Daily Briefing - 11/30/06

There are lot of reactions from around the country and the world on yesterday's "global warming Supreme Court case." One of the more pointed reactions comes from 10,000 EPA (the agency arguing against regulating CO2 and other GHGs) employees asking Congress to, in fact, regulate CO2 and address global warming seriously. Hmm, do we have some internal conflict here? Two of the world's major metropolitan cities study how global warming affects them, while it may be the cows that will doom us all.

In Washington, we're down to three undecided House races (FL-13, LA-02, and TX-23) now that NC-08 is officially decided. Some serious punditry envelopes this section of the briefing with columns from a rather dyspeptic George Will (reacting to a rather dyspeptic Jim Webb), a frustrated David Brooks, a whimsical David Broder, and a somewhat disillusioned Michael Barone. Today's briefing drips with stature.

In other news, there is a fantastic article from NYT on the end of ingenuity and how we can no longer expect human innovation to save our keisters every time we find ourselves in a crunch. FEMA has been ordered by a Federal Judge to -- gasp! -- pay the aid it promised from Hurricane Katrina.


Finally, it's wet in Seattle. The Pope is Catholic. Bears sh... uhh, I'll stop there. Mel Gibson feels Michael Richards pain... gee, you think so? The Army got scammed to buy a whole lot of golf balls... maybe the person responsible is one of the 1 out of every 32 Americans who is in jail, on probation, or on parole. All that and more in the briefing...

MW

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Daily Briefing – 11/30/06
704 days until the NEXT election… and global warming is an integral part of our nation’s agenda!

Key Issues in the News
Global Warming
- NYT: Justices first brush with global warming
o Also from Boston Globe, LA Times, Houston Chronicle, USA Today, SF Chronicle, Denver Post, CNN, BBC, and The Economist
o Analysis from Grist, here and here
o EPA employees issue a petition in support of regulating greenhouse gases
- Warming driving winters out of Bankok
- Researcher says it can be slowed
- Study: Global warming and New York
- It’s those darn cows!
- In Australia, targeting businesses to avoid painful power bills
- Worried skiers
Washington/Legislation/Politics/People/etc.
- George Will takes umbrage with Jim Webb
- David Broder on Rep. Jim Leach
- More Muslims gaining political ground
- David Brooks gives some advice to the Republicans
- Democratic challenger concedes in NC-08
- With massive spending bills still in flux, a war that rages on, the Republicans look to use the lame-duck session to pass a “fetal pain bill”
- Michael Barone cries about all the unforced errors Republicans have made
- Potential ‘08ers…
o Clinton (afraid of Obama), Clinton again (the primary problem), Vilsack (it’s official), Obama (people are spelling his name wrong)
o Hotline on the ’08 Republicans
Other News from the Media
- The End of Ingenuity
o Reaction from Grist
- FEMA told to resume storm aid, unconstitutionally denied by Bush administration
- The juggernaut we all know as Wal-Mart begins to fade?
- Environmental heckler confronts GM chief
…and the Blogosphere
- The Fix: The Case for Vilsack
- MYDD on partisan self-identification shifts
- TPM Muckraker on the FL-13
- Al Gore talks about “hot glacier on glacier action”
- From Grist:
o Eating elite, is it possible to do it affordably?
o Is sushi sustainable?
o Organic food on ABC News
- Rothenberg Report on TX-23 and LA-2 special elections
- TomPaine: The other climate disaster
Miscellaneous… or just plain weird
- My goodness its wet out there
- Army scammed into buying golf ball. Let’s hope they at least got the new Titleist driver to go with them… that thing is a beast.
- 1 out of every 32 people in U.S. are in jail, on probation, or parole… wow.
- And in more uplifting news (oh man, I’m gonna pay for a joke this bad), scientist levitate animals
- Mel Gibson to Michael Richards: You’re a racist, I’m an anti-Semite, let’s hug.
- Stephen Hawking wants us to colonize other planets
Quotes O’ the Day
“Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.” ~ Albert Einstein