Free Republic

Will Obama use two small birds to limit oil drilling in the West? Almost half the land west of the Mississippi belongs to the federal government, including 48% of California, 62% of Idaho and 81% of Nevada. No surprise that the Obama Administration wants to control more. But the result could be to suppress the country's booming oil and gas development. In partnership with green activists, the Department of Interior may attempt one of the largest federal land grabs in modern times, using a familiar vehicle—the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A record 757 new species could be added to the...

It should come as no surprise The New York Times would bury news of a conservative victory over President Obama on page eight. The lead paragraph said it all: Senate Democrats, bowing to united House Republican opposition, dropped reforms of International Monetary Fund governance from a Ukraine aid package on Tuesday. The real question is whether this was merely a moment in time or a seminal shift in how congressional Republicans will approach future showdowns. And to be clear, future showdowns are inevitable if we are to achieve any conservative policy victories. Before going further, it is important to explain...

WASHINGTON — The father of the so-called Green Revolution has a permanent home in the U.S. Capitol. Lawmakers unveiled a statue of Norman Borlaug on Tuesday in a ceremony on what would have been his 100th birthday. The Iowa native and University of Minnesota graduate is credited with saving as many as 1 billion people from hunger by creating a type of wheat that was disease resistant and high-yielding. Borlaug, who died in 2009, won the 1970 Nobel Prize for his work and has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. His likeness will join...

Democratic control of the U.S. Senate – already tenuous as a result of retirements and stiff Republican challenges – has become even more perilous as a result of recent events in Colorado. In what amounts to a game of trading places, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, a Republican who intended to challenge incumbent Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) in the November election, dropped out of the race to run for the congressional seat currently held by Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). Gardner, in turn, jumped into the Senate race, providing Colorado Republicans with a significantly better chance of capturing Udall’s seat....

The GOP’s probability of taking over the United States Senate increased dramatically Wednesday with the entry of Rep. Cory Gardner into the race against incumbent Obamacare enthusiast Senator Mark Udall in Colorado. 1. West Virginia: Rep. Shelley Moore Capito v. no one. Jay Rockefeller quit after Capito got into the race. She will win, going away. 2. South Dakota: Former Governor Mike Rounds in South Dakota v. no one in South Dakota This is a mortal lock for the popular Rounds. 3. Arkansas: Rep. Tom Cotton v. the hapless legacy senator Mark Pryor in Ark Pryor won his seat because...

**SNIP** Midterm elections are often a reflection of the approval rating of the incumbent president and now President Obama stands at 42.8%. And elections in the 6th year of a PresidentÂ’s term are usually not good for the incumbentÂ’s party. To make things even worse for Democrats, the issues of a weak economy and Obamacare make November look bleak for Harry Reid and his Senate Democratic cohorts. â—¾Alaska, Mark Begich â—¾Arkansas, Mark Pryor â—¾Louisiana, Mary Landrieu â—¾Michigan, Open Seat (liberal Democrat Carl Levin retiring) â—¾Montana, John Walsh â—¾North Carolina, Kay Hagan â—¾South Dakota, being vacated by retiring Democrat Tim Johnson...

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz supports reducing the amount of crude oil shipped by rail in favor of pipelines that are safer, cheaper and cleaner, Capital New York reported on Wednesday. "What we probably need is more of a pipeline infrastructure and to diminish the need for rail transport over time," he said in an interview published on the Capital New York website. He said the infrastructure is "not there" to handle the surge in North Dakota Bakken oil production from near zero to 1 million barrels per day (bpd). "Frankly, I think pipeline transport overall probably has overall a...

Democrats who oppose the Keystone XL pipeline have thousands of dollars invested in direct competitors to the company looking to build the pipeline, public records show. A recent environmental assessment by the State Department was seen as a step toward the pipeline’s approval, but Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) remains opposed to its construction. “In my view, there is now enough evidence to conclude that construction of this pipeline is not in America’s long-term interest,” Kaine said in a statement on the review. The freshman Democrat has between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, according to his...

Democrats who oppose the Keystone XL pipeline have thousands of dollars invested in direct competitors to the company looking to build the pipeline, public records show. A recent environmental assessment by the State Department was seen as a step toward the pipeline’s approval, but Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) remains opposed to its construction. “In my view, there is now enough evidence to conclude that construction of this pipeline is not in America’s long-term interest,” Kaine said in a statement on the review. The freshman Democrat has between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, according to his...

