Free Republic

The Canadian election Monday ousted a strong supporter of the Keystone XL pipeline. And it brought into office another strong supporter of the Keystone XL pipeline. The new Canadian premier, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, has supported the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline as well as TransCanada’s proposed $12 billion Energy East pipeline, both of which would carry bitumen from Alberta’s vast oil sands to ports and world markets.

RUSH: Hillary Clinton has come out against the Keystone pipeline. Folks, I hope she's doubling her security, because she and her husband have taken multiple millions of dollars in donations and speaking fees personally from banks and other industries in favor of the Keystone pipeline. She has taken money, I mean it's $3.6 million total. Investors have given both Clintons combined $3.4 million right into their pockets. This is not for their little Crime Family Foundation. This is straight to them. Canada banks are among the largest contributors. And Mrs. Clinton used to be for the Keystone XL pipeline. It's...

Hillary Clinton wants to wait until she wins the White House before taking a stand on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. At a town hall in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Clinton responded to a question from the audience asking if she would sign a bill approving the pipeline by saying that she would not "second guess" President Obama's decision. Should the issue still be alive in January 2017, however, then Clinton will say what her position is. "If it's undecided when I become president, I will answer your question," Clinton said. That answer is sure to rile environmentalists who have...

An environmental group whose request for records related to the Keystone Pipeline was reportedly hampered while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state is considering taking the case to court for the second time. Ben Schreiber, climate and energy program director at Friends of the Earth, said his group has weighed the option of relitigation in the weeks since learning that Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, had interfered in the agency's handling of Freedom of Information Act requests for Keystone documents. While Schreiber said Friends of the Earth received a number of emails involving Clinton's top aides when the...

Exactly two months after the latest Warren Buffett-owned BNSF train derailed near the spot where the Galena river meets the Mississippi, resulting in a huge fire and the evacuation of all homes in a one mile radius, moments ago another of Buffett's BNSF oil trains derailed, this time near the town of Heimdal, North Dakota, resulting in the same outcome. According to the Bismark Tribune, the town in Wells County was evacuated Tuesday morning after a train full of oil tanker cars derailed and burned about a mile and half east of here. ... For those concerned that these countless...

This was pretty funny. William Shaheen, Hillary's New Hampshire co-chair and husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, appearing on today's With All Due Respect, boasted that he knows where Hillary stands on 10 different issues. But when hosts Mark Halperin and John Heilemann put Shaheen to the test, asking him where Hillary stands on the Keystone Pipeline and the Trans Pacific trade deal, Shaheen had to sheepishly admit that he didn't know Hillary's view on either issue, despite his boast and having specifically said that he knows where Hillary stands on trade. View the video here.

The Senate upheld President Obama’s first veto of the new Congress on Wednesday, dooming for the foreseeable future any chance of constructing the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring oil from Canada to the U.S. The vote was seen as a key early test of Democrats’ willingness to defend their lame-duck party leader, and Mr. Obama passed that test easily, with the Senate falling four shy of the two-thirds supermajority needed to overturn the veto. “This is going to come back,” said Sen. Joe Manchin III, a West Virginia Democrat who did break with Mr. Obama and said eventually the...

President Barack Obama last week vetoed legislation that would have greenlighted the Keystone XL pipeline, linking Canadian oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The Senate lacks the votes to override Obama's veto. Yet Keystone isn't dead. Both Democrats and Republicans have an interest in keeping this political football in play. Someday, we hope, the pipeline will be built. But that day won't come any time soon — and perhaps never during Obama's dwindling presidency. In his veto message, Obama asserted that he hasn't decided whether Keystone should be built or not. Obama said he was using his veto pen...

Energy: Three million gallons of Bakken crude burning in rural West Virginia after an oil train derails in a snowstorm ought to underscore the environmental safety of replacing rail cars with the Keystone XL pipeline. One of the reasons President Obama says he'll veto the Keystone pipeline bill that, as a result of last November's GOP electoral gusher, has found its way to his desk is that it will only carry Canadian crude to foreign markets and is not worth jeopardizing the environment. Two things are wrong with that argument. The first is that Keystone XL will also bring Bakken...

