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Before the Senate takes its summer break, a handful of Senators are taking a chance to trash the climate bill. A group of moderate Senators wrote a letter to Barack Obama telling him that they cannot support the climate bill unless it's further weakend ease the burden of cap and trade policies. Seperately, John McCain ripped the bill while talking to Stephen Moore at the Wall Street Journal. . . . . . Over at the Wall Street Journal, John McCain takes a harder stance, saying, "this 1,400-page bill is a farce. They bought every industry off—steel mills, agriculture, utilities...I...

PARIS -- John McCain wrapped up his five-country swing to the Middle East and Europe by meeting with two familiar faces- one old and one new. In London this morning, former Prime Minister Tony Blair and McCain had breakfast together at the swanky Mandarin Oriental hotel. A quick photo-op for reporters before the official visit quickly became a reflection of McCain's recent travels. On the friendship with Britain, McCain said, "What I've learned from our trip is that our alliance and our relationship is still strong. There are areas such as climate change, transparency of international financial institutions, Israeli-Palestinian peace...

LONDON (AFP) - US Republican presidential hopeful John McCain Friday discussed the situation in the Middle East and global warming with former British prime minister Tony Blair, the ex-premier's spokesman said. Blair met with McCain in London as well as US senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, McCain's colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee who are travelling with him, the spokesman told AFP. "They met, but also, obviously with Senator Lieberman and Senator Graham. The subjects they spoke about were the Middle East and climate change," he said. McCain, who is on a week-long tour of Europe and the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Here's what leading presidential candidates have said about climate change and energy policies, and what they want to do. REPUBLICAN ARIZONA SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: "I know that climate change is real ... we've got to address it, we can do it with technology, with cap and trade, with capitalist and free enterprise motivation." Co-authored bill to cut emissions by 65 percent by 2050, favors unspecified fuel efficiency increase and overall energy efficiency. DEMOCRATIC NEW YORK SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: "We need to start on a path to slow, stop and reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions." Supports...

Sen. John McCain and his staff have been adamant for days that his upcoming overseas trip to Britain, France and Israel is not political. /snip ...Apparently, though, there will still be room for fundraising. McCain's campaign has sent out an invitation for a March 20 luncheon at Spencer House -- the neo-classical home built for an ancestor of Diana, the late Princess of Wales -- "by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE and the Hon. Nathaniel Rothschild." The price to attend is $1000 to $2,300. And the dress code for the event? "Lounge suits" -- British for business...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Recent U.S. Senate hearings into alleged global warming, chaired by Arizona Republican John McCain, were among the "most biased" that a noted climatologist has ever seen - "much less balanced than anything I saw in the Clinton administration," he said. Patrick J. Michaels is the author of a new book "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media." He is an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia who believes that claims of human-caused "global warming" are scientifically unfounded. Michaels spoke with CNSNews.com Thursday following a panel discussion sponsored by the...

Think you can sidestep the issue of “global warming,” simply by voting Republican? Think again. Now that Senator John McCain is officially the Republican nominee for President, global warming is, whether anyone likes it or not, an “issue” for both of our nation’s dominant political parties. McCain has been gravitating towards this issue for several years, and made his mark with it during his chairing of the U.S. Senate hearings on global warming back in 2004

... If there's a single thread that runs through the e-mails I receive from peevish Republicans, it's that none of the current candidates possesses the conservative purity of Ronald Reagan. One could almost get the idea that Dutch was betrayed by Pontius Pilate and crucified on Calvary. But that wasn't exactly the case. The fact of the matter is that Gov. Reagan gave Gov. Jerry Brown a run for his money – or should I say our money? – when it came to raising taxes here in California. But, in spite of the additional revenue, he was responsible in large...

WASHINGTON -- Imagining how John McCain, the Navy war hero, would play the role of commander in chief has been easy. Imagining how John McCain, the policy maverick, would lead as chief executive of the U.S. economy has been tougher. In a wide-ranging interview last week, Sen. McCain offered the most-detailed account to date of his thinking on economic issues. (snip) Climate Change Sen. McCain's biggest regulatory effort is likely to come in the field of climate change. Along with independent Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who was then a Democrat, Sen. McCain introduced the earliest version of a cap-and-trade system...

The former Massachusetts governor also brought up a new attack going after his rival on his legislation, the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act: “Instead of seeing if there’s a way of stimulating the economy, McCain-Lieberman would depress the economy. His plan calls for a new financial burden to be placed on people who are purchasing gasoline or for that matter natural gas to heat their homes or to cook in their homes. The energy information agency has said that his plan would cost America 300,000 jobs. In addition, people would pay, they estimate, approximately 50 cents per gallon more for gasoline...

