Lawmakers are asking the FTC to investigate Facebook following reports that the social network has been collecting data even from users logged out of their profiles.

The concerns from Capitol Hill came Wednesday in a letter by Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), who have repeatedly questioned Facebook’s privacy practices.

The duo expressed deep concern with the findings of one Australian security blogger, who discovered this week Facebook was gathering data even from logged out users whenever they visited Web pages that feature the social network’s signature “Like” button.

Facebook has maintained it never tracked its users’ browsing habits and sought only to use information it collected for security and statistical purposes. And even though Facebook has since worked to address users’ concerns, Markey and Barton said in their latest letter they “remain concerned about the privacy implications for Facebook’s 800 million subscribers.”

They further asked the FTC to detail anything the agency has already done to examine Facebook’s use of cookies.

“As co-chairs of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, we believe that tracking user behavior without their consent or knowledge raises serious privacy concerns,” the lawmakers wrote.

Read the whole thing here.

Reps. Betty McCollum (D-MN) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) already staged a silly press conference this week with Elmo, Grover and Big Bird dolls, along with someone in an Arthur the Aardvark costume, to try to embarrass Republicans into continuing to pay for public broadcasting. Of course, using these characters was probably not a good marketing idea to begin with, given the money-making powerhouse that Sesame Street represents and the enormous profits that have been earned through merchandising these characters.

Now public radio stations such as KCRW 89.9 in Santa Monica are sending out press releases with detailed information about the recommended spending cuts from the House Appropriations Committee in H.R. 1, the Full Year Continuing Appropriation Act. KCRW’s message comes from Sarah Spitz at kcrw.org and urges listeners to “take action in support of public broadcasting” by visiting another website. That website allows you to “Click Here to Write Congress” and asks visitors to “contact your representatives in Congress now and urge them to stand up for public broadcasting funding.”

What KCRW is doing, however, may violate the federal Anti-Lobbying Act. 18 U.S.C. § 1913 provides that “No part of the money appropriated by any enactment of Congress shall, in the absence of express authorization by Congress, be used directly or indirectly to pay for any personal service, advertisement, telegram, telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device, intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress, a jurisdiction, or an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation, whether before or after the introduction of any bill, measure or resolution proposing such legislation, law, ratification, policy or appropriation.”

Under a prior version of the statute as it was interpreted by at least one court decision, this anti-lobbying provision applied only to federal officers and employees. But the law was amended in 2002 and now applies to anyone who receives federally appropriated funds including recipients of federal grants such as NPR. Such grants cannot be used to lobby Congress directly or indirectly, which would include trying to persuade NPR listeners to lobby Congress on NPR’s behalf. So if any of the funds received by KCRW from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting were used to pay Sarah Spritz’s salary in writing this lobbying appeal or to fund the facilities used to broadcast her message on behalf of the radio station, then KCRW has violated federal law.   And if any federal funds were used to pay for this website, that is also a violation of the law.

This is not an isolated incident either.  Both of the public radio stations in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capitol (WETA and WAMU) have postings on their websites telling listeners that they should call their congressional representatives to stop these proposed funding cuts.

The amended 18 U.S.C. § 1913 has gone largely unnoticed and has not yet been used to prosecute the recipients of federal funds (e.g., Planned Parenthood) who appear to lobby Congress regularly.  But there is no question about the reach of this federal provision and the possibility that public radio stations such as KCRW may be violating the law in their lobbying efforts to stop Congress from getting rid of taxpayer funding for public broadcasting.

Will the Holder Justice Department do anything about this possible violation of federal law? Unfortunately, given its record over the past two years of politicized law enforcement decisions, that is very doubtful.

However, note to entrepreneurial lawyers:  These possible violations of the Anti-Lobbying Act by public radio stations may trigger the qui tam provisions of the federal False Claims Act, which applies to every organization that receives money from the federal government.  The FCA imposes civil liability and stiff penalties on anyone who defrauds the government by getting a  false or fraudulent claim paid.  Using federally-appropriated funds to engage in illegal lobbying activities may very well violate the FCA.  Private parties can assert qui tam claims under the FCA and can recover up to triple damages and reasonable attorneys’ fee and costs.

