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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's determined efforts to combat global warming face their biggest trial yet as Republicans take full control of Congress this week. The GOP vows to move fast and forcefully to roll back his environmental rules and force his hand on energy development. Related Stories New Congress Grapples With Energy The Wall Street Journal For President Obama, Going It Alone Has Its Risks The Wall Street JournalObama, GOP-led Congress prepare for veto showdowns Associated PressWhere Is U.S. Energy Policy Heading Over the Next Two Years? The Wall Street JournalObama, Congress Brace For Veto Showdowns Huffington Post...

The new Republican-controlled Senate's first act in January will be approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday. McConnell told reporters that the bill would be based on a measure that failed in the Senate last month that was co-sponsored by North Dakota Republican John Hoeven and Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu. "It'll be open for amendment," McConnell said. "I will hope that senators on both sides will offer energy-related amendments but there'll be no effort to try to micromanage the amendment process." Landrieu pushed for a Keystone vote in November in a last-ditch effort to...

The Keystone XL Pipeline project is almost certainly dead. No, not because a bill that would have finally given the go-ahead to begin construction fell one vote short in the lame duck Senate last month. Sure, that halted the legislative approval process in its tracks, but only until January, when a new Congress arrives and is sworn in. Republicans, who will have a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, have pledged to bring it back for another vote in the next session. The next vote may well bring a different result, but will the pipeline ever...

In the brutal closing scene of the 2007 film “There Will Be Blood,” a bowling alley beating, set in motion by years of tension and personal torment, concludes with the final biting words, “I’m finished.” Sifting through the wreckage on the Senate floor last week, the same words could have come from Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu. Forty-one of her Democrat colleagues ruthlessly beat down her proposal to approve the Keystone pipeline, effectively sealing her fate in the December runoff election to keep her seat. Keeping a brave face, Landrieu insisted she held no one to blame and only felt “joy in...

When it came time for the US Senate to vote on the Keystone XL Pipeline, Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) “clout” did not have much of an impact on fellow Democrat senators. In fact, 35 of the senators who voted against the project were given campaign cash by Landrieu since the 2008 election cycle. Take a look here at the list of senators who don’t seem to acknowledge Landrieu’s “clout.” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) $10,000 Sen. Richard Blumenthal (R-CT) $5,000 Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) $10,000 Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) $7,000 Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) $10,000 Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) $3,500 Sen....

“Understand what this project is,” Barack Obama said earlier this week when pressed on why his administration continues to stall on the Keystone XL pipeline after almost six years of waiting for a decision. “It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else.”CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Understand what that was, Glenn Kessler responds today in a Washington Post fact check. It’s a three-Pinocchio lie based on an ignorant-at-best interpretation of a presentation slide from environmental activists. The refineries in...

LINCOLN, Neb.— For all the angst and anger over the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, the project’s fate may lie here in Nebraska, where disgruntled landowners are challenging a state law that officials used to approve the pipeline’s path through their property. After the U.S. Senate rejected a measure to approve the project Tuesday, Republicans who will control the chamber in January said it would be one of the first items on their agenda next year. A more immediate hurdle, though, is the Nebraska suit, which encompasses much of the legal and emotional core of the battle over Keystone. “I...

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline are stoking fear about the project by connecting it to two of the biggest bogeymen in politics: Charles and David Koch. The claim goes that the Koch brothers stand to make $100 billion if the pipeline gets built. The figure, which would effectively double the Kochs’ net worth, has bounced around liberal news organizations and was repeated this month by progressive radio talk show and TV host Thom Hartmann on his RT show. Take it with a block of salt, a PunditFact analysis finds.

Desperate Sen. Mary Landrieu loses the vote, and likely her Senate seat as well. The ongoing theatrics surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline continued in earnest Tuesday. Desperate Democrat incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) spent the afternoon trying to secure the critical 60th vote necessary for the filibuster-proof majority that would get the legislation through the Senate and onto Obama’s desk, while her fellow Democrats weighed the pros and cons of alienating their radical environmentalist constituency. Democrats chose to stand with the radicals, defeating the bill by a 59-41 vote. By the middle of the afternoon, Landrieu’s chances of winning over...

What do train whistles and Warren Buffett have in common? If you answered old-fashioned charm, you’re wrong. The Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, calls the avuncular billionaire “the man behind the exploding trains.” Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns Union Tank Car Company, North America’s largest leaser of tank cars. Berkshire also owns BNSF Railway Company, which moves many of those cars.

