Spain Is a Model Again? - Greg Pollowitz - Planet Gore on National Review Online

Soaring unemployment and skyrocketing energy prices. If that is what is required to "take the lead" on green energy, can we just stay behind?

FACT CHECK: CAP-AND-TRADE IS A TAX

So cap-and-trade is a government mandate that raises energy costs. This is not an isolated view. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said, “Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax and it’s a great big one.” Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said, “Whether you call it a tax, everyone agrees that it's going to increase the cost to the consumer." In short, if costs don’t go up, the whole point of the plan—to encourage people to move away from fossil fuels—collapses.

A Fishy Tale by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

Nearly a quarter-million acres worth of contracted federal irrigation deliveries have been cut from the big farms of the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in central California. The water in large part is being diverted to the salty San Francisco Bay and the delta to improve marine ecology.

The result of the cutbacks is that many crops in the San Joaquin Valley have gone unplanted. Farm income is down. Thousands of farm laborers are unemployed. Growers and workers are now livid at environmentalists, federal bureaucrats, and judges for worrying more about fish than about people and food growing.

Democrats Join Push to Post Bills Online - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

Representative Walt Minnick, the freshman Democrat from Idaho, also backs the effort, but Mr. Baird said that senior Democrats have advised others, including some of the 35 Democrats who co-sponsored the bill he introduced in June, not to join the latest attempt.

Still, Mr. Baird stood by Republicans who displayed the thousand-page stimulus and the cap-and-trade bills on a lectern at a news conference Wednesday afternoon