Free Republic

Election 2010: Another Tea Party candidate has dispatched another incumbent, riding a tidal wave of voter anger. The "angry mobs" that thronged town hall meetings were laughed at. No one's laughing anymore. When the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passed the House with the help of eight Republicans, Rep. Mike Castle, one of the eight and Delaware's at-large congressman, offered an explanation right off of President Obama's teleprompter. He cited Spain, which studies show has lost 2.2 jobs for every "green" job created with huge subsidies, and John Podesta's liberal Center for American Progress as approving the mandate-heavy Waxman-Markey bill as a...

Energy Policy: Senate Democrats have shelved job-killing cap-and-trade legislation, at least for now. Neither the political nor the Earth's climate suggests it's a good time to try to fool Mother Nature or the American people. After a Thursday meeting with Senate Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has apparently dropped plans to pursue cap-and-trade before the August recess. He doesn't have the votes to overcome a GOP filibuster, and saving the earth from a phantom threat stands way below jobs on Americans' wish list. But watch out after November. "What he suggested is that we move forward on several bills...

Energy Policy: The administration plans to use sleight-of-hand politics to sneak through an economy-killing tax on energy as necessary to save the Earth. Make no mistake: Cap-and-trade is a tax every American will pay in every aspect of his or her life.IBD Exclusive Series: American Freedom And Prosperity Under AttackCap-and-trade is like Jason Voorhees of the "Friday the 13th" movie series. Just when you think you've killed it, it comes back. Exposures of fraud in the climate science used to justify it seemed to doom its chances as the economy soured and prospective costs seemed prohibitive. Then the Deepwater Horizon...

Politics: The Senate just claimed the title of the world's most delusional body by refusing to strip unelected EPA bureaucrats of the power to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This was the day freedom died. One wonders why we have a Congress at all. The 53 profiles in cowardice that could not get a cap-and-tax bill through the U.S. Senate voted Thursday to let the Environmental Protection Agency keep the unprecedented power Congress did not expressly give it. It is power that the EPA arrogated to itself through regulation to control every aspect of the American economy and our...

Regulations: Call it cap-and-trade or bait-and-switch, but John Kerry and Joe Lieberman continue to tilt at windmills with a bill to restrain energy growth in the name of saving the planet.IBD Exclusive Series: American Freedom And Prosperity Under AttackThe bill introduced Wednesday and sponsored by the two senators is called the American Power Act, an Orwellian phrase if ever there was one. Like President Obama's offshore drilling program, for every "incentive" there is a restriction. It's as if Hamlet were to be appointed Secretary of Energy. The legislation has little to do with developing America's vast domestic energy supply. It's...

The effort to enact climate and energy legislation this year suffered a critical blow Saturday when Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), the key Republican proponent of the bill, said he was unwilling to move ahead because of Democrats' push for immigration reform. The move forced the other two authors of the bill, Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), to cancel a news conference planned for Monday that would have unveiled the climate and energy plan they negotiated with Graham, the only Republican who had been participating in the discussions. In an interview Saturday, Graham said he...

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) will roll out their compromise climate proposal April 26, according to several sources. While the date is a bit later than originally expected -- many environmentalists had anticipated it would become public next week, in time for Earth Day on Thursday -- the definitive date shows the senators are coming close to finalizing their package.

Campaign staff and volunteers of Sen. John McCain and his former vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin are preparing for the pair’s appearance at Mesa’s Dobson High School on Saturday. A spokesman for the camp offered a bit of advice for those wanting to get in: “Folks should get there early,” said Brian Rogers, McCain’s communications director.The event is free, on a first-come, first-served basis and does not require a ticket. (snip) Also speaking at a rally in Tucson on Friday, the appearances are McCain and Palin’s first ones together at a public event since their concession speech in the...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says he is not abandoning negotiations on a comprehensive energy and climate bill even as he warns of partisan gridlock following the Democrats' push this week to pass health care reform. "It's going to make it very difficult to do anything complicated and controversial," Graham told reporters yesterday. "I'm still committed to trying to roll out a vision of how you can price carbon and make it business-friendly. We're still going to do that. ... But the truth of the matter is, I think you're going to find most of our colleagues around here risk adverse."...

Al Gore, on his website, flags this passage in Mitt Romney’s recent book No Apology: “I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor.” Gore writes: “We can have disagreements about the solutions to this crisis, but we need to acknowledge fundamental truths. The science proving the existence of the climate crisis is not in question. That is where our debates about policy need to begin.” Romney, a potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate, and Gore certainly disagree on...

WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - It's rare when a conservative Republican in Congress heaps praise on President Barack Obama, especially in regards to fighting global warming, but Senator Lindsey Graham did just that on Wednesday. The South Carolina lawmaker has, despite opposition from many in his party, worked with Obama and Democrats on a comprehensive energy and environmental bill, winning their support of more government aid for nuclear power and expanded oil and gas drilling. Nuclear power and domestic oil production are at the core of Republican platforms. "The president has been great to work with on energy and climate,"...

STATEMENT BY SENATORS JOHN McCAIN AND JON KYL ON UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS EXTENSIONMarch 3, 2010 Washington, D.C. ­– The U.S. Senate approved late Tuesday a temporary extension of unemployment benefits and other expiring provision of law. U.S. Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who both supported the extension, released the following joint statement: “When the Senate approved the last unemployment benefits extension in November, we supported it, but warned that without additional measures to promote economic growth and jobs creation, many Americans would remain unemployed when that extension ran out. Indeed, that extension has now run out, and the...

It is early evening on Capitol Hill, and I am sitting with Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, who, along with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, is trying to craft a new energy bill — one that could actually win 60 votes. What is interesting about Graham is that he has been willing — courageously in my view — to depart from the prevailing G.O.P. consensus that the only energy policy we need is “drill, baby, drill.” What brought you around, I ask? Graham’s short answer: politics, jobs and legacy. We start with politics. The Republican Party today has...

Report: 3 key senators propose jettisoning 'cap-and-trade'; favor reducing carbon pollution. WASHINGTON (AP) -- Three key senators are writing a new climate bill without a broad "cap-and-trade" approach to reducing carbon pollution, leaving behind what has been the central feature in the debate over climate legislation for years, The Washington Post reported Friday night. Cap and trade, in which overall pollution reduction targets are met by allowing facilities to buy and sell pollution credits, has become so politically unpopular that its Senate passage is viewed as unlikely. So Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn,., are...

Madam President, I come to the floor to discuss for a few minutes with my colleague from South Carolina the issue of climate change. We all know the budget will be forthcoming. We already understand there will be some $650 billion included in the budget for general revenues that would go as revenues from climate – here it is: $646 billion over 8 years. According to some aides to the administration, it could be as much as $2 trillion. Remarkable. What we have done is we have gone from an attempt to address the issue of climate change through cap...

Sen. John McCain once led the global warming debate on Capitol Hill, pledging to force repeated floor votes on cap-and-trade legislation until it passed. "Over time we will not be elected Miss Congeniality in the Senate, but we will win," the Arizona Republican said in April 2006. But McCain has gone on hiatus from the issue since losing the presidential election to Barack Obama. And he is likely to keep his distance even more over the next six months due to a primary challenge from a conservative former congressman that threatens to end his Senate career after four terms. "The...

New Hampshire would seem to be surprise proof when it comes to visits from prominent people urging support for various causes, but it was something of an eyebrow raiser a when a former policy adviser for John McCain’s presidential campaign went before business folks Tuesday to say that federal oversight is needed to control greenhouse gases.“I won’t pretend that I get standing ovations,” joked Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was a staff economist for President George H.W. Bush and served as chief economic adviser to McCain’s campaign. He spoke Tuesday to a gathering of New Hampshire businesspeople at the New Hampshire Institute...

CHICAGO - Buoyed by their surprise Senate victory in Massachusetts, Republicans in President Barack Obama's home state of Illinois sense the Senate seat he left vacant is ripe for their picking come November elections. Obama's Democrats have long dominated Illinois politics. But Republicans view their man Scott Brown's capture in January of the late Edward Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts as a sign of voter dismay with Democrats in the White House and Congress. Public opinion polls ahead of Tuesday's party primaries in Illinois show five-term U.S. Representative Mark Kirk likely to win the Republican nomination easily. Favored to win the...

Retired Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn returned to Charleston on Friday to repeat his message that climate change and U.S. dependence on foreign oil are national security threats that must be addressed together."If you don't believe in climate change, great, let's focus on energy security," he said at a small private luncheon at High Cotton. "There is no excuse for inaction." (snip) McGinn commanded the U.S. Third Fleet in the 1990s, was deputy chief of Naval Operations, Warfare Requirements and Programs and is a member of the Center for Naval Analysis' Military Advisory Board. (snip) McGinn was among a bipartisan panel...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said today that skeptical Republicans and Democrats should throw their support behind climate change legislation not only because it's good for the economy and the environment, but because Congress desperately needs a win under its belt. "We tried immigration. It's hard. And we failed. We tried Social Security. It's hard. And we failed. We tried health care. It's really hard. And it looks like we're going to have to start over again," Graham somberly told a luncheon audience of energy and climate advocates on the Hill. "On the energy, climate change front, I don't want to...