comMITTed to Romney!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave her weekly legislative briefing to the press. In her remarks she denied that she was told waterboarding was used on detainees and insisted that the Bush administration had deliberately misled lawmakers. CSPAN

Storm center over Pelosi
By Mike Soraghan and Jared Allen
Posted: 05/14/09 08:28 PM [ET]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged on Thursday that she knew in 2003 that terrorism suspects were waterboarded.

During a tense press conference, Pelosi sought to deflect criticism to the CIA, which she said lied to her about the practice.

Pelosi said she learned of the waterboarding after her national security aide, Mike Sheehy, sat in on a February 2003 briefing with her successor on the committee, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). Sheehy has since left Pelosi’s office.

Pelosi defended herself for not speaking out at the time about information disclosed in a classified briefing. Asked why she did not co-sign a formal objection by Harman after Sheehy was told of the waterboarding, Pelosi said any objection by Harman or herself would have done little good.

“No letter could change the policy,” she said. “It was clear we had to change the leadership in Congress and in the White House. That was my job, the Congress part.”

The controversy over what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has erupted into one of the toughest fights of her speakership. Republicans have criticized Pelosi for tacitly agreeing to practices she considers torture in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, and then going after the Bush administration now that political winds have shifted.

THE HILL

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http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/pelosi_excommunication/2009/03/06/189394.html

A Catholic pro-life group has sent a letter to the Vatican calling on Pope Benedict XVI to excommunicate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the Catholic Church due to her position on abortion.

Front Royal, Va.-based Human Life International (HLI) had the letter delivered from its Rome office in February, according to Cybercast News Service’s CNSNews Web site.

The letter was sent “because so many people have called on the bishops in the jurisdictions she lives in, who could possibly do it — and they won’t,” HLI President Rev. Thomas Euteneur told CNSNews.

“Pelosi has a home in the archdiocese of San Francisco, headed by Archbishop George Niederauer, and works in Washington, D.C., the archdiocese overseen by Archbishop Donald Wuerl.”

Pelosi has voted for laws that promote abortion and artificial contraception, both of which are contrary to church teaching. She voted against banning partial-birth abortion, and against the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited federal funding of abortion in most circumstances, CNSNews reported.

The California Democrat also opposed a complete ban on human cloning and supported using tax dollars for research that kills human embryos.

Dr. Edward Peters, who holds the Edmund Cardinal Szoka Chair at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, and is a prominent canon lawyer, said Nancy Pelosi is in violation of the church’s Canon 915 and likely other canon laws that would prohibit her from receiving communion at Mass and potentially face other penalties.

Peters said HLI was within rights granted under Canon Law to petition the Pope to excommunicate Pelosi.

Peters told CNSNews that HLI’s move is not “unprecedented,” even though it is “not a common event.”

He said church law “protects the rights of the faithful to raise questions about things that concern the good of the church. A group is within their rights to present their arguments on the Nancy Pelosi issue. I think their arguments are going to fail, but they are within their rights to ask for it.”

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The Business and Media Institute has a YouTube of Congressman Tom Price, (R) Georgia, standing outside the internationally acclaimed rocket scientist Nancy Pelosi’s office complaining that when the House was marking up their version of the stimulus bill and reconciling their version with the Senate’s version, the Republicans were barred from the room and no media was allowed.

I like Rep. Price’s chutzpa. Unfortunately there is no embed code for the YouTube vid, so please go over to the site and have a listen.

BTW, is it any wonder the Pubbies are boycotting the Dems on this bill? Would you just go with the flow and vote for a bill when you had been consistently barred from any participation in the process?

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090211135318.aspx

By: Jeff Poor Business and Media Institute

President Barack Obama has proclaimed his administration will be more open than the previous administration. However, his counterparts in the House and the Senate aren’t following suit.

The Washington Post has reported that negotiations between House and Senate Democrats have resulted in a stimulus bill with a price tag of “about $789.5 billion.” This agreement raised the ire of Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., and he went outside of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to express it.

