(Matthew Koehler takes on Idaho's endangered Senator - promoted by Matt Singer)
Kudos to the folks at the Western Watersheds Project http://www.westernwa... for sharing with the world some interesting clips of Idaho Senator Larry Craig and Idaho Governor Butch Otter talking global warming and wildfires at recent news conference.
In the first clip here http://www.youtube.c... Senator Craig gives Governor Otter a helping hand with the politically correct term to use when talking about logging our public national forests.
And Senator Craig's profound thoughts on global warming and wildfires is worth a listen here http://www.youtube.c... .
Senator Craig is known to wax poetically about a wide range of subjects, all of which he seems to be an expert, and I've personally been at the receiving end of some of the senator's straw-grasping. Back in the fall of 2002, as the first incarnation of Bush's "Healthy Forest Initiative" was being debated, the Washington Times got hold of a rather innocent email I sent to colleagues letting them know that an NPR reporter was looking for an example of a "thinning" project that we felt would illustrate our concerns with industrial logging being done on our public lands under the guise of "fuel reduction."
The email was published in the Times' Inside the Beltway column and a day letter Senator Craig went to the Senate floor with a blown-up version of the email, which he used to not only blast all environmentalists but to also threaten to de-fund National Public Radio. If memory serves correct, Senator Craig actually used the blown-up version of my email on the floor the next day too. For the life of me, I still can't figure out how or why Senator Craig thought the email correspondence was such a "smoking gun." I mean, do republicans or logging companies or oil companies not work with media outlets on stories?
Last summer, when Senator Craig was still chairman of the Senate's Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests (before the GOP lost control of Congress), I was invited to testify at a Senate hearing reviewing implementation of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA). If you're interested, you can check out my testimony here http://energy.senate... .
Senator Craig opened the hearing with a ten minute soliloquy on wildfires, logging and forest management that contained more than a few nuggets of misinformation and gross oversimplifications. The ten senators present then spent nearly two hours blasting then Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth for the Bush administration's failure to implement fuel reduction projects using the HFRA. As was pointed out later in my testimony, in the nearly three years since the HFRA became law, the Forest Service accomplished zero acres of fuel reduction in Montana and Wyoming and 103 acres in Idaho using that tool. Hardly impressive numbers.
Unfortunately, by the time my panel testified, and was opened up to questions, the senators were all tuckered out from going round and round with the Forest Service. I found this somewhat disappointing since I would have relished the opportunity to answer any question Senator Craig would have tossed my way...and I had a few questions for the Seantor myself. |
