The Sunlight Foundation scored a major scoop this month with a report indicating that “Independent” candidate for Senate Lisa Murkowski signed documents for the “Independent” group Alaskans Standing Together to certify that the group wasn’t working “in cooperation, consultation, or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, any candidate.” In other words, Lisa [...]

It’s worth keeping some skepticism about Senator Murkowski’s promises about what the legislation would do. However, the basic idea of taking advantage of natural movements in the oceans, due to to tides, wave action, and thermal patterns, to gather energy that can be used by human communities, is a good one.

Congressman Young thinks that it’s just terrible that American citizens who go over to Canada to shoot and kill polar bears aren’t allowed to bring the heads of those polar bears back into the United States.

The following are graphs showing the frequency distribution of bill cosponsorship in the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate as of February 13, 2009. Cosponsorship is the signing of a member of Congress’ name to a bill, an act that formally indicates support for the bill. The x-axis in each graph represents [...]

You could accurately say that Don Young represents oil more than he does the people of Alaska. The only legislation Don Young has worked on during this session of Congress so far is a special favor for big crude oil companies.

If a marine mammal is at a population level that is truly in line with its historically sustainable levels, then it can’t be to blame for the endangered status of their prey or competing species. After all, historically, those species fit together just fine, ecologically speaking. No marine mammal species, historically speaking, drove any other existing marine animal to the brink of extinction… unless you count human beings taking to the sea in their boats as a marine mammal. It’s human activity that has upset the ecological balance of the oceans, not wild marine mammals.

George W. Bush is trying to delay the decision of a designation of polar bears under the Endangered Species Act until after the February 6 auction of drilling rights in public waters of the Chukchi Sea to big oil corporations. The Chukchi Sea is to the north of Alaska. It’s where polar bears in the United States hunt seals, and its protection as polar bear habitat would require action on global warming, as well as prevention of oil drilling by George W. Bush’s family friends in the petroleum industry.