One more for the road

I'll be gone for the weekend and won't have a chance to blog again until Monday or Tuesday, and considering the last several posts have been about the environment I figured I may as well leave with one more.

First, though, is this. I watched Curt Wheldon (R-PA) last night on C-Span testifying before a Senate committe about the Pentagon blocking efforts to investigate Able Danger and the alleged identification of Mohammad Atta a year before 9/11. Wheldon was terrribly frustrated because, in his opinion, there is no reason why the witness testimony should be classified other than to protect the Pentagon from looking bad. The committe members -3 Republicans and 1 Democrat: Arlen Specter, Jon Kyl, Joe Biden, and another guy whose name escapes me - all expressed bewilderment that this information should not be released to Congress for oversight and investigation. The amount of information that was said to have been destroyed in relation to this matter is said to be equivalent to 1/4 the Library of Congress. Wheldon also says that the whistle-blowers who came forward with this information are having their careers destroyed by the Dept. of Defense.

Onto the environment ...

A week or so ago a friend of mine told me that the reason gas prices are so high is becase we do not have enough refineries to process oil, and that the reason we do not have enough refineries is because of environmental regulation and lawsuits. I had no reason to doubt that environmental regulations could indeed have prevented the expansion of oil refineries, but I did remain skeptical that the problem could be so neatly laid at the feet of environmentalists. Foward to yesterday and I come across this article alleging that oil companies "intentionally limited oil refineries to drive up gasoline prices." This has happened before. Most people have heard that the energy crisis in California was the result of environmentalists, yet they most likely have not heard that the energy crisis was due to energy companies purposefully driving up prices.

Did it happen again? Are energy companies gouging prices and then shifting the blame to environmentalists, thus killing two birds with one stone? And, of course, it doesn't help when the government is playing "blame the environmentalists," too. If I wasn't on my way out of town I'd do a more through investigation of this matter. Till then, food for thought.

Stay informed.