Free Republic

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal magistrate refused Wednesday to order the White House to provide BP PLC with emails by a former top adviser to President Barack Obama about the administration's response to last summer's massive Gulf oil spill. A lawyer for the oil giant had argued that emails by Carol Browner, Obama's former adviser on energy and climate matters, and three other officials in the Executive Office of the President could shed light on the White House's role in estimating the rate of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the company's blown-out well. But U.S. Magistrate...

Bicycles instead of cars? Dense apartment clusters instead of single homes? Community rituals instead of churches? "Human rights" instead of religious freedom? The UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which met June 3-14 [1996]in Istanbul, painted an alarming picture of the 21st century community. The American ways-free speech, individualism, travel, and Christianity-are out. A new set of economic, environmental, and social guidelines are in. Citizenship, democracy, and education have been redefined. Handpicked civil leaders will implement UN "laws", bypassing state and national representatives to work directly with the UN. And politically correct "tolerance"-meaning "the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism"...

White House: With cap-and-trade seemingly dead and EPA's regulatory authority under attack, the administration's climate czar is abandoning ship. Too bad she's not taking the administration's energy policies with her. Carol Browner, former EPA director now serving as a senior Obama adviser for energy and climate change, a formerly nonexistent position created to avoid Senate confirmation to a real position, has decided to hang it up. Or she's been thrown under the bus, depending on your point of view. As a "czar," she was a prime mover for climate change and the administration's war on carbon. But when cap-and-trade legislation...

Updated 9:48 p.m. Carol Browner, an key adviser to President Obama on energy and environmental issues, plans to leave the White House, an administration official said Monday night. Her departure comes as something of a surprise. Browner had been deeply involved in negotiations over climate legislation, which passed the House but died in the Senate. And she had been a key part of the team helping to deal with and stop the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year. The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency for eight years under President Bill Clinton, she had been...

Three Republican senators demanded Friday that the White House explain last-minute editing changes to an Interior Department report on the BP oil spill that falsely implied that a group of independent experts had endorsed a political decision to temporarily halt all deepwater oil drilling. The senators, members of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called for hearings into the matter, contending that the White House had manipulated science for political ends, a claim Democrats frequently made about the George W. Bush administration. The Interior Department’s inspector general issued a report this week asserting that officials in the office of Carol...

Energy czar Carol Browner needs to go the way of disgraced green-jobs czar Van Jones: under the bus and stripped of her unbridled power to destroy jobs and lives in the name of saving the planet. ASAP. One of the Beltway's most entrenched and unaccountable left-wing radicals, Browner has now been called out twice by President Obama's own federal BP oil-spill commission and Interior Department inspector general. How many strikes should she get? Pushing the question should be a top priority of the new House GOP majority. Not least of all because Washington insiders are still buzzing about possible White...

Energy czar Carol Browner needs to go the way of disgraced green-jobs czar Van Jones: under the bus and stripped of her unbridled power to destroy jobs and lives in the name of saving the planet. ASAP. One of the Beltway’s most influential, entrenched, and unaccountable left-wing radicals, Browner has now been called out twice by President Obama’s own federal BP-oil-spill commission and Interior Department inspector general. How many strikes should a woman who circumvented the Senate confirmation process and boasts a sordid history of abusing public office get? Pushing the question — and shining a bright, hot spotlight on...

It’s not just a band of flannel-shirted environmentalists any longer; it’s become a big-money, major player in Washington power politics and American elections. Starting today, the Washington Examiner is publishing a five-part special report in association with Pajamas Media on “Big Green�: the alliance of the Democratic Party, environmental groups, and activists in the progressive movement. It’s not just a band of flannel-shirted environmentalists any longer; it’s become a big-money, major player in Washington power politics and American elections.In this first of our five-part series in coordination with the Examiner, we consider how the consensus for environmental regulation in the...

Interviews with Leader Boehner & Carol Browner By Meet the Press MR. GREGORY: You talk about all the work here being done for safety. Did the White House do any economic analysis about what a moratorium--what impact it would have on jobs in the Gulf Coast?MS. BROWNER: There is, there is an economic analysis being done. It'll be ready later...MR. GREGORY: But it was never done before the moratorium was put in place? Because those who are down there say, "You know what, the moratorium by the Obama administration is far worse than the spill itself."

The administration has decreed a six-month moratorium on exploratory drilling in the Gulf, based on a report that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote for President Obama. Salazar claimed that a panel of seven experts selected by the National Academy of Engineering had peer reviewed his report. It turns out, though, that the seven experts never saw the recommendation for a moratorium, and in fact oppose it:The seven experts who advised President Obama on how to deal with offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon explosion are accusing his administration of misrepresenting their views to make it appear that they supported...

Overregulation: The Senate votes on blocking a government bureaucracy from usurping power never delegated to it by Congress. This administration may put Copenhagen above the Constitution, but we the people have other plans. The GOP's 1994 "Contract with America," a gift that keeps on giving, hopefully will rescue us once again from the clutches of an unelected bureaucracy, the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been allowed by the Supreme Court to regulate every breath we take and every machine we operate. When cap-and-tax legislation was introduced in Congress, the Obama administration threatened that if Congress failed to act, the EPA...

Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions? Environmentalism did not cause the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but it did help make it possible, just as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, which the Gulf Oil spill has now eclipsed, was also ironically made possible by a desire to protect the environment. The original plan when oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope was to build a pipeline directly to the...

ROBERT, La. — After failing again to stem the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP scrambled Sunday to make some progress in ending the spill that the president's top energy adviser said was the biggest environmental disaster the U.S. has ever faced. Six weeks after the spill, oil giant BP PLC said that its latest plan to cap the well wouldn't capture all the crude fouling the Gulf. And the relief wells currently being drilled — which are supposed to be a better long-term solution — won't be done for at least two months. "Well, the relief...

'The science is settled," we've been told for decades by zealous proponents of manmade-global-warming hysteria. But we now have mountains of documents from the world's leading global-warming-advocacy center that show the science is about as settled as a southeast Asian tsunami. Yet the White House is clinging to the old eco-mantra: The science is settled. Never mind all the devastating new information about data manipulation, intimidation and coverups to "hide the decline" in global temperatures over the last half-century, they say. Never mind what The Atlantic's Clive Crook, after wading through the climate science e-mail files of the U.K.'s Climatic...

The emails and computer files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in Great Britain may prove to be of some importance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) current attempts to control greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. This is because the EPA — perhaps at the urging of others in the Obama administration — has proposed to regulate GHG emissions on the basis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports … and reports primarily based on the IPCC reports. This is highly unusual for the EPA. I cannot think of any instance where the EPA depended so...

President Obama's climate czar, Carol M. Browner, and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs might think that Climate-gate is a nonevent, but on Monday Pennsylvania State University announced that it was launching an investigation into the academic conduct of Michael Mann, the school's Director of the Earth System Science Center. And Tuesday, Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia, announced that he would stand aside as director while his university conducted an investigation. Dozens of researchers at other institutions could soon face similar investigations. . . .

When did global warming turn into a forced religion? My daughter came home from school re cently with a spring in her step and a song on her lips. With no foreshadowing -- or time to call an exorcist -- out came this chilling refrain: " . . . You can hear the warning -- GLOBAL WARMING . . . " By the time her father and I removed our jaws from the floor, we had learned that: A) All the kids had been coerced into singing this catchy ditty, which we called "The Warming Song," at a concert for...

Infrastructure: The stimulus plan to turn America's electrical infrastructure into a so-called "smart grid" is a potential target for unfriendly hackers. It's also the fulfillment of a campaign promise rooted in socialism.There is $4.5 billion in the stimulus package to modernize the nation's electricity system. The whole idea is to monitor where and when electricity is used and to direct it to where and when it is needed. It is thought this will help utilities to adjust their rates to immediate supply and demand for power. It would supposedly allow consumers to adjust their consumption to the times when they...

There's more than one way to get cap-and-trade, President Obama's energy czar said today. Carol Browner, the former Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) administrator who now serves in the Obama administration's newly created role of energy czar, floated the possibility today of the EPA implementing cap-and-trade energy policies, during an interview at The Atlantic's First Draft of History symposium in Washington, DC. "We also have the reality of EPA, under current law, moving forward...to start the traditional regulatory clock," Browner said when asked, during an interview with Atlantic Media Political Director Ronald Brownstein, about the difficulties of passing the stalled energy/climate...

Former Vice President Al Gore and current White House climate change czar Carol Browner are warning companies and lawmakers that the courts will step in to regulate greenhouse gases if Congress fails to act. "All of the discussion has been about the president and the Congress," Gore told journalists at a U.N. press conference Tuesday. "We have a third branch of government: the courts."

Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner's conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards." Federal law requires officials to preserve documents concerning significant policy decisions, so instructing participants in...

Maybe it’s my inner rebellious child, but it bugs me to be told what I want. And if there’s anyone I don’t want telling me that, it’s some do-gooder from the government. So when Carol Browner made the morning show rounds today, claiming that Pres. Obama’s new, higher MPG standards are “giving Americans the cars they want,” it really got under my skin. Oh, and then of course there’s the little thing about what she said being . . . demonstrably false. View video here.

Czar is perhaps the perfect title for Carol Browner, the person President Obama chose to rule over his climate policy. The woman will run her kingdom like an autocrat, she will take no prisoners and she will hide all the "bodies" For Example: Until early January Carol M. Browner, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. Then Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist International's Web page, though a photo...

Incoming Global Warming Czar Carol Browner was — until last week — listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group that advocates what's called "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. The Washington Times reports Browner's name and biography were listed on the Web page for Socialist International . Mr. Obama's transition team says Browner's membership in the organization is not a problem and that it brings experience in policymaking to her new role. But House Minority Leader John Boehner’s spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier asks, “Does she agree with the group's positions...