So even if Eric Holder’s Justice Department doesn’t want to go after NPR, private parties and their lawyers may be able to do it and make a profit on it.

The first key test of whether Republicans have learned their lesson will come in the decision on whether to weaken a crucial 1994 reform limiting the terms of Republican committee heads by waiving term limits for Rep. Joe Barton so that he can run for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The term limits rule, by the incoming Republican majority in 1994 and enshrined in the Contract with America, was designed to break down the imperial fiefdoms at all important committees built up during 40 years of Democratic rule. When Democrats retook the House, they continued to allow their committee chairmen unlimited rein. The result: unchecked power on committee chairs like Charlie Rangel.

All indications are that Speaker-presumptive Boehner sides with reformers against bending the rules and will allow a fair contest between Reps. Fred Upton, John Shimkus, and Cliff Stearns to succeed Barton. (At issue is whether time as ranking minority member can be counted toward the term limit, effectively extending a single member’s leadership of Republicans on the committee from six years to a decade or more.)

While Barton has been solid in some respects, his serial verbal miscues and penchant for grandstanding have made him a lightning rod and an unprecedented move to undermine term limits for his benefit would give Speaker Boehner and House Republicans all sorts of headaches they don’t need as they prepare ambitious rollbacks of Democratic spending and Obamacare.

Barton’s actual record at Energy and Commerce also makes it abundantly clear that his cause is far from a “hill to die on” for conservatives — not with perfectly valid conservative alternatives in the race. He supported the auto bailout, stem cell research, and who can forget his leading the charge for a government takeover of college football’s BCS system? His record on Internet regulation is decidedly mixed: he’s talked of partnering with ultraliberal Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey on sweeping investigations and regulation of web site privacy practices. In recent days, Barton has also opened the door to accepting some form of FCC net neutrality regulation of the Internet. Last Tuesday’s election was a mandate for many things,BCS s but Nanny State regulation of college football and the Internet isn’t one of them.

Republicans should thank Barton for his long service but say thanks but no thanks to his bid to water down a key tenet of the Contract with America limiting the terms of Republican committee heads. Giving in to Barton’s extraordinary request could signal that the new Republican majority is not truly serious about learning its lessons and ending business as usual in the Capitol.

The Hill  reports the latest attempt by the Democrats to deflect the outrage of the American people by blame shifting the cause of the Gulf oil spill disaster to former VP Dick Cheney and the Bush administration:

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee traded partisan blows Tuesday over whether the Obama administration or the former Bush administration deserves more blame for the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Senior Democrats on the panel — Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) — used a hearing on the Interior Department’s role to trace the disaster back to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy policy task force.

Waxman said that task force — which was assembled early in the Bush administration — set the stage for policies that pushed drilling at the expense of tough safety oversight of rigs and review of environmental risks.

“The cop on the beat was off-duty for nearly a decade and this gave rise to a dangerous culture of permissiveness,” Waxman said. “In many ways this history begins with Vice President Cheney’s secretive energy task force.”

Waxman said that under the Bush-era Interior Department, “the priority was more drilling first and safety second,” although he added that the current administration was also too hands-off before the spill.

Seriously?   Waxman and Markey obviously did not have access to this outstanding timeline and writeup by Kevin McCullough, which details the events dating back to February 13, 2010:

It seems incomprehensible that the president and other members of the administration still have jobs when it is now being reported that the federal government was apprised by BP on February 13 that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was leaking oil and natural gas into the ocean floor.

In fact, according to documents in the administration’s possession, BP was fighting large cracks at the base of the well for roughly ten days in early February.

Further it seems the administration was also informed about this development, six weeks before to the rig’s fatal explosion when an engineer from the University of California, Berkeley, announced to the world a near miss of an explosion on the rig by stating, “They damn near blew up the rig.”

It’s also now being reported that BP was asking for the administration’s help on this matter long before the deadly accident and the now gushing well of tar.

Which leads me to some questions for the president. If I were in front row of reporters in the White House briefing room, here’s what I’d like to know:

1. It appears, Mr. President, that you were informed by BP about problems on Deepwater Horizon on February 13 and the company wanted your help. What did you say?