“My name’s Tom Price and I represent the Sixth District of Georgia and [am] the privileged chair of the Republican Study Committee,” Price said. “It’s now noon on Wednesday. I’m standing outside the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. The door is closed. We just heard news break there’s been an agreement between the House and the Senate on the non-stimulus bill.”

Negotiators were slated to meet later in the day. However, since news of a deal was leaked to the media, Price questioned if there were “shady deals” going on.

“It’s curious because Republicans were invited to a meeting they said at 3 o’clock this afternoon,” Price continued. “What this means is there are more shady deals going on behind closed doors — without the public, without Republicans in attendance.”

The Georgia congressman had also called on congressional leaders to televise the House-Senate negotiations. However, as much as the press has helped the Obama administration trumpet a new era of transparency, there has been little call from the television media for these negotiations to be televised publicly.

“As the House and Senate move to negotiate the final text of the so-called stimulus bill, I have called on Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make good on that promise and allow any and all House and Senate negotiations to take place in an open and public forum,” Price wrote in a Feb. 11 blog post for Red State. “By allowing television cameras in the room as negotiations take place, we can provide the transparency American taxpayers expect.”

Price also urged people to visit the Republican Study Committee’s Web site.

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To my knowledge, this is the first Dem to publicly break ranks with the Pelosi/Reid leadership. I know that 11 House Democrats voted against the “stimulus” bill, but this is the first time I have heard any of them go on the record with criticism of their leadership.

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0209/Pelosi_Reid_have_failed_Shuler_says.html

POLITICO.COM

By: Glenn Thrush

Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C) has further ingratiated himself with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — not — by declaring that Pelosi and Harry Reid “failed” the bipartisanship test on stimulus.

“In order for us to get the confidence of America, it has to be done in a bipartisan way,” Shuler said in Raleigh following an economic forum, according to the AP.

“We have to have everyone — Democrats and Republicans standing on the stage with the administration — saying, ‘We got something done that was efficient, stimulative and timely.’”

Here’s the kicker: “I truly feel that’s where maybe House leadership and Senate leadership have really failed.”

Shuler, rumored to be mulling a ‘10 Senate run, was one of 11 House Democrats to vote “no” on the stimulus and was already deep in Pelosi’s doghouse. Now he’ll have to build a Harry Reid wing.

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If Nancy Pelosi was some back bencher from an obscure district in the middle of nowhere, she wouldn’t make me nervous. The fact is that this internationally acclaimed rocket scientist is third in the line of succession to the Presidency!

Click on this YouTube video and watch and listen to a couple of the leading lights in the Democratic Party and it will remind you why you are a Republican.

~~John Cronin~~

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A word of unsolicited advise to the Obama administration: In the future, you would be better off if you didn’t let internationally acclaimed rocket scientist Nancy Pelosi write any more spending bills for you. Essentially the same bill that she wrote for the House is now being debated in the Senate. The same government as sugar daddy philosophy is at work in the Senate version, except it’s more sugar and less daddy.

This bill is as welcome as a skunk at a garden party. Here’s hoping the Pubbies can cobble enough votes together in the Senate to send this porker back to committee for a major re-write.

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/04/voter.anger/index.html
By: Lisa Desjardins

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The recent debate over the nearly $900 billion economic stimulus plan and revelations of tax problems by three Obama administration appointees have voters angrily jamming phone lines on Capitol Hill to air their frustrations to their elected representatives.

Their reactions are putting pressure on Congress and benefiting watchdog groups on both sides of the political aisle.

Capitol operators tell CNN Radio that phone lines have been jammed for the past two weeks, sometimes prompting busy signals.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, said calls on the sweeping stimulus plan jumped from eight during all of January to hundreds a day now.

In a sampling of 12 Senate offices, half had so many messages that their voicemail boxes were full.
It’s because of people like Betty Davidson.