WASHINGTON -- Carol Browner, President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be his climate czarina, served until last summer as a member of a socialist organization whose mission is to enact progressive government policies, including toward environmental concerns like climate change. Browner's name and biography have been scrubbed from the Web site of Socialist International, the umbrella group for 170 "social democratic, socialist and labor parties" in 55 countries. But a photo of Browner speaking in Greece to the group's Congress on June 30 remained in the site's archives. Browner, formerly the longest serving administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, having served...

Incoming White House energy-environment czar Carol Browner was recently discovered to be a commissioner in Socialist International. While that revelation has been ignored by the mainstream media and blithely dismissed by her supporters, you may soon be paying the cost of Browner’s political beliefs in your electricity bill. So what does all this have to do with your electricity bill? In late-December, Carbon Control News reported that Browner was a “strong backer” of utility “decoupling,” which had emerged as a “key climate policy priority for Obama.” How would decoupling actually function in practice? There are several different schemes for decoupling,...

One of the best-remembered "famous movie lines": Al Pacino as Scarface, shouting defiance as he introduces a vicious grenade-launcher-equipped assault rifle to the police. Going out in a blaze of glory - or at least a blaze of something. Well, President-elect Barack Obama had his own "little friend" to introduce us to: Carol Browner and the hard-core socialist policies that will certainly come out of her, every bit as much as firepower came out of Scarface's weapon. Fox News Special Report revealed this: Incoming Global Warming Czar Carol Browner was — until last week — listed as one of 14...

Politics: Is anyone surprised that the would-be czarina of federal climate and energy policy has ties to a socialist group? The environmental movement's goal is to afflict the economy, not comfort the ecology.Carol Browner, who'll run the new White House office of climate and energy policies, isn't new to Washington. The public will recognize her name from the years she served as Environmental Protection Agency administrator under Bill Clinton. The public, however, knows little or nothing about her work with Socialist International, a group that describes itself as a worldwide organization of social democratic, socialist and labor parties that envisions...

Despite denials from her soon-to-be former employers, the Albright Group, former Clinton EPA head and soon-to-be climate change czar Carol Browner served as a de facto lobbyist for Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, which arranged to buy a company operating six major U.S. ports, including New York and New Jersey. Browner told the Obama transition team that she never served as a lobbyist in her time in Washington, and her employer, the Albright Group, owned by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, also said that the firm does not lobby. But in 2006, when...

December 12, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Down on BrownerRegression we can’t afford. By Michelle Malkin Yet another Clintonite has been wheeled out of the political morgue to serve in the Obama administration. Carol Browner, a neon-green radical who headed the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993-2000, is widely rumored to be the president-elect’s choice for “energy czar.� But an ethical cloud still hangs over Browner’s EPA legacy. It doesn’t take a team of Ivy League lawyers to figure out that this is one more headache the Hope and Change crew doesn’t need. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, let...

Yet another Clintonite has been wheeled out of the political morgue to serve in the Obama administration. Carol Browner, a neon-green radical who headed the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993-2000, is widely rumored to be the president-elect's choice for "energy czar." But an ethical cloud still hangs over Browner's EPA legacy. It doesn't take a team of Ivy League lawyers to figure out that this is one more headache the Hope and Change crew doesn't need. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, let me dust off the cobwebs and help out all the smarty-pants vetters on the Obama...

After the selection of a largely centrist economic team, liberals have been asking when President-elect Obama would give them a seat at the table. Well, now we know, and Americans should strap themselves in. Mr. Obama is stocking his energy shop with the greenest of greens who want to move fast on a very aggressive climate agenda. Here come the carbon busters. It's striking that the moderate in this bunch may be Steven Chu, who has reportedly been tapped as Energy Secretary. Though a political unknown, Mr. Chu is the respected director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where the...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- President-elect Barack Obama will nominate Nobel laureate Steven Chu as energy secretary and Lisa Jackson to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, according to media reports Wednesday. Obama is also expected to name Carol Browner as energy 'czar,' the reports said. Chu, a Chinese-American, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997.

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

DUBAI DUETS Late Friday, Department of Justice lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel were attempting to determine if former President Bill Clinton had registered as an "Agent of a Foreign Principal." Federal statute requires that anyone -- even a former President -- doing political or public affairs work on behalf of a foreign country, agency or official must register with the Department, and essentially update his status every six months. It was not clear the Clinton had done so. If his status is less clear, here is what we do know: If Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not know...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, said in July that it had found the "smoking gun" that caused the space shuttle Columbia to break apart as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1: a piece of foam that had peeled off the external fuel tank and struck the shuttle's wing 1 minute and 22 seconds after liftoff. But many experts looking at the tragedy that killed seven astronauts say there is a deeper cause. They say that the metaphorical smoking gun should be painted green. Because of demands that the agency help to front for...

The master of environmental babble was at it again last week. Yup, Al Gore was out committing Goreisms yet once more. And, as always, he spouted a whole lot of propaganda based on just a slim hair of truth. For instance, Gore starts out saying that, "here in the United States, patriotism doesn't mean keeping quiet. It means speaking out and standing up for a stronger, more secure nation." Anyone following the Clinton-Gore administration those eight long years knows what kind of baloney that is. Not only did both Clinton and Gore ask for and receive illegal campaign funds from...