Free Republic

A news reporter based in Washington, D.C., Matthew Anthony Harper, is facing the ultimate censorship by the Washington bureaucracy: exclusion from press events. WorldNetDaily – itself a veteran of legal and bureaucratic battles over press access in the nation’s capital, once having threatened to sue all the officials of the Senate Press Gallery and ultimately winning its desired press pass – interviewed Harper, of the Christian newspaper InterMountain Christian News, whose access is now threatened. Harper explained to WND that the White House press office is requiring him to hold a press pass with Congress and/or the Supreme Court as...

Republicans love to wail and gnash their teeth at the concept of a single payer for healthcare. And they should — the U.S. government would certainly destroy the quality of our medicine and shorten lives. The miracle of American healthcare today would be long gone with the creation a vertically integrated system run by Uncle Sam. As Ronald Reagan used to joke, the scariest words in the English language are, ‘We’re the government and we’re here to help’. However, hypocrisy is not something to be lost on any politician. So, it does not come as a surprise that the GOP...

SACRAMENTO--A small utility near Lake Tahoe's north shore thought it had the answer to providing long-term affordable energy coal. But after an outpouring of public criticism and political pressure, the Truckee Donner Public Utility District voted to reject a 50-year contract to obtain energy from a planned coal plant in Utah. The district's vote late Wednesday night was an illustration of a larger debate within California. Over the last month, several utilities have considered renewing or negotiating new contracts for cheap power from high-polluting sources before a new state law takes effect Jan. 1. Under that law, utilities in California...

Several Southern California cities have abandoned plans to renew long-term contracts for coal-fired electricity, gambling on the availability of adequate alternative energy from cleaner sources. Local officials told Utah-based Intermountain Power Agency on Monday they wouldn't be renewing their contracts for cheap, coal-fired power, which expire in 2027, and would instead be looking for available alternatives, from wind farms to desert solar power. "It's a huge change," said Mayor Todd Campbell of Burbank, which is one of the cities that decided to not renew its contract. The others are Pasadena, Glendale, Riverside and Anaheim. They join the Los Angeles Department...

Trucking through the Green Haze in Truckee The Pasadena Pundit Curiously omitted in California’s large newspapers covering the story of the City of Truckee's decision whether to renew its contract for coal-fired power from the Intermountain Power Plant (IPP) in Utah is that the proposed plant expansion will apparently meet all air quality standards (see SFGate.com http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/10/BAGJGMSTB01.DTL and see SacBee.com http://subscriber.sacbee.com/user_registration/login/?goto=http%3A//www.sacbee.com/324/story/89876.html). According to the State of Utah Department of Environmental Quality: "The IPP will meet all primary and secondary National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The IPP will also meet Class I increments in the National Parks in southern Utah...