race's final weeks. One Chambliss ad, according to the Journal-Constitution, attempted to portray Cleland's procedural votes on setting up the proposed Department of Homeland Security as opposition to the president's efforts to defend the homeland.
Sen. Zell Miller, a fellow Georgia Democrat, appeared in a Cleland spot to defend his Senate colleague.
'It's disgraceful for anybody to question Max Cleland's commitment to our national security,' Miller said. Pointing to Cleland's record in the Vietnam War, during which he lost both legs and an arm, Miller said 'Max Cleland is my hero,' and his 'opponent should be ashamed.'
Chambliss backed a version of the homeland security legislation that would set aside employee union rules to allow President Bush to hire and fire federal workers in the new department. Cleland supported a version more favorable to those unions, which contributed heavily to his campaign, the Journal-Constitution reported.
Cleland consultant Karl Struble told Cox News Service the Chambliss ads used 'some of the ugliest stuff I've ever seen,' including 'using pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein ... They're taking lying to a new art form in that race.' Chambliss media consultant, meanwhile, said Cleland's ads are 'so over the top negative' that they seemed designed to disgust uncommitted voters and keep them from the polls, Cox News Service reported.
On the issues, Chambliss and Cleland also sparred over a potential move to allow workers to direct some Social Security payments into private investment. Cleland was against such a move; Chambliss supported it. They also differed on health care and the president's economic plan."
Of course by 2002 the Republicans were honing their craft and knew that a smear campaign could be effective even if the target was a decorated war veteran. After all, in the 2000 Republican presidential primary, a highly effective smear campaign was waged against former Viet Nam POW and war hero Arizona Senator John McCain.
So in 2002 CNN quotedSenator John McCain as saying the following when heard about the ad that the Chambliss campaign had run against a fellow war veteran:
"I'd never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield -- it's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible."
And who did Georgians send to the Senate in 2002? It seems that it was a man who never met a corporate lobbyists that he didn't like.
Now it's 2008 and Senator John McCain, who during the course of this year's presidential campaign reminded us time and time and time again of his war record, is traveling to Georgia to help his "friend" Saxby Chambliss win a run-off election against his Democratic opponent Jim Martin.
You Simply Can't Beat This for Hypocrisy
Sen. Chambliss one young voter ( and millions like him) are determined to shine a light on this hypocrisy and encourage Georgia voters to go to the polls on December 2nd and elect Democrat Jim Martin.
Well-polished political celebs and teams of scraggly ground troops from both major parties could invade Georgia over the next few weeks if the U.S. Senate race between Republican Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin ends up in a full-blown runoff.
Thousands of votes —- including many paper ballots from Fulton County —- were still being counted late Wednesday, and neither Chambliss nor Martin had broken the magical 50 percent mark required by state law to declare a winner.
The sleep-deprived candidates were still in campaign overdrive the day after Tuesday's cliff-hanger election, even though the state cannot officially call a Dec. 2 runoff before next week when votes are certified.
Chambliss was hoping that a last-minute surge of still-to-be-counted votes would put him at 50 percent plus one. Martin was confident the outstanding votes wouldn't significantly change the outcome of Tuesday's election.
Hardly any Americans will pull a lever or punch out chads this election day. But that doesn't mean the problems of the past are gone.
Computerworld is reporting on issues with touchscreen voting machines in key battleground states of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia. The malfunctioning machines caused some polling places to resort to back-up paper ballots, and in some cases those ran out.
Though touch screen machines seem to get the most attention, a marjority of the nation's counties are using optical scanning machines. These require voters to fill out a paper card that's fed into a scanner. A No. 2 pencil isn't required, but the process isn't hassle-free.
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