MORE THAN A MILLION PEOPLE ON THE NATIONAL MALL, the Obama memorabilia open-air market at Farragut Square, cheers, tears, newspapers grabbed off newsstands the day after the inauguration. As I —left D.C.’s Union Station for New York at 6 a.m., a man standing in line ahead of me at the newsstand purchased ten copies of […]

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Will Talk Lead to Action? “There are many other [regulations] right now being considered covertly inside of this Administration as going away presents to industries. We don’t intend on allowing it to happen without the full light of this committee’s attention being drawn to it.” —House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Chairman Edward […]

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ETHANOL MANDATES HAVE BECOME a defining issue of the presidential campaign. And that’s a problem for Barack Obama. For many years, John McCain was an ardent opponent of ethanol. During the early part of the current presidential campaign—or at least while he was campaigning in Iowa—he was an advocate. Now, McCain’s an opponent again. Obama, […]

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Refrigerator Note—At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on January 17, committee chair Ike Skelton (D-MO) told Lt. General James Dubik and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Mark Kimmitt that he wanted “some sense of a timeline” on Iraq. Iraq’s Defense Minister had told Skelton that Iraq’s army would be able to handle internal security […]

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On May 13, 1999, George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, changed his position on global warming. “The last time, I wasn’t certain of the science,” Bush said. “I’ve had some briefings recently, and I’m becoming more convinced that the science proves there’s global warming.” Bush was the front-runner in the campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination—although he wouldn’t officially declare his candidacy until the legislative session ended a month later. He was responding to a question I asked him at a press conference in Austin, where I was working on a book about his candidacy. Neither Bush nor his press secretary, Karen Hughes, explained when “the last time” was. Nor would either elaborate on what briefings about what science had led him to depart so radically from the position he’d held since he was elected governor five years earlier. Up to this point he’d said there was no proof that the earth was warming.

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