2. Given this new revelation,  Mr. President, how can you can sleep at night knowing that your inaction cost the lives of eleven men in Louisiana?

3. Did you inform the victims’ families about these facts when you invited them to the White House for last month’s photo op?

4. You’ve said, Mr. President, time and again, that the buck stops with you. Doesn’t that statement seem like something bordering on propaganda when you follow it up with what appears to be a false sense of outrage by telling Matt Lauer that you’re looking for rear ends to kick?

5. Does the buck stop with you… or not?

6. Are you going to insist that Mr. Salazar step down from his post in disgrace and shame?

7. Will you hold another prime time television press conference and tell the entire truth to the American people? — These would be the actions of a man who says that the buck “stops” with him.

8. I know when this news was breaking midday on Saturday about the latest BP developments that you and the Vice President were out on the golf course. Was it 39th or 40th time you’ve played a round in 18 months? (Just for a point of reference President Bush played golf 24 times in eight years.) Never mind, your priorities are for you to decide. At least until election night…

The Democrats are truly going to have to stop the childish blame-shifting and whining about the Bush administration.  It’s been almost 20 months, or 2 years, since Bush was in office.  The American people don’t want any more finger pointing, they want action–swift, efficient, and effective–especially when pertaining to the Gulf and the Americans effected by the oil spill.

But, the Democrats are still trying to figure who to blame so Obama can go kick their ass, when in reality, they should be kicking their own asses due to their negligence of the events of dating back to February 13, 2010.

Cartoon credit: TobyToons

If he succeeds he will have doomed us; if he fails, politically the effort will have finally, fully exposed him for what he is: a Power Grabbing Statist whose economics are recklessly dogmatic while at the same time ignoring those societies he claims are his model.

Obama reminded us how as a candidate he set out what he called a set of principles, which he acknowledged were passed by the House, in a vote almost precisely one year ago today.

Here is what he said then about cap-and-trade, which the House passed. This discussion occurred in the apparent context of how to mount his and his team’s big-ticket agenda items:

“The problem is, can you get the American people to say this is really important, and force their representatives to do the right thing. That requires mobilizing a citizenry…And climate change is a great example.”

You got it: this is the community organizer, refusing to allow a crisis to go to waste, but instead seeking to use it to do what he’s trying to do.

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

“Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal-powered plants, you know, natural ga — you name, it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was — they will have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money, they will pass that money [sic] on to the consumer.”

That’s right. It’s a staggeringly large tax, which he acknowledged will be borne by consumers. This reflects two signs of economic literacy: the purpose and operation of cap-and-trade, and that businesses pass taxes on to consumers. Until they can’t, of course, then they move.

Oh, speaking of this being a tax, he added:

“This will also raise billions of dollars”.

Please note, that is not “some costs”. That is what Al Gore called a “wrenching transformation of society”.

First, a note about the lack of intellectual honesty in claiming that it was a lack of candor and political courage — both of which he was implicitly manifesting — that have left us relying on the most abundant reliable energy sources man has ever known. No. Physics and economics dictate from where we derive our energy. Not a lack of statism.

Further, we are not as he said running out of oil onshore, and in shallow water. We have generations of oil in oil shale and other “unconventional oil” sources, right beneath our soil. That he has to pretend we do not, and that he is not blocking it, tells you quite a bit of what you need to know about the sincerity of this seizure of a crisis to ensure it does not go to waste.

Which raises his claim that adopting his cap-and-trade statism will “grow the economy.” Absurd.

Consider the following excerpt from Chapter 6, “Green Eggs and Scam: The Wholesale Fraud of ‘Green Jobs’” from How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America: (citations are omitted)

CAN MAKE-WORK “GROW THE ECONOMY”?

Sadly, however, such impacts, whether “opportunity” costs or otherwise, are not pressing considerations in Washington. No, we are now told that by mandating that the American economy be driven by all manner of energy sources that cannot stand on their own, we will “grow the economy.” That is the new, favorite phrase of my young Democratic congressman, Tom Periello. Mr. Periello, like a host of lawmakers desperate to find cover for their 2009 vote in support of the disastrous Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill, has since dedicated countless hours on the House floor and elsewhere to spread this tawdry exposition of economic illiteracy to those masses he and his colleagues hope are desperate or inattentive enough to fall for it….

