Free Republic

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law. But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist. In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required...

Conservative members of the Supreme Court seemed outraged Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s actions in a four-year battle with an Idaho couple who want to build a house on land the EPA says contains sensitive wetlands.

An international arbitration panel has ruled that Venezuela must pay Exxon Mobil more than $900 million in a long-simmering dispute over the nationalization of Exxon’s assets in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt, one of the most coveted oil reserves outside the Middle East.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Since 2003, the antiwar movement in the United States has had much to protest with Americans fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, but the movement—which has dropped off sharply the past two years—may be more anti-Republican than antiwar, says a University of Michigan researcher. A new study by U-M's Michael Heaney and colleague Fabio Rojas of Indiana University shows that the antiwar movement in the United States demobilized as Democrats, who had been motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments, withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, first with Congress in 2006 and then...

Fancy yourself a suave military gaming tactician? Is prestige level 24 starting to bore you on Black Ops? DARPA wants to put your strategic savviness to real military use by integrating its Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) configurations into the sub-hunting simulator game Dangerous Waters. Download and play the game, and your tactical prowess may just be implemented into ACTUV’s prototype software. DARPA’s ACTUV program aims to develop new tools for anti-submarine warfare that include unmanned autonomous ocean-going vessels that can track quiet submarines hiding in the depths. But in order to figure out what tactics work...

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Thirteen people were arrested Thursday afternoon outside the governor's office as protests over statewide budget cuts grew noisier and more boisterous, witnesses said. The arrests came as labor groups converged on the Washington state Capitol for a third day of demonstrations to call attention to budget cuts they called "immoral." The 13 protesters were arrested following a pushing and shoving match between protesters and Washington State Patrol troopers.

(EIA) — Amid rising concerns about the risk of a prolonged disruption in Libyan oil exports, crude oil inventories in Europe and elsewhere warrant close scrutiny from market participants. The loss of Libyan crude oil supply will likely be partly offset by two factors: on the supply side, higher exports from Saudi Arabia and other producers; on the demand front, a temporary reduction in Asian consumption following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

A measure that changes collective bargaining rules for Department of Corrections employees passed the state House late Monday, despite never having a public hearing and being introduced at the last minute. House Bill 2011 was approved by 59 to 36 vote. It now heads to the Senate. Proponents said the measure was necessary to ensure the safety of workers in the state’s prisons, but opponents said the process by which the bill came before them was shoddy. The legislation sponsored by Rep. Mike Sells, D-Everett, was introduced on Saturday. There were no committee hearings or opportunities for public comment. “This...

OLYMPIA, Wash. — A Republican-led motion to bring a vote on a bill that would have restricted driver's licenses access to illegal immigrants and attempted to stop other identification fraud was defeated Monday in the Washington state Senate, dealing proponents of the measure a major defeat. In a procedural motion, Republicans asked the Senate to consider the bill, which had not been brought to the floor by Democrats, who hold the majority and control of which bills get a vote. But the motion failed 23-25 in the waning minutes of a deadline to vote on bills in their chambers of...

A day later, on Friday, the National Labor Relations Board posted what appears to be its first-ever “Fact Check” that stated the following: Fact Check This feature encourages accuracy in the media by correcting common misperceptions and errors of fact when they are brought to our attention. Google Ads It has been reported that the NLRB spent Agency funds on Google ads. An initial review indicates that the ads were provided at no charge beginning in 2008 by Google. The Agency has decided to discontinue them. Now that the NLRB has taken it upon itself to correct the record by...

NEW YORK (AP) — A decade ago the U.S. government attacked Al-Jazeera as a propagator of anti-American propaganda. Now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is citing the network for fine news coverage — and tweaking the U.S. media in the process. The Arab broadcaster says it's ready to take advantage of what it considers a major boost in its acceptance in the United States. Clinton, on the week many U.S. television outlets were preoccupied by the spectacle of actor Charlie Sheen, suggested during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that American networks were falling behind in the competition...

