While attention was focused elsewhere Tuesday, another Democratic Senator decided to join Republicans to protect the flow of CO2 emissions and the Big Energy companies that produce them. At The Wall Street Journal, Siobhan Hughes writes:
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) on Tuesday broke ranks with Democratic party leaders and indicated that he would support an effort by Senate Republicans to overturn new rules to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.
The defection on the Obama administration's cornerstone environmental policy represents a blow to the White House, which on Tuesday threatened to veto any measure to overturn the first-ever Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse-gas rules. The measure, a "disapproval resolution," is being pushed by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and is scheduled for a Senate vote on Thursday.
"I have long maintained that the Congress—not the unelected EPA—must decide major economic and energy policy," said Mr. Rockefeller, who represents a coal state that could be hit hard by greenhouse-gas regulations. "EPA regulation will have an enormous impact on the economic security of West Virginia and our energy future."
Mr. Rockefeller's position brings to four the number of Democrats supporting the Republican effort and is notable because the West Virginia lawmaker had previously attempted to carve out a more modest approach that would have suspended new EPA rules that apply to stationary sources for two years. Now, he is throwing his weight behind efforts to overturn an EPA finding that greenhouse gases pose a danger to the public, a determination that is the underpinning for the EPA's greenhouse-gas regulations.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2007:
I don't wish to panic anyone, but I have just learned that Paris Hilton went to jail. Except then she got out of jail, because she was sad, and she got a rash, and jail was intolerable; perhaps there was a pea under her mattress. But then -- wait, this is important -- everyone got mad, and she was ordered back to jail, because the judge determined that being sad about going to jail wasn't actually a legal reason for being let out. And people drove various places, and there were various buildings and courtrooms and mansions involved, and ankle bracelets, and parents were there, and prosecutors, and she was seen wearing various things. And then some other stuff happened, but my vision got blurry and I had to step away for a moment.
This sequence of events, mind you, is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT WILL EVER HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFETIME, at least for this particular week. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you know what is happening to Paris Hilton during every particular moment of this day, and yesterday, and the next few days, because WITHOUT THIS INFORMATION, YOU WOULD NOT KNOW ABOUT IT.