Harry Reid personally voted against Landrieu and screwed his own party. Checking the Roll Call this morning, Harry Reid's vote is Nay. Why did he allow the vote (since he rules the Senate with an iron fist) and then vote against her and ruin her chances in Louisiana? Nothing short of the Bills passage would have saved her down there. She's too little to late now and the union jobs are being pooched. And Obama stands above it all to pooch the Union jobs with a veto promise. This might have been the last chance for the Democrat Party (notice...

About two dozen protesters against the Keystone XL pipeline turned out in bleak weather Monday morning outside Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Washington home to protest her quest for a bill supporting the $8 billion project, which is set for a vote Tuesday. The demonstrators who showed up for a mass chant of “Stop this pipeline” and “No KXL” targeted Landrieu, rather than the pipeline’s other vocal backers in both parties, in part as a warning to Democrats against going wobbly on Keystone. They also unfurled a mock inflatable pipeline. “I don’t understand that, why she’s selling herself out, why she can’t...

Alphabetical by Senator Name Alexander (R-TN), Yea Ayotte (R-NH), Yea Baldwin (D-WI), Nay Barrasso (R-WY), Yea Begich (D-AK), Yea Bennet (D-CO), Yea Blumenthal (D-CT), Nay Blunt (R-MO), Yea Booker (D-NJ), Nay Boozman (R-AR), Yea Boxer (D-CA), Nay Brown (D-OH), Nay Burr (R-NC), Yea Cantwell (D-WA), Nay Cardin (D-MD), Nay Carper (D-DE), Yea Casey (D-PA), Yea Chambliss (R-GA), Yea Coats (R-IN), Yea Coburn (R-OK), Yea Cochran (R-MS), Yea Collins (R-ME), Yea Coons (D-DE), Nay Corker (R-TN), Yea Cornyn (R-TX), Yea Crapo (R-ID), Yea Cruz (R-TX), Yea Donnelly (D-IN), Yea Durbin (D-IL), Nay Enzi (R-WY), Yea Feinstein (D-CA), Nay Fischer (R-NE), Yea...

Will it or won't it pass? Stay tuned..

The White House on Tuesday sidestepped the question of whether President Obama would veto a Senate bill authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline. Asked repeatedly if the president would put the kibosh on the legislation, White House press secretary Josh Earnest would say only that he did not want to leave reporters with the "impression" the president was leaving his options open. "I’m not in a position to issue veto threats from here, but … there are similar pieces of legislation that have been introduced in this Congress where the president’s senior advisers have recommended a veto," Earnest said. Earnest was...

We most certainly need to "drill, baby, drill." But how much of this oil is going to be shipped elsewhere, and how much will stay in the US? While much of it will probably be refined, will it then be shipped to Latin America or other places? Why not keep it all (or at least the lion share of it) here in the United States?

(CNSNews.com) - "Tonight the Senate has an important opportunity to send a bill to build the Keystone Pipeline to the president's desk," House Speaker John Boehner told a news conference on Tuesday. "Now let's be clear about this. A Keystone Pipeline veto would send the signal that this president has no interest in listening to the American people. Vetoing an overwhelmingly popular bill would be a clear indication that he doesn't care about the American people's priorities.""It would be the equivalent of calling the American people 'stupid,'" Boehner said.

Embattled Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and other supporters of building the Keystone XL pipeline appear to be one vote short of the 60 they need to win a key vote on the project on Tuesday. Landrieu has 59 votes backing legislation to approve the project, and Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Angus King (I-Maine) appear to be her top targets to get to 60. The effort is crucial to Landrieu because of her runoff election in December against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who also backs the pipeline. Landrieu is seen as a decided underdog in the race, and Senate Democrats...

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and other supporters of the Keystone XL oil pipeline are stuck at 59 votes — one vote shy of the supermajority they need to move their bill forward on Tuesday. Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Monday that they would vote against moving forward with the legislation, making it unclear whether supporters had a path to the magic number of 60. Rockefeller had appeared to be one of the last possible converts Monday evening, and supporters were pressuring the retiring senator to join their side. But he told reporters on Monday that he...

Liberal environmentalists are spending a rainy Monday morning in Washington protesting outside the Capitol Hill townhouse of Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu over the Keystone XL oil pipeline. According to a source on the scene Monday, protesters are standing in the yard of Landrieu’s East Capitol Street home holding signs opposing the pipeline. Protesters also brought along a mock black plastic pipeline. The source said Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police are on the scene, but appear to be letting the protesters stand in Landrieu’s yard anyway.