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President-elect Barack Obama may not have seriously vetted New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) for his selection as Commerce secretary, Byron York proposes after reading a Washington Post report that Richardson downplayed the significance of the investigation that led him to withdraw his name. ... READ MORE

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Democrat Al Franken is playing it safe by staying in Minnesota after declaring victory over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), but that's not enough to keep RNC Chairman Robert "Mike" Duncan from accusing him of stealing Coleman's Senate seat through ... READ MORE

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Caroline Kennedy's Senate campaign has tanked, Amanda Carpenter proclaims after a new Public Policy Polling survey reported that 44 percent of New Yorkers have a "lesser" opinion of her than before she announced her desire to fill Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) ... READ MORE

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Though Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) may have protested the pick, former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta will serve the nation well as CIA director, Attaturk proposes, noting Panetta's rejection of torture. Lisa Derrick, meanwhile, calls Levi Johnston, ... READ MORE

RedState
It's not hard to understand why President-elect Barack Obama would pick former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, who has no direct intelligence experience, to head the CIA, given that Obama himself won the White House with no executive ... READ MORE

TalkingPointsMemo
President-elect Barack Obama and his team may have made a mistake by not calling Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the incoming head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to tell her that former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta would be ... READ MORE

Power Line
President-elect Barack Obama's decision to tap former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, who has no direct intelligence experience, as head of the CIA may have cemented the agency's role as a political entity rather than an intelligence-gathering one, Paul ... READ MORE

MyDD
Though President-elect Barack Obama is taking some criticism for naming former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta--who has no direct intelligence experience--to head the CIA, it should be noted that several of his predecessors at the agency similarly lacked ... READ MORE

The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post's banner headline this morning tells readers that President-elect Barack Obama, by picking former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and retired Admiral Dennis Blair to serve as head of the CIA and director of national intelligence, has made ... READ MORE

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The Drudge Report leads with a photo of storm clouds over the Capitol and a story telling readers that the Senate, on its first day of work in 2009, faces controversy over whether former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris and comedian Al ... READ MORE

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July 14, 2008

Markey Hits Bush on Drilling for Invoking 'WMD' — Wells of Mass Deception

@ 3:45 pm by Walter Alarkon

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) pushed back against President Bush's call on Congress to lift the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, suggesting that Bush is just as wrong on drilling as he was on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

"Today President Bush is invoking the specter of another WMD: wells of mass deception," Markey said at a press conference Monday. "The president's own press spokeswoman said earlier today that today's announcement by the president will change nothing, since all of the legislative moratoria on offshore drilling remain in place. The Bush oil policy is an attempt at mass deception by a White House that has, for the last seven and a half years, pursued Big Oil's agenda of drill, drill, drill."

Markey said that drilling has failed to make the country independent from foreign energy sources and hasn't prevented rising gas prices.

He echoed Democratic calls for more drilling in areas where it's allowed, instead of in areas offshore that where exploration is prohibited under federal law.

"The Democrats are saying, no, instead of drilling off the beaches of our country, drill into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve," Markey said. "Drill where we have the oil right now, 700 million barrels. Begin to deploy upwards of 500,000 barrels a day into the marketplace, directed at the speculators, at the manipulators, at OPEC, at the oil industry."

4 Comments »

The Hill welcomes comment from anyone and will almost always post it whether it is favorable or critical, as long as it is substantive and advances debate.
  1. I sincerely disagree with Rep. Markey. Digging into our reserves for emergencies is ridiculous. That's like blowing your retirement account on a new television because you're unhappy with your old one. While offshore drilling may not have any immediate benefits in the long run I beleive it will help our economy and help to fix our trade deficit. Drilling into the SPR will do nothing but leave our oil supply even more vulnerable. This is a convincing article on why offshore drilling is one of Bush's few decent propositions: http://hotfixamerica.com/?p=23

    Comment by Jay — July 15, 2008 @ 3:03 am

  2. Jay, I'll agree that using our Strategic Reserves is not the best idea but you failed to mention the millions of acres the Oil companies have under lease that they are not utilizing. Perhaps it was an over sight or you've just been hit in the head by the propaganda catapult?

    Comment by Brian — July 15, 2008 @ 12:43 pm

  3. I realize that they have plenty of land. I'm not advoating that they shouldn't use this land, they should and are though not as much as I would prefer. Regardless I don't think that we should have enacted a ban on offshore drilling, we should only have made stricter restrictions on safety and regulated it to be more enviromentally friendly.

    Comment by Jay — July 15, 2008 @ 8:36 pm

  4. Most Americans want to be free from Oil as energy. Welcome to democracy.

    Comment by Morgan Mghee — July 16, 2008 @ 5:09 pm

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