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Barack jumps on board with coal-to-liquid

Although not getting much mainstream press between his new ethics bill and being a beach babe, Sen. Obama is co-chairing a new Senate caucus to promote coal to liquids and, one would assume, his recently reintroduced legislation, according to E&E Daily (sub. req.).

When is West Virginia's presidential primary?

More wonky interview

DR: What happened with Prop. 87 [the Calif. ballot initiative to tax oil company profits]? TT: Well, it failed. It’s amazing what $97 million of misleading advertising from oil companies […]

Wherein I finally get it all out

I realize we have long since passed the point of blog parody, with the number of words written about Revkin’s article now exceeding the number of words in the article […]

Cars

Joel Makower returns from the recently wrapped-up upcoming North American International Auto Show in Detroit and asks: Where was the green? On a related note, man oh man do I […]

We are down the rabbit hole

Holy snot! Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (yes, that Ted Stevens) is sponsoring a bill to increase CAFE standards — the very standards he voted to eliminate in 2002. This is […]

I still think Lieberman’s a turd

… but I was never torn about whether to support Joe Lieberman. Here’s what he’s up to now: Lieberman was praising Bush as a “great leader” for bucking American opinion, […]

Warming seas beget dying fish, GM unveils plug-in hybrid, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Better Not, Pout Happy Feat It’s All Sarovar Their Day in Cote Mercury Retrograde Read the articles mentioned at the […]

To race

Gore’s refusal to jump in or completely rule out a presidential run is driving Beltway journalists to distraction, forcing them to fill up column inches saying absolutely nothing. They want […]

It’s cool

More interesting details on Chevy’s wicked new quasi-electric kinda-plugin Volt from EcoGeek.

The nuclear bomb that almost blew up

Sometimes old news deserves attention: Ari Berman, of the lively Notion blog at The Nation, posts that we recently nearly saw an accidental nuclear detonation at the one plant for decommission and retirement of nuclear weapons in this country, run by Pantex in Amarillo, Tex.

He writes:

In March 2005, a nuclear warhead almost exploded in Texas. The near miss accident occurred in Amarillo, when workers at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant bungled the dismantling of a W-56 warhead, a weapon 100 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.

This emerged after a less-provocative-but-still-troubling story from Ralph Vartabedian at the L.A. Times, who revealed that the U.S. Department of Energy fined Pantex $110,000 for violations revealed after the incident, and has launched an investigation.

Sounds reasonable. But at the same time, the DOE declared that it had "confidence that Pantex will continue its outstanding work, while keeping stringent safety and security policies in place."

So why investigate?