Sadly, the best case scenario for this claim would be that it is made out of disgraceful ignorance. …

The truth is that even inherently biased administration studies of the “green job” scheme cap-and-trade, by EPA, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the Congressional Budget Office, as well as the independent Brookings Institute, Heritage Foundation, American Council for Capital Formation, and CRA International, agree that these cap-and-trade bills must reduce overall employment and lead to lower incomes than can be had without them. EIA, for example, said that the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill destroys 2.3 million jobs on net when fully implemented (in 2030), 800,000 of them manufacturing jobs. Not one cap-and-trade scenario modeled by any of these entities produced net job or income growth from cap-and-trade.

Reckless and disingenuous though the claim is, agenda-driven whizzes in Washington insist that throwing away a billion dollars, confiscated from today’s and future generations, grows the economy—simply because they see a giant hamster wheel research facility go up in their district. But the claim that this will “grow the economy” is made up. These actions will do the opposite.

The government can give us nothing that it has not taken from us. The politics of envy, which underlies much of the “green jobs” hooey, have never been as strong in the United States as in Europe—and that fact gave us a chance for longer than the Europeans to stand firm against all of the promises of free ice cream. Now we are told to look to Europe, but ignore the actual lessons. Instead, accept a fairy tale.

Our German experts [at old-line and state-funded think tank RWI-Essen] summarized for us:

“German renewable energy policy, and in particular the adopted feed-in tariff scheme, has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into the country’s energy portfolio. To the contrary, the government’s support mechanisms have in many respects subverted these incentives, resulting in massive expenditures that show little long-term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security.”

I then discuss the doggerel, repeated by Obama, of Green Jobs in Red China, briefly excerpted here:

“What might be the most embarrassing aspect to this con is that the same policies supposedly ensuring that particular, politically desired goods will be produced here, because their use is mandated here, actually ensure they’ll be made somewhere else….

The lede in a November 5, 2009, Boston Globe story captured the situation well: “Little more than a year after cutting the ribbon at a new factory in Devens built with more than $58 million in state aid, Evergreen Solar said yesterday that it will shift its assembly of solar panels from there to China.” Ouch. It seems that “In exchange for receiving $58.6million in grants, loans, land, tax incentives, and other aid to build in Massachusetts, Evergreen pledged that it would add

350 new jobs,” which it did. Briefly, only to then “write off $40 million worth of equipment at Devens because of the production shift to China.” The company cited the cost of production here not faced if they build their machines elsewhere. No one told them it wasn’t polite to prove the president wrong, and send green jobs overseas, to make things for use back home in response to mandates making it more expensive to produce here, prompting others to move overseas.

Boy, Obamanomics can be exhausting.”

Tonight’s display, on substance, was sophomoric or uninformed. Politically, it was standard cynical fare.

It is difficult to be amazed by a politician but Obama’s rhetoric Tuesday night in fact betrayed a gobsmacking level of cynicism or ignorance: rationing is not a prescription for growth; the state cannot mandate defeat of the laws of physics. China is installing windmills because Western countries pay them to under Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism, simply because those nations get emission “reduction” crisis for doing so which they need as they’ve discovered they can’t actually reduce emissions without economic crisis driving it (like today) or resulting from it (like in Spain, cited by Obama as his model eight times). And China will stop building windmills the minute we abandon this fetish.

Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and co-author of the House’s Internet Freedom Preservation Act, said the FCC should “take any actions necessary to ensure that consumers and competition are protected on the internet,” and offered to “continue to work with my colleagues in Congress to provide the Commission any additional authority it may need to ensure the openness of the Internet for consumers, innovators and investors.”

Markey, like FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, is a backer of net neutrality, a policy that would inadvertently be instituted were the FCC to reclassify broadband services under existing rules relating to telephone services, and directly instituted were his bill passed and signed into law.

