Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Continuing a campaign to focus national attention on America’s needs to develop new energy supplies President Bush stood at the White House podium on Tuesday to repeat his message to Congress that needs to act now to increase the supply of domestic oil by permitting offshore drilling, exploration of ANWR in Alaska and oil shale development.

Today’s press conference was a follow-on to his announcement on Monday that he was lifting the executive ban on increased offshore drilling and he called on Congress to do the same.

President Bush has been demanding attention to the energy issue since the first days of his Administration (photo chronicle of his efforts to highlight alternative fuels is here). And yet, every year, the only action from Democrats in Congress has been to use the issue as a political football or to use it to raise taxes, not increase energy supplies.

Are Democrats Listening to The American People?

In June we learned from Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole (R) what aggressive measures House Republicans were taking to address the issue and how that effort has been obstructed by Democrats. There was hope that after House Democrats got an earful on high gas prices from their constituents they would be willing to be more flexible on the issue after returning from their break. Unfortunately, House Speaker Pelosi announced that rather than even permit a discussion on more oil drilling, no energy bill would be brought to a vote.

Up to now, Democrat attention to the energy issue can be summed up by this quote of a Democrat congressional aide:”Right now, our strategy on gas prices is ‘Drive small cars and wait for the wind.’”

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are not sitting still. U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008 on June 26, 2008 with 43 GOP Senators as co-sponsors. The legislation is a compromise designed to attract Democrat votes as it omits drilling in Alaska’s ANWR.

Key points of the legislation:

• Remove the ban on offshore drilling 50 miles beyond the shore except on the Florida Gulf coast where drilling is still banned.
• Remove the moratorium on development of oil shales in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming.
• Foster development of “plug in” electric cars and trucks.
• Tighten regulation of commodities markets.

10 Democrat Senators have recently been quoted suggesting that drilling for new oil may be necessary. And it’s not hard to understand why they would change on this issue. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans favor drilling for new domestic oil supplies. And the following Democrat Senators are up for re-election this year:

Mark Pryor of Arkansas
Joe Biden of Delaware
Dick Durbin of Illinois
Tom Harkin of Iowa
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana
John Kerry of Massachusetts
Carl Levin of Michigan
Max Baucus of Montana
Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey
Jack Reed of Rhode Island
Tim Johnson of South Dakota
Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia

Voters in those states should waste no time contacting BOTH their senators and demanding they support the legislation.

Is Senate Leader Reid Listening?

Response from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been typical. Once again he trotted out the flawed talking point that oil companies already have permission to drill in areas where no oil is likely to be found. But, he also reiterated that Democrats were not opposed to finding new domestic supplies of oil, so it seems he should endorse allowing oil companies to drill where they feel oil is more likely to be found.

Reid also repeated a desire for more wind power. While Democrats criticize drilling as an immediate solution (ignoring the psychology of the market to do so) Reid and friends seem oblivious to the fact that energy solutions from alternatives like wind power will take years and years longer than drilling.

If only we could harness the wind power coming from Democrats on this issue all our energy problems would be solved!

also:

Terrorist Crying During Interrogation At Gitmo Makes Liberals Sad

The left is boo-hooing about this video today of a terrorist and killer crying like a baby as he is interrogated at Gitmo: (h/t Gateway Pundit)

Feel sorry for him?

Puhlease.

What did this “kid” do? He threw a grenade that killed a American soldier plus:

After his capture a video was found that shows Khadr toying with detonating cord as other men including Abu Laith al-Libi assemble explosives in the same house that had been destroyed in the firefight. He was also seen planting landmines while smiling and joking with the cameraman. It has been suggested that these were the same landmines later recovered by American forces on a road between Gardez and Khowst.

He is charged with five war crimes including murder.

Still feel sorry for him?

And now the fallout from the Boudemaine decision is being felt:

Omar Khadr appears for the first time Wednesday before a military judge whose reputation for working quickly through trial preliminaries has earned him the nickname “rocket-docket.”

As the prosecution presses for an early trial date, army Col. Patrick Parrish is expected to process a virtual conveyor belt of defence motions more rapidly than his predecessor, who refused to be rushed.

Khadr’s defence team does not want to go to trial, arguing the proceedings before the United States war crimes commissions at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, are unfair.

But Parrish, who has been on the job for a little more than two weeks, has already shown his determination to press on.

On the weekend, he rejected a request from Khadr’s defence lawyers to postpone Wednesday’s hearing to give them more time to assess the implications of last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on detainee rights.

In a 5-4 decision, the court placed a question mark over the Bush administration’s policy on holding foreign terror suspects, saying they have a “habeas corpus” right under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

Against that backdrop, navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, Khadr’s military-appointed defence lawyer, will use Wednesday’s hearing to argue that the entire case against the Toronto-born accused terrorist should be thrown out on grounds U.S. authorities have never told him of his rights.

The lawyer had previously argued that the interrogators had destroyed their notes in some evil plot to withhold evidence.

The Pentagon urged interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to destroy handwritten notes in case they were called to testify about potentially harsh treatment of detainees, a military defense lawyer said Sunday.

The lawyer for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, said the instructions were included in an operations manual shown to him by prosecutors and suggest the U.S. deliberately thwarted evidence that could help terror suspects defend themselves at trial.

Kuebler said the apparent destruction of evidence prevents him from challenging the reliability of any alleged confessions.

They left out one thing. Alex Knapp reports that the notes we’re ordered destroyed after a typewritten copy was finished.

Now that I’ve delved a little more deeply into this, a few more things have come to light.

(1) The operations manual apparently only orders the destruction of the handwritten notes after the creation of formalized typed notes or a formal intelligence report.

(2) Under normal circumstances, that type of procedure would probably be acceptable, and there’s not too much to object to there.

(3) The key words, though, are “under normal circumstances.” The Defense counsel in this case are making the argument that the handwritten notes should be preserved in order to impeach hearsay testimony. In a normal court of law, of course, this would not be necessary because hearsay is typically inadmissible (although there are exceptions). In the detainee trials at Guatanamo, however, hearsay is admissible, and so defense counsel wants access to the original notes.

As a policy matter, I would prefer that these notes be kept for detainee hearings. This is because I generally favor a maximum amount of transparency when it comes to prisoner interrogations in any setting. Indeed, if it were up to me, every interrogation in the criminal justice system would be videotaped (as is the law already in a handful of states). That said, from the standpoint of the current law, there may not be anything illegal in what has been ordered. And given that the handwritten notes are replaced with formal notes and/or reports, the taint of coverup in the initial reports is markedly diminished.

The only thing to cry about in this case is that it only proves we have completely reverted back to September 10th, 2001.