“I’m very upset!” exclaimed the 63-year-old from Laguna Hills, California.

She called her senators Tuesday, frustrated with the almost $900 billion-dollar economic recovery proposal.

“What a joke!” she said.

But she is particularly incensed by news that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and former Obama appointees Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer didn’t pay their taxes properly in the past.

“They can make the laws, but they don’t have to abide by the laws,” she complained. “It’s only we taxpayers.”

Those bitter words are like spring rain to nonprofit watchdog groups across the spectrum, who are seeing big boosts in interest.

“Just in the last week … responses to our e-mails out to activists have jumped dramatically,” said Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform. “We’ve had more calls into our offices, more e-mails.”

That same spike has hit Citizens Against Government Waste, which is also seeing a surge in e-mails, calls and angry posts to its Web site.

“These people are almost feeling like suckers now for paying taxes, because no one else does,” said the group’s vice president, David Williams.

He sees the tax issues and stimulus bill as hair triggers after months of frustration over bailouts, Wall Street greed and whether the rich and powerful get special treatment.

“In the past week, we have gotten numerous e-mails from people talking about how the interest rates on their credit cards are going up even though these companies have received taxpayer bailouts,” he said, “and they don’t understand why they’re not feeling any relief.”

At the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Deputy Director Naomi Seligman said that whenever a well-known politician, such as Daschle or Geithner, is involved in an ethics question, it does raise some interest for them.

Seligman suggested that tax issues are raising the greatest ire.

“I think the average American is looking at their taxes during tax time and saying ‘Wow, I pay my taxes. Why aren’t these guys?’ ” she said.

That’s certainly how Davidson feels. She’s worried about shoveling debt onto her grandkids from the stimulus bill, and she is convinced Washington is corrupt.

“I’m just getting so sick and tired,” she said.

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Although she has been washing her face since Sunday’s appearance on ABC News, the internationally acclaimed rocket scientist, Nancy Pelosi, can’t seem to get the egg off. The media’s interest in the story is ongoing, as witnessed by this Politico video.

Her jaw dropping opinion that Family Planning funds needed to be included in the so called “stimulus” bill ( since removed from the bill under public pressure ) because the states’ budgets were in deficit and if poor people didn’t have children, the states could economize by not having to provide social services to their children and this cost saving would have the effect of stimulating the economy. Contracepting your way to prosperity!

~~John Cronin~~

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Politico reports in this article that the public outcry over internationally acclaimed rocket scientist Nancy Pelosi’s dufus insistence that the state’s need to economize should cause Congress to include contraceptive funding in the “stimulus” bill has caused Obama to place a phone call to Henry Waxman, asking him to drop the provision from the bill.

It’s not that Obama is having second thoughts about paying back Planned Parenthood for helping get him elected, it’s just that putting the money into this bill is kind of, well, embarrassing.

Speaking of embarrassment, Nancy Pelosi’s tin eared call for the government to help reduce the number of poor people, not by growing the economy, but by preventing poor people from having babies, helped provide the public opinion momentum to get this funding removed from the bill.

Chalk one up for the loyal opposition and one down for an increasingly inept and amateurish administration.

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18024.html

It was the love affair that could never be, President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans.

The two sides came together en masse Tuesday for the first time since Obama took the oath of office. Despite the niceties, both sides walked away spurned.

In many ways, Obama told the assembled Republicans everything they would want to hear, according to people in the meetings.

He promised to make tough spending choices in his first budget blueprint — “everyone will have to take a haircut,” he said. He told them he wouldn’t increase the size of government just to increase the size of government. He even teased House Minority Leader John A. Boehner about his golf swing.

Likewise, Republicans left the meeting with kind words for the president — but still resolved to oppose him on the floor Wednesday when Democrats bring his massive economic stimulus plan up for a vote.

