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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John who wrote (74399)	6/26/2012 10:07:12 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	2 Recommendations Respond to of 103300

Will Obama's Re-election Doom Fracking? Energy: The top White House energy aide says new regulations gripping the technology responsible for unlocking America's vast oil and gas reserves will be ready by year's end. Team Obama's war on fossil fuels continues. One more reason not to re-elect President Obama to a second term was provided last Friday, when Heather Zichal, the top White House energy aide, told reporters that she expects the Interior Department rules regulating hydraulic fracturing, dubbed fracking, to be completed by year's end. Why are federal rules necessary since fracking has been successfully regulated at the state level for decades without a single documented case of groundwater contamination by fluids used in the process? Unless the regulations are so restrictive as to effectively end fracking as an energy tool in the name of safety, as has happened with offshore drilling and coal. Researchers at the University of Texas, in a report recently released at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting and paid for with only university funds, say they have "found no direct evidence that fracking itself has contaminated groundwater." Neither apparently has the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA in April told a federal judge it withdrew an administrative order that alleged Range Resources Corp. had polluted water wells in a rural Texas county west of Fort Worth. It had no evidence that would hold up in court. In addition to dropping the Texas case, the EPA has agreed to substantial retesting of water in Wyoming after its methods were questioned. And in Pennsylvania, the EPA conducted its own analysis of well water — only to confirm the state's finding that water once tainted by gas was safe. A 2010 Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection report concluded that "no groundwater pollution or disruption of underground sources of drinking water have been attributed to hydraulic fracturing of deep gas formations." Keep in mind that even EPA director Lisa Jackson could provide no evidence of groundwater contamination due to fracking when she told a House oversight committee hearing that despite some anecdotal evidence: "I'm not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water." Still, she and her agency will keep trying to shut down this valuable energy-production tool. So desperate have the greenies become to stop the oil and natural gas boom produced by the use of fracking that they resorted to claims that fracking can cause earthquakes. A recent report by the National Research Council dispelled that notion. U.S. Geological Survey seismologist William Ellsworth says he agrees with the research council that "hydraulic fracturing does not seem to pose much risk for earthquake activity." The mixture used to fracture shale is in fact a benign blend of 90% water, 9.5% sand and 0.5% chemicals such as the sodium chloride of table salt and the citric acid of the orange juice you had for breakfast. Shale formations in which fracking is employed are thousands of feet deep. Drinking-water aquifers are generally only a hundred feet deep. There's a lot of solid rock between them. Every single well in the Bakken and other shale formations is fracture-treated. Lynn Helms, director of North Dakota's Department of Mineral Resources, believes the EPA move to regulate and impose federal "safety"rules is a ruse to stop fracking altogether. "This 60-year-old technique has been responsible for 7 billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas," according to James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and in whose state fracking was first commercially applied in 1949. "In hydraulic fracturing's 60-year-history," he says, "there has not been a single documented case of contamination." Depending on what happens in November, fracking will either be our path to energy independence or a memory of what might have been

To: John who wrote (74399)	6/26/2012 10:07:40 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 103300

Issa's Right: Tougher Gun Laws Fast And Furious Goal Scandal: The head of the House oversight panel suggests the real reason for the administration's invoking executive privilege in the Fast and Furious case is to hide proof that the operation was part of a push for gun control. Defenders of President Obama's use of executive privilege to provide cover for Attorney General Eric Holder in the gun-running fiasco that resulted in the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata may dismiss it as just another conspiracy theory. But the suggestion by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that the deadly operation was conceived to advance the administration's gun-control agenda is quite plausible. "Here's the real answer as to gun control," Issa said on ABC's "This Week": "We have email from people involved in this that are talking about using what they're finding here to support the — basically assault weapons — ban or greater reporting." Issa was asked about the possible connection after comments he made at an NRA convention. "Could it be," he said on NRA News' "Cam & Company" program, "that what they really were thinking of was in fact to use this walking of guns in order to promote an assault weapons ban? Many think so. And they haven't come up with an explanation that would cause any of us not to agree." Perhaps the answer is in the documents that Holder and Obama are risking much to hide. As we observed recently, the way Fast and Furious, the government's gun-running operation, was executed made no sense unless its intended purpose was to facilitate violence with U.S. weapons in the interests of pursuing the administration's gun-control agenda. As Issa noted on "This Week," the Department of Justice announced on April 25, 2011, "right in the middle of the scandal," that it was requiring some 8,500 gun stores in Arizona, California, Texas and New Mexico to report individual purchases of multiple rifles of greater than .22 caliber by law-abiding American citizens to the ATF because such guns are "frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest border." Like the ATF-supplied guns found next to the body of Brian Terry? Coincidence? We think not. On July 14, 2010, roughly five months before Agent Terry's murder, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix special agent in charge of Fast and Furious. "Bill," the email read, "can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time? We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun sales. Thanks." A Jan. 24, 2011, email showed Newell saw it as an opportunity "to address (the) Multiple Sales on Long Guns issue." Chait emailed Newell that "this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of the case." These documents, and perhaps others that have been withheld, show that Fast and Furious was intended not to interdict gun trafficking, but to make the administration's case for more gun control. According to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, "There's plenty of evidence developing that the administration planned to use the tragedies of Fast and Furious as rationale to further their goals of a long gun reporting requirement." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others in the administration had been pushing the discredited line that 90% of guns seized in Mexico came from the U.S. as justification for stricter gun laws and reporting rules. The final damning evidence that Fast and Furious was a gun-control plot just may be in the documents the administration is fast and furiously trying to hide.