Barack Obama

House Republicans Want Obama's Emails

Susan Crabtree | October 7, 2011, 10:34AM

Blackberry Phone

Remember all the handwringing from the Secret Service and the National Security Agency over President Obama's decision to keep using a Blackberry while serving as commander-in-chief?

Turns out, it may have been warranted for reasons entirely unrelated to personal or national security. In every Washington scandal or headline grabbing lawsuit, it's the emails that getcha, and for the first time a sitting President is known to have plenty of the chatty Internet missives piling up.

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Nuclear Energy

Markey Calls On U.S. To Dispense Anti-Radiation Pills

Susan Crabtree | March 16, 2011, 11:55AM

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA)

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) is calling on the U.S. government to require residents within 20 miles of a nuclear plant to have iodine tablets on hand as sales of the pills in the U.S. and Canada soar in response to the nuclear explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

It's been 22 years since scientists recommended implementing the tablet policy after the Three Mile Island incident, Markey said.

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Andy Harris

GOPer Who Whined About Gov't Health Care Denied Committee Assignment

Brian Beutler | December 29, 2010, 9:31AM

Rep.-elect Andy Harris (R-MD)

Karma's something something.

Remember Rep.-elect Andy Harris (R-MD)? The anti-health care reform physician who got a heap of bad publicity when he made a fuss about having to wait a few weeks until his employer- (a.k.a. government-) provided health care kicked in? And who asked whether the government had a... public option, of sorts, from which he could buy insurance in the interim?

Turns out hubris has consequences.

According to The Daily Times, "The Maryland Republican didn't get his top choice for a committee assignment, the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over public health issues."

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Health Care

GOP Turns To K Street Veterans To Help Unravel Health Care Law

Brian Beutler | December 27, 2010, 2:53PM

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) with members of the GOP leadership

House Republicans are turning to old friends on K Street to lead their legislative attempts to repeal the new health care law.

Three recently hired Republican aides -- two set to work in senior positions on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, and one for soon-to-be Speaker John Boehner -- spent the past years lobbying on behalf of insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and other corporate interest groups with a vested interest in weakening or repealing the law.

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House Energy & Commerce Committee

Meet John Shimkus: Anti-Climate Science GOPer Who May Head House Energy Panel

Eric Kleefeld | November 29, 2010, 8:43AM

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL)

As we survey the Republicans set to take charge of House committee chairmanships, we can see how some of them have said the darnedest things. For example, just look at the possible next chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL).

The committee's current ranking GOPer, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), endangered his bid for the chairmanship this past June, when he publicly apologized to BP for the way they were cajoled into setting up a $20 billion escrow fund to compensate victims of that whole underwater oil geyser in the Gulf of Mexico.

But let's take a look at Shimkus, who is a key alternative candidate to Barton for that chairmanship, and his pronouncements on climate policy and other issues -- and how environmental catastrophes cannot possibly happen, because God will not allow it.

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