Free Republic

Who says the news is always bad? It's just that a discouraged editor on the night shift or a reader picking up her paper from the doorstep next morning may have to search for the good news between outbreaks of the other kind. Sometimes it helps to just pause and notice what's not there anymore, what's missing. Like any mention of what used to be a sad staple of the news, decade after decade: the Energy Crisis. Energy Crises used to come as regularly as flu seasons, some years or whole eras worse than others. Let's see, there was...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's jobs council called on Tuesday for a corporate tax overhaul, expanded domestic drilling and new regulatory reforms, a set of proposals unlikely to provide a quick fix for high unemployment or gain much traction in an election year. A panel of top U.S. business leaders advising Obama - whose re-election chances could hinge on whether he can boost the fragile economy - offered its latest job-creation prescriptions at a meeting with him at the White House. Obama pledged to "push as hard as possible" on their recommendations but also sought to temper expectations. "Obviously...

There is a revolution going on in America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests. Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due to revolutionary methods of exploration and exploitation such as fracking and horizontal drilling. Current prices of over $100 a barrel make even complex efforts at recovery enormously profitable. There were always known to be additional untapped reserves of oil and gas in the petroleum-rich Gulf of Mexico, off America’s shores, and in the American West and Alaska....

Senate Republicans blocked a $60 billion infrastructure bill Thursday, making the bill the second piece of President Obama’s jobs proposal to be voted down in the Senate. Republicans and a few Democrats filibustered the broader $447 billion jobs bill last month. The vote came is a scripted floor exchange, with Democrats expected to quickly defeat an alternative GOP infrastructure funding bill. The bill garnered 51 votes--not enough to overcome the 60-vote cloture threshold. The Democratic bill, which includes a $10 billion national infrastructure bank, is funded by a 0.7 percent surtax on incomes of more than $1 million a year....

President Barack Obama told Americans on Saturday there is no "magic bullet" to bring down high gasoline prices and said he wants to end what he called $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies. Obama is feeling the heat from gasoline prices that are about $4 a gallon and may surge higher. A New York Times-CBS News poll found that 70 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track and analysts believe gas prices are a main reason. The president devoted his weekly radio and Internet address to outlining his views on the U.S....

Timing is everything, as the old saying goes, and no political issue depends on timing as much as that of energy. When prices for gasoline at the pump are high, energy climbs to the top of the electorate's list of concerns, but when prices are low, people tend not to think about it. If the price at the pump continues to climb and stays high through the summer, it will be very much on the minds of voters. And that will play to the strength of Sarah Palin's hand, as Scott Conroy recently observed at RealClearPolitics: It would be difficult...

Dan Calabrese, writing in The North Star National, sees the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and the resulting oil spill as a good test of spine stiffness for the GOP. One Republican, he says, has passed the test, and it’s Sarah Palin, as usual, but Calabrese is not encouraged by the signs he's seeing from others in the Shy Elephant Party: A day after pundit Charles Krauthammer declared “drill, baby, drill” to be history in light of the spill, and two days after the Obama Administration halted all domestic drilling (gee, what a surprise), Palin came out and invoked her moral...

We’ve all been shocked and saddened by the tragic events in the Gulf of Mexico. My heart breaks for coastal residents who are facing fears of the unknown impacts of the oil spill. As an Alaskan, I can speak from the heart about the tragedy of an oil spill. For as long as I live, I will never forget the day the Exxon-Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef and millions of gallons of North Slope crude poured into the waters of our beautiful Prince William Sound. The spill was devastating to so many Alaskans who, like my own family, make...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain says that he's taking another look at the possibility of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and as part of that assessment McCain says that he plans to talk to the nation's most prominent advocate of drilling in ANWR, Alaska governor Sarah Palin. McCain has opposed drilling in ANWR. In the past he's compared it to drilling in the Grand Canyon. But as energy prices climbed over the past several months, he has been careful to avoid locking himself into an anti-drilling position. In late June, McCain told voters in...

We are the nation of Velcro, the light-bulb, the microwave, the Ford Model-T, and the Wright Brothers. We fought and defeated tyranny and fascism. We’ve walked on the moon. Where others see impossibility, our nation sees a challenge. Pessimism and hopelessness are not American characteristics. As the price of gas climbs higher and higher, doomsday scenarios are playing out in the media. Americans aren’t buying it, they’re demanding a solution. But our can-do nation is suffering at the hands of “can’t-do” congressional leadership. After months of prohibiting a vote on increased domestic oil production, House Democrats have gone on summer...

You must have seen or heard it. It's been repeated ad nauseum by Democrats on floors of both houses of Congress, before TV cameras and radio microphones and at recent campaign events. "We can't drill our way out of this." The donkey party's latest mantra has been hammered home by the usual suspects from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to Barack Obama. Like most Democrat talking points, it's a falsehood. Yes we CAN drill our way out of this. Just the announcement of our intention to drill in any one of the Big Three Forbidden Zones (off the Continental Shelf,...

"We can't drill our way out of the problem." Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said it. It's one of those bromides sincerely repeated by Democrats with such conviction that for years left-leaning audiences duly nodded their heads, never questioning whether the truism was indeed true. Until gasoline leaped above the $4-a-gallon mark. Now some polls show that Americans support more domestic drilling. President Bush seized the moment Wednesday when he asked Congress to lift its ban on offshore drilling. Even Republican presidential candidate John McCain has seen the light. A long-time...

Will $4 Gasoline Trump a 27-Year-Old Ban?SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Published June 19, 2008 WASHINGTON — One was an oilman from Texas, the other a high-paid energy executive. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, for seven years George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been unable to persuade Congress and the public that domestic oil drilling is an answer to America’s energy needs. With the clock running down on his presidency, Mr. Bush made one last push Wednesday by calling on Congress to end the 27-year moratorium on most offshore drilling. With oil at more than $130 a barrel, gasoline...

A recent telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters nationwide by the polling companyTM, inc. on behalf of FamilySecurityMatters.org shows that by nearly a 4-to-1 margin, Americans favor increasing domestic oil drilling (77% support; 18% oppose). Moreover, 61% of respondents strongly backed tapping into U.S. oil reserves, and majorities from every demographic group surveyed backed domestic drilling, including 91% of Republicans, 73% of Independents and 67% of Democrats.

Congress recently launched hearings in which they hauled in the nation's top oil executives to explain why gasoline prices were so high. "People we represent are hurting, the companies you represent are profiting," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, told the oil execs. When asked, J. Stephen Simon, the executive vice-president of Exxon Mobil Corp. replied that his total compensation package was $12.5 million. That's a bargain for a guy that helped his company earn $40.6 billion last year and can't hit a 90-mile-per-hour fastball. Look at some of the salaries sports figures and actors command, and yet none have individually produced...

Americans are getting a confusing message on automobile mileage. "By driving a more fuel-efficient vehicle, a vehicle powered by alternative fuels, or even by driving our current vehicles more efficiently, we can all do our part to reduce our nation's reliance on imported oil and strengthen our energy security," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recently announced. Good advice. But Abraham chose an odd occasion to make his appeal. He and Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman were announcing the mileage figures for 2003 cars and passenger trucks. The average of 20.8 MPG continued a downward trend on fuel efficiency that has...