EPA Roman Crucifixions

Today in Washington, D.C. - April 27, 2011:
The Senate is in recess until Monday, May 7, when it will take up 3 district court nominees

Yesterday, the Senate voted 68-31 to pass S. 1925, Democrats’ bill reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. Prior to passage, the Senate rejected a substitute amendment from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), which would have kept the bill closer to current law and require more mandatory minimum sentences for sex crimes. Alsorejected was an amendment from Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), which would have required the DoJ to reduce a backlog of DNA tests in open rape investigations. Senators rejected a watered-down version of this amendment offered by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) as well.

Presently the House is set to pass the aka"cybersecurity" bill: HR 3523, the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011" (CISPA).  More on this bill will be reported in a seperate article.

Yesterday members of the Sen John Boozman and other members Agriculture committee and American responded to the push back by American Family farmers to the Obama administration  seeking to "dramatically changed the manner in which children could work on farms owned by family members prohibiting them from operating machinery, performing regular livestock tasks and working with raw farm materials."  More about this issue is already posted by ARRA News.

In the Heritage Foundation’s blog today,Lachlan Markay reports, “Explosive video of a top official at the Environmental Protection Agency comparing his enforcement philosophy against oil and gas companies to Roman crucifixions was removed on Thursday by the environmental activist who had uploaded it. ‘This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by David McFatridge,’ reads a message on the video’s YouTube page. . . . The YouTube video’s owner appears to be the same David McFatridge listed as an activist for the radical environmental group the Sierra Club. McFatridge has been active in a number of anti-hydraulic fracturing campaigns. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who spotlighted the video on Wednesday in a speech on the Senate floor, drew connections from Armendariz’s comments to the EPA’s campaign against hydraulic fracturing, and branded the agency’s efforts a ‘war on fossil fuels.’

In an editorial today, The Wall Street Journal blasts the EPA for these comments: “It's no secret that the bosses at the Environmental Protection Agency hate fossil fuels. But few are as candid as Al Armendariz, the regional administrator who says the agency's ‘general philosophy’ is to ‘crucify’ oil and gas producers. That's how EPA chief Lisa Jackson's point man for Texas, Oklahoma and other south-central states put it in 2010 lecture. Mr. Armendariz explains that his staff's ‘philosophy of enforcement’ is ‘like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.’ The point is to ‘make examples’ of alleged lawbreakers. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe released video of the speech on Wednesday as part of his investigation into the EPA's now-discredited claims of water contamination due to hydraulic fracturing, including in Parker County, Texas. In that case Mr. Armendariz's shop targeted Range Resources, a driller that has since been exonerated, and his remarks about executions raise questions not only about his own work but the EPA's larger impartiality and judgment."

 As Senate GOP Leader McConnell has addressed this issue, “[T]he President’s ideological outlook and the policies that have grown out of it will only continue to drive up the cost of gasoline at the pump. . . . [H]ere are the facts. This President continues to limit offshore areas to energy production and is granting fewer leases on public land for oil drilling. At the same time, he has encouraged other countries, like Brazil, to move forward with their own offshore drilling projects. The Obama administration continues to impose burdensome regulations on the domestic energy sector that will further drive up the cost of gasoline for the consumer. He’s proposed raising taxes on the energy sector, a move that the Congressional Research Service has said would drive up costs. And, as we all know, he flatly rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline — a potentially game-changing domestic energy project that promises not only greater independence from Middle Eastern oil, but tens of thousands of private sector jobs. All these policies help drive up the cost of gasoline and increase our dependence on foreign sources of oil.”

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