Beneath the polite give and take between the new president and the newly disempowered Republican caucus, there was a sense that Obama’s honeymoon had already begun to ebb. For the first time, it seems, congressional Republicans, shut out of power and seemingly cowed by the harsh verdict of voters and wild popularity of the new president, are finding their voice, rallying in large numbers against the centerpiece of Obama’s agenda.

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I’m sure most of you have heard about what the internationally acclaimed rocket scientist, Nancy Pelosi, had to say Monday about the need to reduce the number of children being born as a way for the states to save money on social services to poor children. This same leading moral theologian also claims to be an “ardent, practicing Catholic.”

Nancy Pelosi is an “ardent, practicing Catholic” in the same way that I am a Jamaican astronaut.

Do you know what would be really cool? I’m talking cosmic cool. If Nancy Pelosi’s Archbishop would petition the Vatican in the cause of Nancy Pelosi’s EX-COMMUNICATION from the Catholic Church.

It is time for the charade to come to an end. It’s not my place to judge Pelosi, that is the dominion of the Almighty. But I can say that her views on abortion and contraception and her jaw dropping anti-life pronouncements on the need for America to economize by passing out contraceptives to poor young adults so that we won’t have to spend any money caring for their babies, is the antithesis of Catholic teaching. Period. She claims that a debate is going on within the Church on these matters. There isn’t. Pelosi needs to find another denomination where she will be more comfortable with her anti-life philosophy and in my view, the Catholic Church needs to encourage her in her search for a new church by booting her out of ours.

http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=640d218e-40f8-4c3d-a440-425683dde7e0

Pelosi says federal spending on contraceptives stimulates economy by reducing number of kids requiring state services

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who describes herself as “an ardent practicing Catholic,” said on a nationally televised news program on Sunday that federal spending on artificial contraception helps states financially by lowering the amount spent on education and health care for children.

Pelosi, appearing on the ABC program This Week, was asked by moderator George Stephanopolous about the inclusion of huge federal outlays for contraception in President Barack Obama’s proposed $825-billion ‘economic stimulus package.’ “Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?” asked Stephanopoulos. Replied the Speaker, “Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those — one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”

Bill Donohue, president of the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, yesterday issued a strongly worded statement in response to Pelosi’s remarks. “Looks like the Democrats have abortion and contraception on the brain,” said Donohue. “Last week, President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on federal funds being used to promote and perform abortions overseas. Now we have Pelosi arguing that the way to balance the budget is not by cutting expenditures, but by cutting kids. Her comment matches up well with what Obama said during the presidential campaign about comprehensive sex education: speaking of his own daughters, he said that ‘if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.’ We have reached new low when high-ranking public office holders in the federal government cast children as the enemy. But at least it explains their enthusiasm for abortion-on-demand.”

Troy Newman, president of the pro-life group Operation Rescue, also issued a statement harshly critical of Pelosi. “So now, according to Pelosi’s thinking, flooding abortion clinics with tax money to pay for contraception is supposed to stimulate the economy,” said Newman. “That’s ‘freakonomics’ at best. But at worst, it is a government-sponsored program to reduce the population. This is the beginning of the payback to Planned Parenthood for supporting Obama. Abortion businesses such as Planned Parenthood are likely to financially benefit the most from Pelosi’s anti-baby windfall. Birth control pills are abortefacients that can either kill human beings in the earliest stage of development. Birth control failure can lead to an increase in abortions. Because of this, there are moral objections to birth control pills and other so-called contraceptives.”

Newman also noted that Pelosi’s position was contrary to her claimed Catholicism. “Pelosi is implying that low-income people should not be having babies as a means of stimulating the economy,” he said. “This is the complete opposite of what her Catholic religious beliefs instruct her. The Bible clearly states that children are a gift from God and a reward, not a burden.”

