Teh Crazy Lines Up Behind BP Apologist Barton

Rep. Joe Barton, best known for his groveling apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward at the height of the Gulf oil disaster, says the rules don't apply to him - he wants an exemption to committee chairmanship term limit rules so he can once again chair the House Energy & Commerce Committee in 2011.

His fight against Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is looking increasingly quixotic. How bad is it? Just look at the members standing by him:

“I didn’t line up against anyone, but I did line up with Joe Barton,” said Rep. Steve King of Iowa, one of the Republican conference’s most conservative lawmakers. “I did that because I watched the job that he’s done, not only has he been a reliable conservative leader, he’s wanted to engage in the fight.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), another conservative favorite closely aligned with the tea party, said she would vote for Barton if he appealed the ruling of the GOP Conference.

Rep. Steve King is best known for ... where to start? He's had more controversies than I can count. If I had to pick his most insane moment, it would be saying that he wasn't sure if a 9/11-esque suicide plane attack on an IRS building that killed a federal worker was justified or not.

The best example of crazy from Rep. Bachmann? There are few issues on which The Green Miles & the National Electrical Manufacturers Association agree. One of them is that Rep. Bachmann's War on Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs is batshit insane.

If you were looking to make a list of the most unreasonable, most politically toxic members of Congress, you could save yourself a lot of time by just copying the roster of Camp Barton.

Global Warming Deniers' Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Election Day 2008 will be remembered for being a lousy day to be a global warming denier.Nowhere was this more apparent than right here in Virginia:

Jim Gilmore: Told the Virginian-Pilot, "We know the climate is changing, but we do not know for sure how much is caused by man and how much is part of a natural cycle change." Lost by 30 points.

Thelma Drake: Told the Virginian-Pilot, "There is tremendous disagreement about whether climate change is caused by human behavior or other natural forces." Despite final pre-election predictions she'd win by six points, Thelma instead lost by 4 points.

Virgil Goode: Told WSLS-TV global warming is "overly hyped" and holds a strong financial stake in Big Oil. Despite final pre-election predictions he'd win by eight points, Virgil is currently losing by 100 votes.

And look just east to Maryland's 1st Congressional district, which Republican Wayne Gilchrest had represented for 16 years before losing his primary to hardcore conservative Andy Harris. The moderate Gilchrest had cruised to re-election in the slightly red district, getting at least 61 percent of the vote in his last seven races.

But general election voters took one look at Harris' 9 percent lifetime voting record from Environment America record and turned their noses up. Democrat Frank Kratovil is currently beating Harris by just over 900 votes.

And look across the country. In the House, longtime clean energy opponents Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) went down, while Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) narrowly survived a surprisingly close race in a deep red district.

In the Senate, Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) and Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), who each only found religion on climate action on their electoral deathbeds, lost their re-election bids. On the other hand, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), a more vigorous supporter of clean energy and climate action, has so far been able to cling to a slim lead in his race against Al Franken.

The bottom line? If you expect to hold public office in America today, you better be on board with clean energy. It's about American jobs, it's about lowering energy bills for consumers, and yes, it's about curbing the worst effects of global warming. If you don't buy in, you better hope you're lucky enough to be in a district as conservative as Michele Bachmann's.

But hey, if you want to roll those dice like Andy Harris did, be my guest. Good luck with that recount, Andy! You'll need it.

McCain Staff: Oil Drilling 'The Right Thing for the Environment'

From the White House to Congress, Republicans are pushing to open more of America's public lands and waters to Big Oil, letting them drill for more fossil fuels to help keep America addicted.

I've heard lots of outlandish arguments from drilling proponents, particularly Rep. Michele Bachmann. She's falsely claimed that drilling would cut gas prices in half (even the Bush administration admits it would cut prices a few cents at most) and that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is as lifeless as the surface of the Moon (the threatened polar bears that live there would beg to differ).

But John McCain's senior policy advisers Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Nancy Pfotenhauer might take the cake:

"This [offshore drilling] is the right thing for the economy, it is the right thing for national security. And, as [McCain] is always committed to pursuing these endeavors in an environmentally friendly way, it's the right thing for the environment in the long run as well," said Holtz-Eakin. [...]

Pfotenhauer argued that yesterday's [Mississippi River oil] spill wasn't at all related to drilling -- even though one would assume the 420,000 gallons of fuel oil that were dumped into the river had to come out of the ground somehow.

Drilling comes with enormous risk of spills (like this week's) and disturbs surrounding wildlife. And what does Holtz-Eakin think we're going to do with that oil once it's out of the ground? Use it to grease our bike wheels as we toot around town in a carbon-free manner? Every gallon of gas produced will turn into 20 pounds of global warming pollution when burned.

Of course, if we'd raised gas taxes as economists like Robert Samuelson has been arguing for years, the money we're paying at the pump could be going to fix our failing roads and bridges. But instead, friends of oil companies fought to keep gas taxes low as prices climbed. Doesn't it looks silly now that people were claiming at $2 a gallon we couldn't raise gas taxes because it would break the backs of working people? Now we're at $4+ and still rising. Great plan, guys.

So now we have the worst of both worlds -- high prices at the pump and virtually all of our money going straight to Big Oil. Isn't it time to abandon our drill-and-burn policies and start encouraging some alternatives?