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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in Congress and a state supreme court have thrown the political hot potato known as Keystone XL straight back onto President Barack Obama's lap. So loath is Obama to making a decision about the proposed oil pipeline that deliberations have entered their sixth year — a period nearly as long as Obama's time in office. He's blamed the seemingly endless delays on bureaucratic formalities and parochial issues in Nebraska, even when skeptics claimed that the politics of the next election were giving the president cold feet. Now the election is over, the Nebraska issue is resolved,...

New Republican members were still being sworn in and expressing their desire for bipartisan initiatives, when President Obama said he would veto the Keystone pipeline, ObamaCare fixes and other bills that run counter to his agenda. Washington’s new “common ground” will be a tricky, dangerous swamp.Meanwhile, U.S. crude oil prices are below $50 per barrel, for the first time since 2009, and natural gas has dropped below $3 per million Btu (or thousand cubic feet). That’s bad news for Iran, Russia, Venezuela and ISIS, but great news for energy users. Motorists will save billions of dollars in gasoline costs; families,...

Want to know why the president and his team are stampeding to talk about global warming despite increasing public disinterest in the topic, a bitterly cold and snowy winter and deepening skepticism about the costs of clamping down on industry as the economy again falters? It turns out that money talks. From the NYT: “A billionaire retired investor is forging plans to spend as much as $100 million during the 2014 election, seeking to pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers. The donor, Tom Steyer, a...

The House on Friday passed a bill to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline hours after a Nebraska court ruled in favor of the proposed route. The legislation now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to be approves. The White House has warned President Obama would veto the legislation. Passage fell largely along party lines, 266-153, with 28 Democrats joining nearly all Republicans in favor. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) voted "present." That is short of the necessary two-thirds majority needed to override a veto. The vote marked the 10th time the House has voted to authorize the...

http://www.ketv.com/politics/nebraska-supreme-court-approves-keystone-pipeline-route/30613212

It took them long enough. Recall that when Mary Landrieu pushed her own version of an authorization for the Keystone XL pipeline, Barack Obama and the White House played coy, hoping to help her win the runoff election that she ended up losing in a landslide on December 6th. Even as late as this weekend, the Obama administration didn’t tip their hand on Keystone. Yesterday Josh Earnest told the gaggle that Obama wouldn’t sign the bill as it currently stands, but stopped short of an explicit veto threat against the idea entirely.Today, the White House made it explicit: The...

Video at link. (CNSNews.com) – Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, says President Barack Obama is “factually incorrect” to say that the Keystone XL Pipeline will not benefit Americans. At the press conference in Washington Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Gerard about Obama’s remarks in November about the pipeline, which, if approved, would transport crude oil from Canada and from two U.S. states to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, held a press conference with reporters on Jan. 6, 2015 following his annual State of American Energy speech in Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com/Penny...

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...