Pelosi’s comments on This Week are part of a continuing pattern of taking public positions contrary to Church teachings. In January, Pelosi said she wants President Obama to undo the Bush administration’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research or have Congress nullify the former president’s executive orders on the issue. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as recently as June 2008 issued a statement on stem-cell research reiterating the longstanding position of the Church: “Harvesting these ‘embryonic stem cells’ involves the deliberate killing of innocent human beings, a gravely immoral act,” the bishops said.

In an August 2008 interview with Meet the Press, Pelosi created a firestorm of criticism in Catholic circles by saying, “I don’t think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins. As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been discussing this… over the history of the church, this is an issue of controversy.” The Speaker’s remarks prompted an outcry from Catholic bishops around the country, including Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, and Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. Cardinal Justin Rigali of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Bishop William Lori of the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine issued a joint statement to the press that said, in part, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi misrepresented the history and nature of the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church against abortion.”

On Sept. 5, 2008, San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer issued a lengthy statement regarding Pelosi’s remarks, which concluded: “Speaker Pelosi has often said how highly she values her Catholic faith, and how much it is a source of joy for her. Accordingly, as her pastor, I am writing to invite her into a conversation with me about these matters. It is my obligation to teach forthrightly and to shepherd caringly, and that is my intent. Let us pray together that the Holy Spirit will guide us all toward a more profound understanding and appreciation for human life, and toward a resolution of these differences in truth and charity and peace.”

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122964897338520479.html

A note to all those visitors who will soon flood Washington for the inauguration: Be careful of the “swamp.”

That would be the swamp Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to drain when she led her party to victory in 2006. The GOP had been rocked by scandal, and Mrs. Pelosi and Democrats won, in part, by promising to clean up the “culture of corruption” that pervaded Washington.

Instead, Democrats now have an image problem. The real issue isn’t so much Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s Senate-seat auction, as it is the focus that his scandal has directed toward a wider assortment of Democratic troubles. This isn’t great timing for Barack Obama, who campaigned on cleaner government.

The Blagojevich drama is titillating enough, and local Democrats’ dithering over how to fill Mr. Obama’s seat guarantees it will remain a storyline longer than is comfortable. But the Illinois drama has also thrust new light on the ongoing ethical controversies of House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel. At the rate the House Ethics Committee is receiving complaints — over Mr. Rangel’s real-estate problems, tax problems, his privately sponsored trips to the Caribbean, and donations to his center in New York — this too will make headlines for a while

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune published a new story about Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who racked up $420,000 through a series of suspicious real-estate deals. Texas Rep. Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, came under scrutiny this fall for questionable earmarking. West Virginia Rep. Alan Mollohan has been under investigation for a separate earmarking mess. And then there’s Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who has yet to answer questions about the sweetheart mortgage deal he received from Countrywide.

One unfortunate side effect of Mr. Obama’s long coattails was that they helped the party’s more ethically challenged members get re-elected. Pennsylvania’s Paul Kanjorski and John Murtha, who both struggled to keep their seats because of earmarking travails, will continue to answer questions about their actions. Mrs. Pelosi lost a problem when Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson — with his $90,000 in freezer cash — lost in November. Yet she has potentially gained a new headache with Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who may have wanted that Obama seat a little too much.
There are more. Shockingly, this has happened despite all those campaign-finance laws, and Congress’s legislation to ban lobbyist lunches. The members took credit for those publicity stunts, and went right back to their “culture” of earmarking.

The speaker’s reluctance to tackle these problems is odd considering she is a seasoned pol who surely knows nothing sucks the life out of a party more quickly than a good round of tittle-tattle. The Republican crew of Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney sank the GOP easily enough, quite aside from its other problems.