Governor Mitt Romney: "Well, he's spoken several times about it. He actually said that if he was going to select a Vice President, it would have to be somebody who understood the economy because that wasn't something he was terribly familiar with. "He spoke both in '05 and again in '07, both times saying that he was not terribly familiar with how the economy worked, and I think he's right. Frankly, I think the pieces of legislation he's noted for suggest a lack of understanding of how the economy works. "In particular, McCain–Lieberman, this is a bill that would add...

American Council For Capital Formation Study: McCain-Lieberman Could Hike Gasoline Prices By 50 Cents Per Gallon. "A study by an economic research institute, the American Council for Capital Formation, underscored these findings, estimating that under S. 139: ... By 2020, gasoline prices would increase 30 to 50 cents per gallon." (H. Sterling Burnett, "Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions," National Center For Policy Analysis, 11/18/04) The EPA Estimated Sen. McCain's Plan Would Hike Gas Prices By 68 Cents Per Gallon. "The EPA has estimated what the McCain energy tax would mean to consumers. Since the bill's provisions are phased in, the full...

<p>Former Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile lobbied the House yesterday on campaign finance, fulfilling a partnership she said began with Republican Sen. John McCain during the 2000 presidential race.</p> <p>Miss Brazile said she got to know Mr. McCain during the Republican South Carolina presidential primary in February 2000, when he was locked in a fierce contest with then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush and she was coordinating strategy for Vice President Al Gore.</p>

Well, fun was had by all yesterday covering the stultifying Schoolmarm and the GOP candidates in Iowa. Fred Thompson earned his gold medal for refusing to follow Schoolmarm’s order for a show of hands on an inane global warming question. Now, let’s dig a little deeper. As I noted yesterday, the rest of the leading GOP candidates’ responses to Schoolmarm’s global warming query demonstrate a rather disturbing greening of the party. And not just mild green. But bright, neon, Gore green. Total enviro-nitwit-ization. Can these guys really belong to the same party as stalwart, anti-fearmonger Sen. Jim Inhofe? Have they...

The overriding environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. The Democratic hopefuls in the 2008 campaign are fully engaged, calling for large — if still unquantified — national sacrifices and for a transformation in the way the country produces and uses energy. The Republicans do not go much further than conceding that climate change could be a problem and, with the notable exception of John McCain, offer no comprehensive solutions. In 2000, when Al Gore could have made warming a signature issue in his presidential campaign, his advisers persuaded him that it was too complicated and...

Arizona Sen. John McCain will visit Greenland, Turkey, Georgia, Montenegro and Italy as part of a Senate delegation headed overseas during Congress' summer break. McCain and the other Republican senators want to observe the effects of global warming while in Greenland. They also will attend an A-list economic and political conference at a swanky northern Italian resort. McCain and U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., favor legislation to cap industrial emissions in an effort to curtail global warming. Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Mel Martinez, R-Fla., Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Richard Burr, R-N.C., and John Sununu, R-N.H., are slated to go on the...

THERE IS NOW a broad consensus in this country, and indeed in the world, that global warming is happening, that it is a serious problem, and that humans are causing it. The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded there is a greater than 90 percent chance that greenhouse gases released by human activities like burning oil in cars and coal in power plants are causing most of the observed global warming. This report puts the final nail in denial's coffin about the problem of global warming. In addition, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has identified...

A leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination declared the debate on global warming "over" yesterday and said that the US would act to save the environment. Senator John McCain's speech at a summit on green policies indicated a crucial change in US political opinion towards climate change. "I am convinced that we have reached the tipping point and that the Congress of the United States will act with the agreement of the administration," said Mr McCain, who is a favoured candidate in next year's presidential primaries. "The debate is over, my friends. Now the question is: what do we...

The Arizona senator criticizes White House decision-making during a tour of the L.A. and Long Beach ports. Republican presidential candidate John McCain was anything but subtle Wednesday as he took swipes at the Bush administration during a meticulously staged appearance with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the bustling docks of Los Angeles Harbor. President Bush's record on global warming? "Terrible," McCain declared. His pursuit of the Iraq war? "A train wreck."

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said today that global climate change is real and Americans must deal with its effects. "Climate change is a fact," the Arizona senator told a crowd this morning gathered under a large tent outside the Iowa Machine Shed restaurant in Davenport. McCain argued for a system that would cap emissions but allow individual companies to trade credits, within that cap, to put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. A similar type of arrangement took place in the 1990s to battle acid rain. Several Democratic presidential candidates also approve of such an approach. "We can have an...