Not content to cynically railroad a dedicated public servant out of his job, we have it on good authority that Smokey Joe Barton and Company on the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee are holding a public flogging of former EPA region Administrator Dr Al Armendariz on June 6th in Washington DC. It's an all day hearing about the contrived controversy that cost us the Best Regional Administrator We Ever Had. Before the Congressmen commence their chest beating, Dr. Armendariz will be allowed to make an opening statement. We hope we can catch this on C-SPAN, because other than his resignation letter, it'll be Dr. Al's first public statement on the whole mess since it began. Unfettered by Administration filters, Congressman Barton might be getting more than he bargained for at the hearing - bringing a lot more attention to a sorry episode that happened so fast, it didn't have time to snowball the amount of ridicule it deserved the first time round, Now everyone from Rachel Maddow to John Stewart to Stephen Colbert will have a shot at using this story against Dr. Al's critics as another example of their having gone off the deep end when it comes to anything EPA-related. And instead of muted Dr. Al, they're likely to see a Dr. Al Unplugged who's able to talk about what really goes on behind he curtain in Rick Perry's Texas. Having made a martyr out of him, we wonder if his critics understand that they could now be sponsoring Dr. Al's powerful resurrection?   Read More

Word comes from Politico that after 17 years of trying, "Republicans for Environmental Protection" is 86'ing the concept and changing its name to some kind of focus-group-tested "ConservAmerica." It's not so much that conservatives have abandoned the environment and public health. Poll after poll shows broad support for most of the environmental agenda, and over the last 20 years some of the most successful projects Downwinders has pulled off have been with Republican office-holders as partners. It's that a controlling faction of the Republican Party is increasing hostile to what has been an historical bi-partisan set of goals for their own sake, differing only in approaches. In 2012, the very value of having clean air is routinely questioned by that faction, as is the science behind any advance in knowledge that contradicts a worldview where corporations make all the decisions about our risks for us. So instead, the former RFEPs are hoping to attract conservatives in general. “We’re seeing more and more independents out there,” said David Jenkins, the group’s vice president for governmental and political affairs. “Messaging through a Republican frame doesn’t reach those people as well as reaching them through a conservative frame.” They may be on to something. The most ardent conservative critics of pollution in North Texas are not state or federal Republican office-holders, but grassroots right-wingers like former DISH Mayor Calvin Tillman, who feels as though the GOP has let him down. It's one more sign that the modern Republican Party is further isolating itself on an issue that really doesn't give a flip about the politics of your lungs.   Read More

 That would be Congressman "Smokey Joe" Barton, who thanks to redistricting has put his Arlington home up for sale and moved back to his hometown of Ennis in hopes of being in his current district by the time the dust settles on the court challenge now headed to the Supreme Court. His current district, while not exactly blue, was getting more purple as the percentage of Arlington voters grew. By trying to squeeze another possible Hispanic-dominated district or two into DFW, redistricting may have given new life to Barton's incumbency by drawing him a more Republican-centric district to represent.   Read More

"Smokey Joe" Barton named among the "Most Corrupt Congressman" by non-partisan CREW for shady natural gas dealings.   Read More