The Obama administration delivered a warning late Friday to a federal judge who’s demanding Interior Department action on deepwater drilling permit applications: Be careful what you wish for. The Interior Department challenged a Louisiana judge’s orders that require decisions on several industry applications later this month, warning that the court's mandate could force Interior to “deny the applications outright” and divert resources from review of other permit requests. Interior appealed the orders late Friday and asked for a stay. In their filing, Justice Department lawyers say that Judge Martin Feldman’s orders could thwart the “efficient development of oil and gas...

Researchers at Chalmers in Sweden have shown that a surface emitting laser – a cheaper and more energy-efficient type of laser for fiber optics than conventional lasers – can deliver error-free data at a record speed of 40 Gbit/s. The break-through could lead to faster Internet traffic, computers and mobile phones. Today's commercial lasers can send up to 10 Gb of data per second (Gbit/s) through optical fibers. This applies to both conventional lasers and to surface emitting lasers. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have managed to increase the speed of the surface emitting laser four times, and see...

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah man who infiltrated a sale of federal energy leases in December 2008 to protest U.S. policies about climate change was found guilty by a jury Thursday of disrupting a government auction and faces up to 10 years in prison. The defendant, Tim DeChristopher, 29, became a folk hero to some in the environmentalist movement for taking action against the leases, which provoked protests and demonstrations in the closing days of the administration of President George W. Bush because of the perceived risk to sensitive lands in southern Utah. In his four-day trial in federal...

Solis labors under the flawed assumption that she represents only the steadily dwindling sliver of the American work force that is still unionized. As a result, Solis is leaving the other 90 percent of American workers high and dry. Here's the key passage from Solis' remarks at the DNC on public employee protests in Wisconsin and Ohio that points to her fractured understanding of whom she represents: "The fight is on. We work together. We help those embattled states right now where public employees are under assault." She called members of the protesting public employee unions "our brothers and sisters"...

Sometimes the stuff politicians say in this town just blows my mind. Check out the video below of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar telling the House Natural Resources Committee a whopper earlier today. Salazar claims oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has remained at "an all-time high" despite the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the federal moratorium and permatorium that have stopped all deepwater drilling activity, put thousands of people in Texas, Lousiana, Mississippi and Alabama out of work, and kept the region's energy economy mired in a deep recession. But according to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, Gulf...

On Election Day last year, Big Labor's bosses were aghast at spending some $200 million on political campaigns only to see voters elect a Tea Party inspired GOP majority, toss out the Democrats' supermajority in the Senate, and elect a wave of new Republican governors across the country. That's a lot of money to come out of donations from Big Labor's 14.7 million members - with some of it allegedly taken from their dues, which is illegal, and some rumored to come off-the-books from undocumented workers. Most of Big Labor's political campaign money comes from payroll deductions and checkoff donations...

A Guilty Plea in SEIU Initiative Signature-Forging Case – But the Left Turns Embarrassment to its Advantage in the Legislature OLYMPIA, Feb. 26.—Union officials and left-wing activist groups are saying that an embarrassing signature fraud case involving the Service Employees International Union last summer is a terrific reason to regulate everyone else. They’re pushing a bill that would impose tight new restrictions on signature-gathering companies. It’s the same basic idea they’ve been backing for years, and it’s looking like it is picking up support in the Democrat-controlled Legislature. But here’s the funny thing about it. Not only is the SEIU...

Last week, we heard that State Rep. Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh) had been busted in a prostitution sting. State Rep. Gordon Hintz was issued a municipal citation in Appleton earlier this month for violating a city sexual misconduct ordinance. Appleton police said the citation was issued Feb. 10 in conjunction with an ongoing investigation of Heavenly Touch Massage Parlor, 342 W. Wisconsin Ave., in Appleton. Police searched the business and a nearby residence in the 1300 block of North Division Street Jan. 28, after investigators had staked out the properties for several days after receiving a tip. ** Last Friday.... after...

It’s hard to keep up with all the headlines that are flying fast and furious in the wake of the revelation earlier this week of a $1.8 million fraud scandal that has rocked the Seattle Public School District. But the latest news is that the Seattle Times and School Board President Steve Sundquist, historically two of the biggest apologists and fans of controversial School Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, are both saying the superintendent needs to go — either fired by the school board, or should resign. (Sundquist also mentions the option of buying out the remainder of Goodloe-Johnson’s roughly $300,000/year contract....