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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (82081)	10/27/2010 8:57:43 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Environmental Defense Fund admits propaganda effort against natural gas exploration is bunk By: Mark Hemingway Commentary Staff Writer 10/27/10 5:30 PM EDT In January, the documentary Gasland won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The documentary attacked the process of “fracking,” which involves pumping a solution that is 99 percent sand and water, plus a few trace chemicals, underground at high pressure. This creates fractures in the rock formations that allow oil and gas to flow to collection points. The film claimed that the process pollutes groundwater with devastating consequences. (For more on Gasland and fracking, see this article from the Examiner’s “Big Green” series in September.) Multiple EPA studies have shown fracking is safe and effective, but the propaganda effort got the attention of congress. In March, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., held hearings on whether the practice should be federally regulated rather than regulated at the state level. After issuing subpoenas to eight energy companies, Waxman dropped the probe. Now fracking is being defended by a very unlikely source — the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the biggest and most active environmental non-profits in the country. Appearing on the Energy and Environment program “On Point” EDF Senior Policy Advisor was utterly dismissive of the concerns about fracking: <<< E&E TV: “Do you believe that [hydraulic fracturing] can be used safely?” (5:23) EDF’s Scott Anderson: “Yes I do. I think in the vast majority of cases, if wells are constructed right and operated right, that hydraulic fracturing will not cause a problem.” (5:19) E&E TV: “How difficult is it for states to regulate this practice? And should it be done on a state-by-state bases, a region-by-region bases or nationally?” (2:11) EDF’s Scott Anderson: “The states actually have a lot of knowledge and experience in regulating well construction and operation. We think that states have every reason to be able to tackle this issue and do it well. We also think that if states fail in that and the federal government has to takeover, the states will have no one but themselves to blame.” (2:00) E&E TV: “Without this practice of hydraulic fracturing, what would our natural gas supplies look like?” (1:38) EDF’s Scott Anderson: “Our natural gas supplies would plummet precipitously without hydraulic fracturing. About 90 percent of gas wells in the United States are hydraulically fractured, and the shale gas that everyone talks about as being a large part of the future of natural gas production is absolutely dependent on fracturing in each case.” (1:33) E&E TV: “So you would say that this is a necessary part of our energy future?” (1:09) EDF’s Scott Anderson: “Yes. At the Environmental Defense Fund we don’t pick fuels, we are realist, we recognize that fossil fuels will be around for a while, a long while most likely. We recognize that natural gas has some environmental advantages compared to other fossil fuels, so we do believe that natural gas will be around, and has a significant role to play….” (1:05) >>> It’s not every day you get a big environmentalist organization exposing a big environmental cause du jour as being totally without merit. Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (82081)	11/2/2010 6:21:39 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Electronic Voting Machine Problems Raise Early Concerns By Ed Barnes FoxNews.com Published November 02, 2010 Early monitoring of voting around the country is raising concerns about electronic voting machines in key battleground states -- especially in Pennsylvania, where machines are registering Democratic votes instead of Republican, and vice versa. According to Pamela Smith, who heads the Election Protection Command Center, a national non-profit, non-partisan vote monitoring organization, early results from volunteers around the country and from voters who call a toll-free number (1-866 OUR VOTE) show that reports of vote flipping and other problems are already severe enough to “cause concern.” Smith said problems with iVotronic machines have cropped up in Pennsylvania’s Lawrence County, where voters trying to vote a straight party ticket registered their votes for another party – in essence, flipping the votes. In these cases, voters tap one spot on the touch screen and another lights up. “It is like when you use an ATM and hit withdraw and check balances lights up,” said Susan Greenhalgh of Verified Voting, a nonprofit organization that advocates reliable and publicly verifiable elections. “In one case a voter called the poll worker in to help, and neither could get the machine to vote properly,” Smith said. There has been concern in the past few weeks over the security and reliability of the iVotronic touch screen voting machines. Reports from Texas, West Virginia and other states have found that the machines can misclassify votes, and a recent report by former CBS News anchor Dan Rather showed that the machines are constructed in the Philippines under “sweatshop conditions” that cause malfunctions. In North Carolina, the state Republican Party has sued to force election workers to notify all voters of problems with the machines, preserve all ballots and personal electronic programs and have voting officials keep detailed records of all complaints at voting stations. Chief among the GOP concerns was that the machines were shifting votes for Republicans into the Democratic line. Because the Democrats have the top spot on the voting pad, anything from the slight touch of the touch screen above the Republican mark to outright manipulation could be to blame. Smith said the biggest concern so far is the problem of calibration, which can lead to vote flipping. She said it was too early to call the problems with the machines a crisis, but she said they were troubling. She said the center also was seeing problems in Houston, Philadelphia and Fairfax County in Virginia. In Houston, which had virtually all of its voting machines destroyed in a fire this year, long lines were forming and indications were that the effort to replace the machines hadn’t met voter demand. Houston ranks behind Los Angeles as the second largest voting district in the nation, and it is the key to the Republican majority in Texas. In Fairfax County, a bellwether district that often determines which way Virginia goes electorally, there are reports that electronic voting machines had switched to the federal ballot, dropping local candidates from the ballot altogether. In Philadelphia, which often provides Pennsylvania's Democratic candidates their pluralities, older electronic voting machines have been breaking down, and poll workers do not have or are not giving out emergency paper ballots. For FOXNews.com reports on voter fraud: Click here. .

To: Sully- who wrote (82081)	11/2/2010 6:27:50 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Minnesota GOP Reports 'Unacceptable' Problems With Counting Machines Associated Press Published November 02, 2010 Republican Party of Minnesota says it has received multiple complaints about failing tabulation machines at polling places around the state. A statement issued Tuesday says there are complaints about machines in Duluth, Olmsted County, Lakeville, Faribault, Mendota Heights and Eagan. The party calls the situation "completely unacceptable" and blames Secretary of State Mark Ritchie for failing to prepare for the election. Ritchie spokesman John Aiken says his office has received some complaints about faulty machines, but the problem doesn't appear worse than in most years. He notes that people can still vote by placing their ballots in a secure slot in the counting machines. The ballots are then fed into the machines when they are running again. .