Mrs. Pelosi must also know Republicans are belatedly getting their own house in order, at least in terms of optics. The GOP is lucky that most of its worst offenders, such as Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, have now been dealt with by federal prosecutors or voters. To further inoculate his side, House Minority Leader John Boehner also recently moved to strip Alaska Rep. Don Young — allegedly under federal investigation — of his top slot at the resources committee. He intends to turn Democratic infractions into a political story. He knows how easyMrs. Pelosi’s problem is politics. Her refusal to temporarily remove Mr. Rangel from Ways and Means is in part a reticence to further anger the Congressional Black Caucus, which remains steamed that she worked for Mr. Jefferson’s ouster from his seat on Ways and Means. Worse, next in line for Mr. Rangel’s slot is Rep. Pete Stark, an off-the-charts liberal who Mrs. Pelosi would struggle to leash.

Is Mr. Obama taking notes? The president-elect is discovering the limits of his campaign strategy of ignoring inconvenient questions. One of his great achievements this year was to convince voters that his meteoric rise was unconnected to the Chicago political machine. His silence in the Blagojevich scandal has mainly served to make people wonder if that was true.

His Clinton-era appointments threaten to unleash their own round of stories, from a rehash of Eric Holder’s role in the Marc Rich pardon, to Bill Clinton’s foundation donors. And Mrs. Pelosi’s congressional problems threaten to become his own. Mr. Rangel, Mr. Reyes and Mr. Murtha — to name but a few — all head bodies that will be central to Mr. Obama’s agenda.

One of President Bush’s mistakes was his refusal to police the spending and earmarks that led his party to temptation, or to push his party to quarantine its liabilities. If the president-elect wants to avoid the same error, he might consider what his promises of good government mean in practice, especially as regards his own party.

Write to kim@wsj.com

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Nancy Pelosi, who symbolizes much of what is wrong with the Democratic Party, has caved on her draconian opposition to offshore drilling, which in recent weeks she called a “hoax”. The hoax has morphed into reality as Ms. Pelosi evidently sat down at her desk and started counting votes (something she has not always done in the past) and finally realized that her position was a loser for her and her Party. Welcome back to reality, Madam Speaker.

~~John Cronin~~

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080816/D92JM7NG2.html

By DINA CAPPIELLO

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats’ stance against offshore drilling has shifted more, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaling on Saturday her willingness to consider opening up more coastal areas to oil and gas exploration.
In her party’s weekly radio address, Pelosi said opening portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling would be a part of energy legislation that House Democrats intend to put forward in the coming weeks to address oil dependence and high gasoline prices.
Lawmakers will be able to “consider opening portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling, with appropriate safeguards, and without taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil,” said Pelosi, D-Calif.
Just weeks ago Pelosi seemed resolved to block any votes to allow offshore drilling, in part because Californians have opposed drilling off their coasts since an oil spill off Santa Barbara in 1969. New oil drilling is only allowed now in federal waters in the western Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.

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http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=301100996715667

~~John Cronin~~

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 16, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election:

There’s little doubt voters want more drilling if even congressional candidates are starting to trek to Alaska to urge more oil development. Seven are there now. [ Editor's Note: Jason Chaffetz is one of the candidates making the fact-finding trip] That’s a wake-up call to Congress.
Congressional challenger Craig Williams of Pennsylvania spoke to us Wednesday by phone from Deadhorse, Alaska. He and six other Republican candidates think there’s enough voter disapproval with Congress’ failure to do anything about gas prices to win this election, even in a season when Democrats are believed to have the advantage.
“We’ve got a Democratic Congress doing absolutely nothing. Even the Republicans (before them) didn’t do anything. So we are now paying $4 a gallon for gas. It’s an emergency,” Williams said.
The House, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has gone well beyond complacency and into obstruction. “We’ve got about a dozen bills ready for the floor of Congress, and they won’t allow any of the legislation to move forward,” Williams said. Democrats “are afraid of a Republican amendment on an energy bill and won’t allow it before the election.

The so-called Greens are portraying ANWR has heaven on earth, but I heard a pundit describe it this way: “If Hell ever did freeze over, this is what it would be like.”
The proposed drilling areas are on the coastal plain, not in the idyllic mountain ranges. When the spring thaw comes, it leaves behind huge ponds of stagnant water that dot the landscape and are a breeding ground for some of the worst mosquitoes who can imagine.
The drilling area is not located in one spot but is scattered over an area of about 2,000 acres, about the size of a major U.S. airport.