A week after his State of the Union address, political observers are still trying to figure out what President Obama's game is. That's because rhetorically and substantively, he seems to be in another world. In his State of the Union address, Obama refused to even take note of the GOP's historic midterm gains and the fact the House and Senate are now both under Republican control. On foreign policy, Obama talked as if everything was going swimmingly abroad, prompting even the Washington Post's Dana Milbank to marvel at Obama's "disconnect" from what is happening in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Russia....

Scorched Earth. If you're an unpopular lame duck President whose terrible policies have granted your opponents two wave elections, you're bound to start noticing dissent among your supporters. For some Presidents that might mean that your pet projects will languish as your political friends become scarce. Not so for a petulant, frustrated man like Barack Obama. For Obama, it simply means that he's going to have to start destroying members of his own party. As the Daily Mail reports, the President is ready to lash out at any Democrat who would dare attempt to rein him in: A White House...

The United States Senate voted Wednesday to agree that climate change "is real and not a hoax." That was it, the full extent of the amendment to the Senate's slow-moving Keystone XL pipeline bill. Final tally: 98 to 1.This was one of two traps set up by Democrats to get their opponents on the record as disputing the authenticity of human-caused global warming, a phenomenon nearly universally accepted by the scientific community. But it didn't go as expected.Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) co-sponsored the amendment with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who introduced it. Inhofe can claim credit as a primary inspiration...

President Obama is either the most cynical man in Washington today, or the blindest.That is the only conclusion one can reach after being subjected to his 2015 State of the Union Address."You know, just over a decade ago, I gave a speech in Boston where I said there wasn't a liberal America, or a conservative America," Obama recounted. "Over the past six years, the pundits have pointed out more than once that my presidency hasn't delivered on this vision," Obama continued. "How ironic, they say, that our politics seems more divided than ever." At this point, even a slightly more honest or self-aware politician...

President Barack Obama has promised to veto that legislation as long as the State Department is still conducting its formal review. Late last week, the Nebraska Supreme Court eliminated another obstacle, tossing out a lawsuit challenging the pipeline's route. Pipeline opponents in Nebraska filed two new suits Friday over the proposed route. The 1,179-mile pipeline would carry an estimated 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Canada to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines on its way to Gulf Coast refineries. Since the pipeline was proposed six years ago, it has sparked intense debate over its potential...

I am guessing you don't know one of the major things President Obama was doing while snubbing France and world leaders who convened in Paris to express solidarity in the civilized world's war against radical Islamic terrorism. I assure you it was something close to his heart -- as opposed to fighting Islamic jihad. It was something that will thrill the anti-business, anti-energy extreme environmentalists but will not warm the hearts of American businesses and energy producers, and it is not good news for America's currently overhyped economy. Yes, you heard me right; despite all the faux euphoria projected by...

The White House confirmed Thursday that Canada has postponed the North American Leaders Summit scheduled for next month but would not say whether tension over the Keystone XL oil pipeline is the reason. Canada, this year’s summit host, announced Thursday that the summit will be held later in 2015, though no exact date has been set. Some Canadian media outlets, such as the Toronto Sun, reported that the meeting was rescheduled because of President Obama’s continued indecision on Keystone, which...

Energy Policy: In spite of dramatically lower methane emissions from fracking, according to the EPA's own data, the agency wants to impose draconian regulations on the oil and gas industry similar to those on coal. The new rules that the White House announced on Wednesday aim to cut oil emissions of methane, a target of environmental groups, by 45% below 2012 levels, despite the fact that the emissions already show a sharp decline even as shale oil and gas production has skyrocketed. This war-on-shale action mirrors the administration's war on coal, with EPA rules impossible to meet economically and sometimes...

Now that the U.S. economy is showing signs of life, President Obama is not wasting a moment to take credit for this recovery. “The steps we took nearly six years ago to rescue our economy and rebuild it on a new foundation helped make 2014 the strongest year for job growth since the 1990’s,” he said in a recent speech. For sure we can expect the president to continue this message in his upcoming State of the Union address, as he works to rebuild his credibility, thinking toward his final two years in office and his place in history. And...

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,...

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...