For over five years, the Obama Administration has delayed a decision on the Keystone pipeline because of alleged concerns about environmental impacts, especially climate change. The Administration’s non-decision process has been strongly supported by its activist environmental allies who have made extreme and unsupportable claims. Now, the truth comes out from the former Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, who finally admitted that the decision is “a political one, and one founded in science” and just yesterday by former Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, who said that Keystone is a “win-win.” In spite of these admissions, environmental activists continue their...

An unusual coalition of lawmakers from both parties, labor and business leaders, veterans groups and Canada's ambassador to the United States joined forces Tuesday to push for quick approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Five Democrats joined Republicans at a Capitol news conference to urge President Barack Obama to approve the pipeline following a State Department report last week that raised no major environmental objections. The $7 billion pipeline would carry oil from tar sands in western Canada to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. The project has lingered for more than five years and has become a symbol...

Replacing the Keystone XL pipeline with oil-laden freight trains from Canada may result in an average of six additional rail-related deaths per year, according to a U.S. State Department report that is adding to pressure for President Barack Obama to approve the line. The long-awaited study, released on Friday, focused on the environmental impact of TransCanada's $5.4 billion pipeline, but also spent several pages analyzing the potential human impact of various ways to transport oil, using historical injury and fatality statistics for railways and oil pipelines. Although it excluded the runaway oil train derailment that killed 47 people in Lac...

The State Department today released its long-awaited environmental impact analysis of the Keystone XL pipeline. The analysis is key because President Obama announced last summer he would not approve the pipeline unless it was found to have no significant impact on climate change. And that’s what the analysis finds. It argues, as many other analysts have concluded, that if we block the pipeline, Canada will just ship the oil out by rail. So, what public policy reason is there to block the pipeline? There really isn’t one. Indeed, the environmentalists' obsession with Keystone began as a gigantic mistake. Two and...

It’s no coincidence that sage grouse habitat also happens to intersect both the largest untapped coal deposits in the country as well as large parts of the Bakken oil field. It’s clear the primary motivation to focus on sage grouse for ESA listing is to provide yet another tool for special interest groups to block energy development. And in this obstructionist toolbox, there’s no heavier sledgehammer than the Endangered Species Act. What an interesting irony, then, that so much effort is going into “protecting” one bird from energy development, when the Obama administration is turning a blind eye to hundreds...

Some state lawmakers who worry about their safety want the right to carry guns while on public property. A new house bill would allow state legislators to arm themselves while visiting the Capitol or county courthouses.

In a brief to be filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, 19 Democratic senators are siding with the Obama administration against evangelical Christian businessmen who argue that paying for their employees’ birth control, a requirement under Obamacare, violates their company’s religious freedom. The senators—five of them women—argue in their “friend of the court” brief that the owners of the Oklahoma-based crafts store chain Hobby Lobby are not exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate simply because some forms of birth control offend their religious beliefs. Hobby Lobby’s owners, David Green and his family, are suing the federal...

There’s a clan of semi-nomadic tradesmen quietly watching for a sign that, somewhere on the horizon, there might be a resolution to the Keystone XL dispute. The Berringer brothers have travelled far, and often, to build pipelines like their dad did. Between the now-retired father and his two burly boys, their total combined experience adds up to about a century. And in all that prodigious pipeline-laying history, they say, not once have they ever witnessed a struggle like the one over Keystone XL. The Berringer boys happen to have a few bucks riding on the outcome. They’d expect their union...

Despite years of acrimonious delay, the Keystone XL pipeline project is increasingly likely to receive the green light from the U.S. government sometime this year. ... In the end, intense pressure from constituencies close to the Obama Administration will force the President to align himself with the project. Here are the top five reasons why the government will finally be compelled to take action on this hot-button issue and why it will probably happen sooner rather than later. 1) The U.S. Midterm elections - Nothing changes policy faster than an election and this year it looks like several members of...

A state lawmaker from Perkins County (South Dakota) wants to require that first- and second-grade students show they are proficient at reading before they can advance to the next grade. “I brought the bill at the request of my school board in Eagle Butte,” Rep. Betty Olson, R-Prairie City, said. The House Education Committee hasn’t scheduled a hearing yet for HB 1067. The bill doesn’t name a specific assessment or test that should be used. “They’ll have to figure that out,” Olson said.

Among Washington's most important but rarely covered realities is the daily close coordination among Democratic politicians, executive branch bureaucrats and the left side of the non-profit activism community. Emails obtained recently through a Freedom of Information Act request submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute exposed a slice of that coordination in the campaign to stop construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The emails show, according to Fox News correspondent John Roberts, "senior policy officials at the EPA working closely with environmental groups in what appears to be an effort to kill the pipeline."...