Fellow Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry, meanwhile, insisted that while it is within the authority of the FCC to reclassify broadband he is not advocating such aggressive action.

“I am not advocating that the FCC reclassify broadband services as a result of this decision,” Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said. “But I absolutely believe they maintain that legal authority and it would be entirely consistent with the history of communications laws in our country if they did.”

Kerry went on to say that Congress did not intend for ”cable and telephone broadband internet service providers to fall outside of the authority of the FCC,” and therefore that he would be willing to work with “all interested parties” on the construction of “a new legal and regulatory framework for broadband, especially if reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service proves too difficult to administer.”

Democratic FCC commissioners, for their part, seem determined to attempt to reclassify broadband as a Title II service, which (if done successfully) would enable the agency to effectively regulate the internet and institute net neutrality by the back door.

“The only way the Commission can make lemonade out of this lemon of a decision is to do now what should have been done years ago: treat broadband as the telecommunications service it is,” Michael J. Copps said. “We should straighten this broadband classification mess out before the first day of summer.”

Observers say that if the FCC does what is being discussed, it is likely to kick off “World War III,” with broadband providers effectively going to battle with the agency in what could be a politically messy showdown, in which other groups who firmly oppose net neutrality—including, prominently, minority and civil rights organizations— could also weigh in.

Congressional Republicans have vehemently opposed both plans to institute net neutrality and to pursue reclassification, with Rep. Joe Barton saying last month that  ”The worst idea I’ve heard in years is reclassification.”  He added that “I don’t want to regulate broadband like we regulated telephone services in the 1930s.”  In addition, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan and Genachowski had a lengthy exchange when Genachowski appeared before House members to discuss regulation of the internet.  Rep. Rogers’ office says he does not believe such regulation via direct institution of net neutrality or reclassification is the best way to encourage innovation and increase investment in broadband infrastructure, two ostensible goals of net neutrality advocates.

Observers say it bears noting in all of this, however, that, skepticism of and opposition to net neutrality has not been confined just to Republican ranks: Last year, 72 House Democrats signaled doubts about net neutrality in a letter to Genachowski.

Now, aside from the merits of the issue, which I’ll get into in a moment, Waxman and Markey’s behavior is out of line. Waxman and Markey (W/M) are Members of the House of Representatives. What business is it of theirs if the APPA lobbies Senators about a bill pending in the Senate? Senators can conduct their own inquiries without any assistance from W/M. And why didn’t W/M copy Sen. Murkowski or at least Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) on their Feb. 25 letter to Mr. Crisson? Failure to “cc” any of the principals in the Senate flouts one of the most basic rules of legislative courtesy.

Besides being busybodies, Waxman and Markey are bullies.

In their letter to Crisson, Waxman and Markey demand that he “clarify exactly APPA’s position on EPA’s scientific finding,” and either “provide the scientific basis” for disputing it, or explain why APPA is urging Senators to disapprove the finding if it has no scientific “bases” for disputing it.

There is in fact a strong scientific basis for disputing EPA’s endangerment finding. Peabody Energy presents the evidence in exquisite detail in their petition for a reconsideration of the endangerment finding. The basis that eludes Waxman and Markey may be summarized in one word: Climategate.

EPA’s endangerment finding relies heavily on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Scientists at the heart of the Climategate scandal include several lead authors and contributors to the IPCC reports. They massaged data to produce pre-determined conclusions, ignored data that did not fit into a “nice tidy story line,” conspired to bias the peer-reviewed literature by preventing “skeptics” from publishing, and violated freedom of information laws to prevent critics from checking their data and methods.

These behaviors produced a secretive, agenda-driven process that flouts EPA’s own standards of “transparency and openness,” making the IPCC reports unsuitable as a basis for EPA policy decisions.

However, although the scientific shortcomings of EPA’s endangerment finding are serious, Mr. Crisson need not engage in this debate, because the Murkowski resolution does not take a stand on EPA’s “science” one way or the other.

W/M would like nothing better than to spin the Murkowski resolution as a benighted attempt to determine scientific truth by voting. Ironically, W/M do much the same by continually invoking the alleged “consensus of scientists,” as if a head count could settle scientific controversies. But that’s a topic for another day.

