Thanks to Senators Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall for their votes against the Keystone XL pipeline. It was a courageous thing to do but also common sense ruled their decisions too. It is a project that we just don't need.
And thanks to former Interstate Stream Commission Director Norm Gaume for his diligence in keeping the current Commission and staff on notice that they can't do incredibly stupid projects along the Gila River. His law suits have held the Commission accountable for questionable and illegal actions in trying to get the boondoggle on the road. Now, if we could get some serious journalists to look into who is pulling the strings on this issue and why they are doing so.
And thanks to former Interstate Stream Commission Director Norm Gaume for his diligence in keeping the current Commission and staff on notice that they can't do incredibly stupid projects along the Gila River. His law suits have held the Commission accountable for questionable and illegal actions in trying to get the boondoggle on the road. Now, if we could get some serious journalists to look into who is pulling the strings on this issue and why they are doing so.
1 comment:
I looked up Martin Heinrich. He's our senator. Har. Good for him and Cowboy Tom though. At least some Democrats can stand on principal sometimes.
Actually I've been thinking abut Martin. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee he made a laudable but one-time effort almost a year ago to publicly pressure the administration to release the committee's report on CIA torture. The administration has been stalling ever since, basically by making it a battle over the redaction process. It appears the administration is waiting for Republicans to take over the senate because Republicans don't want it released.
Some people are asking Mark Udall, an intelligence committee member who lost re-election, to enter the report into the congressional record, which can be done legally under the constitution’s “Speech and Debate clause”, which then-senator Mike Gravel used to enter the Pentagon Papers into the congressional record in 1971 and make them public.
Over the course of this stalling Martin Heinrich and committee chair Dianne Feinstein have issued a couple of mildly worded statements about the administration's stalling.
Martin has already had made the case for the importance of releasing the report, so the public knows what happened and can hopefully prevent it from happening again. He, too, could enter the report into the record, if he wanted to, the entire, unredacted report. That would be standing on principal.
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