For starters, he noted, the potential drilling areas aren’t the idyllic tourist paradises environmentalists suggest. “That’s not where any drilling is proposed,” he said.
Take the tiny sliver of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge proposed for energy development, where 10 billion barrels of oil await. It’s an icy coastal plain, said Williams. “It’s still pretty, and people have homes here, but it’s not what you see on TV,” he said.
People in the area desperately need jobs, and polls consistently show 75% approval for more drilling, Crockett said.

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The opinions expressed on some sites alleging that Mitt Romney is a 21st century version of Blackbeard the Pirate, searching for another company to acquire so he could throw all the employees out into the streets the week before Christmas are missing the mark.

The real pirates who apparently savor the thought of business failures, mass layoffs, bankrupt airlines, struggling consumers and enormous trade deficits are none other than the current (hopefully soon to be replaced) Democratic leadership: Obama,Pelosi and Reid.

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/HughHewitt/2008/07/11/its_the_oil,_stupid

By: Hugh Hewitt

The economic mess the country confronts can be laid at the feet of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The Don’t Drill Democrats are forcing deindustrialization through depression brought about by soaring energy costs. This is a man-made meltdown, and make no mistake: The Democrats could halt and reverse the skyrocketing cost of oil, but they are choosing not to.
The impact of the massive oil shock brought about by the rise of oil to more than $140 a barrel has just begun to be felt. The airline industry has gotten organized to alert everyone it can that it cannot continue to stagger along at this price. Eight airlines are completely gone that flew a year ago, and many others are on the brink. Layoffs and new charges to battle soaring costs are hardly worth noting they arrive so frequently.
Tremors continue to course through Wall Street as investors shunned mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and yesterday worried Congressmen throw questions at the Fed Chairman and the secretary of the Treasury: How bad can it get?
The answer is very bad indeed. We may be headed for another big bailout of a financial institution, a crisis that could have been avoided had the Congress acted first on energy. The hit on every individual and business at the pump has squeezed the liquidity out of the market, and scared the consumer into a caution not seen in decades. Barack Obama is standing off stage way-left with a plan to tax everything that moves and spend it on transfer payments, and the markets know that means postponing growth until the kids have had their shot at reenacting Jimmy Carter’s triple play of sky high interest rates, double digit inflation and unemployment above 7%

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By: Alexander Bolton THE HILL

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/downturn-hits-house-2008-06-16.html

Maybe the Pelosis should give Mitt Romney a call. I’ve heard he’s a pretty sharp portfolio manager. While they are at it, maybe they should ask him his advise on energy policy as well.

~~John Cronin~~

Congressional leaders lost millions of dollars in last year’s economic downturn.
New financial disclosure reports reveal, however, that while House members suffered losses, senators defied the odds and saw their profit margins rise.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Ca.) husband, the San Francisco financier Paul Pelosi, lost between between $880,000 and $7.4 million in various investments. As a result, the Pelosis earned only several hundred thousand dollars if income from their assets, which range between $29 million and $133 million, according to public records.

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http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=297904745555169

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, June 09, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Energy: The average price for regular gas hit $4 a gallon over the weekend. Gas prices have risen 75% since Nancy Pelosi took over. Where’s the energy independence Democrats promised two years ago?

In November of 2006, House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi issued a press release touting the Democrats’ “common-sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices.”

She accused the oil companies of “price gouging.” The price of gasoline when the Democrats took control of Congress was around $2.25 per gallon.

The average price of regular gas crept over the $4-per-gallon barrier over the weekend, as measured by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

That represents a more than 75% increase in the retail price of a gallon of gasoline on Pelosi’s watch. Call it the “Pelosi premium” we’re all now paying.

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