With her weak statement on Obama’s capitulation to the American Petroleum Institute, Barbara Boxer took a step toward sacrificing environmental needs on the altar of partisan loyalty. If she is to retain the trust of American environmentalists, Senator Barbara Boxer needs to stop making excuses for Barack Obama, and denounce with clarity the Obama Administration’s abandonment of environmental responsibility and scientific integrity.

This week, Barbara Boxer will lead the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to consider 4 very, very important environmental bills: One bill to rename a courthouse, and three bills to rename federal office buildings.

Eighteen Democrats and one independent from the United States have signed a letter urging the President and the Attorney General to return to a commitment to equality in the United States. The letter asks Attorney General Eric Holder to allow the decision that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is unconstitutional to stand.

H.R. 556 would require oil companies currently operating along California’s coast to clean up their operations and work to ensure reasonable protection of California’s coastal ecosystems. Is that why John Rockefeller opposes the legislation?

Senators are offering limited legislation to deal with the problem of risky offshore drilling, presenting bills that affect only certain areas, or only for a certain time.

Senator Barbara Boxer has found time to introduce legislation to rename a post office, so why can’t she find time to craft legislation on the much more important issue of offshore drilling?

First they asked for 50 seats. Now they say they need 60. What’s next? Will the Senate Democrats need 70 seats in 2010 before they can finally keep their promises?

Obama promised last Friday that he would be in the Senate. “I will work in the Senate,” he said, to remove retroactive immunity from the legislation. Today, Barack Obama wasn’t there.

That’s a total of eleven Democrats who voted against the simple progressive idea that the Bill of Rights means something, and the government shouldn’t have the ability to conduct searches and seizures against us without a search warrant. So, let’s do the math. In order to overcome the damage done by these Republican-leaning or Republican-enabling Democratic senators, we’d need to have yet another eleven genuine progressive Democratic senators.