My free (and unsolicited) advice to Mr. Crisson – and anyone else debating opponents of the Murkowski resolution – is to clarify what the resolution is and isn’t. It is not a referendum on EPA’s “science.” Rather, it is a referendum on whether bureaucrats with a vested interest in expanding their power, aided and abetted by trial lawyers and eco-pressure groups with no political accountability to the American people, should make climate and energy policy for the nation. It is a referendum on the constitutional propriety of EPA dealing itself into a position to implement regulatory policies Congress never approved when it enacted and amended the Clean Air Act.

A bit of background is in order here. If allowed to stand, the endangerment finding will compel EPA to establish greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles. That, in turn, will automatically make carbon dioxide (CO2) “subject to regulation” under the Clean Air Act’s pre-construction and operating permit programs. As even EPA acknowledges, stretching those programs to include CO2 would lead to “absurd results” manifestly contrary to congressional intent.

For example, EPA would have to apply pre-construction permitting requirements to tens of thousands of previously non-regulated small business, and operating permit requirements to millions. The permitting programs would crash under the own weight, freezing construction activity and thrusting countless businesses into legal limbo during the worst recession in 50 years.

The endangerment finding is also precedent for economy-wide regulation of greenhouse gases under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) program. Logically, EPA would have to set the NAAQS for CO2 below current atmospheric levels. Even a global depression lasting several decades would not be enough to bring America (and the world) into attainment with such a standard, yet the Clean Air Act obligates states to attain “primary” (health-based) NAAQS within five or at most 10 years.

To have its cake and eat it (regulate CO2 without hammering small business and igniting a political backlash), EPA proposes in its Tailoring Rule to exempt small sources of CO2 from the permitting programs. This breach of the separation of powers may or may not survive judicial scrutiny. But even if it does, EPA’s proposed small business protections would terminate in six years. Moreover, the Tailoring Rule in no way reduces the threat of NAAQS regulation. The Murkowski resolution, on the other hand, would nip all this mischief in the bud.

How? The Murkowski resolution would veto the endangerment finding’s “legal force and effect.” And that is all it would do. It takes absolutely no position on the scientific validity of EPA’s reasoning or conclusions, as anyone can see who actually takes the trouble to read the text, which is only one sentence long.

And, just in case you’re wondering, Sen. Murkowski is not a global warming skeptic, nor is she opposed in principle to greenhouse gas regulation. She simply believes that climate policy is too important to be made by anyone except the people’s elected representatives.

It is thus a complete misunderstanding to claim, as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and others do, that the Murkowski amendment is equivalent to Congress voting to overturn the Surgeon General’s report in 1964 finding that cigarette smoking causes cancer. The Surgeon General’s report was simply that – an assessment of the scientific literature. It had zero legal force or effect. In fact, the Surgeon General proposed no remedies at all. It was Congress, not the Surgeon General or any executive agency that, in 1965, required cigarette packages to carry a health warning, and that later prohibited cigarette advertising on television and radio.

If the endangerment finding were simply an assessment of the scientific literature, the Senate would have no business voting on it. But it is much more than that. It is the setup for EPA to take control of vast portions of the economy. It is the trigger for a cascade of regulations potentially more costly than any climate bill or treaty Congress has considered and either rejected or declined to enact or ratify.

W/M need to chill. Whether anyone – the APPA, other trade associations, or Members of Congress – agrees or disagrees with EPA’s “science” is irrelevant. Do W/M support politically accountable policymaking or bureaucratic end runs around the democratic process? Do they think EPA should be allowed to amend the Clean Air Act and violate the separation of powers to avoid the political fallout from regulatory excesses (“absurd results”) that the agency’s “science” would unleash on the American economy?

Finally, do W/M favor establishing NAAQS for CO2?  If not, just how do they propose to avoid this “absurd result” if the endangerment finding is allowed to stand?

Too bad W/M get to ask all the questions and don’t have to answer any. Their questions are designed to bully and intimidate – and distract public attention from serious threats to our economy and our democracy, threats the Murkowski resolution would remove.