The Necropolitan Sentinel

Our self-destructive dithering on the XL Pipeline could have even worse consequences than we thought.

Via Investor’s Business Daily, a few sobering thoughts about this Administration’s Energy Policies, and its deference to environmental extremists:

While the U.S. dithers with concerns about “dirty oil” from Alberta’s rich tar sands, energy-hungry China makes Ottawa an offer it might not refuse. Memo to Washington: Pipelines can run west as well as south.

When President Obama pledged to wean us off foreign oil, we hoped he didn’t mean our friendly ally to the north, Canada. Granted, it doesn’t have beaches like Rio, where we’re helping the Brazilians drill offshore, but we had hopes nonetheless.

Together, the U.S. and Canada have enough oil and natural gas locked up in shale formations, tar sands, Alaska, the Canadian Arctic and the Outer Continental Shelf to make OPEC pound sand. But we won’t drill for ours and apparently, we don’t want Canada’s.

With more than 170 billion barrels, Alberta has the world’s third-largest oil reserves, behind only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and ahead of Russia and Iran. Daily production of 1.5 million barrels from the oil sands is expected to nearly triple to 3.7 million by 2025. The only question is, will this crude be flowing south to U.S. refineries or west for export to China?

At issue is the Keystone XL pipeline, parts of which have already been built, that would bring Alberta oil to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. The pipeline also could transport oil extracted from shale formations in the Rocky Mountain West. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the region, dubbed the Persia of the West, may hold more than 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, six times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, and enough to meet U.S. oil needs for the next two centuries.

Our emphasis.

UPDATE: Instalanche; thanks, Glenn!

It’s worth reading the whole thing, because Althouse puts Emily Mills in her place at great length:

Isthmus columnist Emily Mills slimes me over the Wisconsin Supreme Court “chokegate” story . . . without taking the trouble to link to or quote anything I said. Or should I say without daring to link to or quote anything I said? She cites the “the fires of victim blaming amongst Prosser supporters” and then says:

One of the more vocal among them is blogger and UW Law School professor Ann Althouse, who has gone to great and terrible lengths to excuse the alleged behavior, attack the credibility of only the anonymous sources with whom she disagrees, suggest that no arrests (yet) mean no wrongdoing, impugn the honor of Justice Bradley, and cast doubt on the very justice system of this state.

What? Emily makes no effort to back up that characterization of me. . . . Any fair reader can see that I’m endeavoring to understand the stories that have appeared in the press, critiquing the press, and asking a lot of sensible questions. It’s not even fair to call me a “Prosser supporter,” let alone assert that I’ve “gone to great and terrible lengths” to “excuse… attack… [and] impugn” anybody.

Emily Mills’ dishonest assertions about me seem to reflect her desperation, her need to believe what she wants to believe, her reflex to plug her ears and go la la la la la. I mean, look at what I actually said.

When Bill Lueders first dropped the allegation that Prosser choked Bradley, I merely noted it and said “Hmmm.” My second post linked to the presentation of the story on the lefty blog Think Progress, which was about the ways to oust Prosser from the court. I corrected the blogger (Ian Millhiser) for calling Prosser an “accused criminal” instead of a “person accused of a crime” — which is a point anyone who cares about the rights of the accused ought to find important — and I observed that we lacked the full context. I speculated about who Lueders’s sources were and who would have the motivation to go to the press. And, most devastating to Mills’s embarrassing statement about me, I said:

But sure. If Justice Prosser committed a criminal attack on another Justice, he shouldn’t be on the court, even if he only lashed out after weeks or years of merciless bullying.

In fact, if you search through my posts, you’ll see that I’ve consistently said Prosser should resign if he choked Justice Bradley. I said:

I agree with Millhiser that if it’s true Prosser reached a breaking point and started strangling Bradley, he should go. I doubt that’s true, however, because there was no arrest. That’s why we’re getting the story in this unsourced, piecemeal form.

I’m struggling to figure out what went on. Yes, I do use the evidence of no arrest to suggest that Prosser didn’t suddenly snap and launch into a strangling, but that doesn’t mean I’m saying “no arrests (yet) mean no wrongdoing.” It means — as anyone who reads that post with a calm, clear mind can see — that I’m guessing the situation was complex — and later reports confirm my guess.

That post is updated with a reference to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report citing allegations that Bradley initiated the physical aggression — charging at Prosser with fists raised. Emily Mills deserves to have her own language turned back on her: She has gone to great and terrible lengths to excuse Bradley’s alleged behavior and to impugn the honor of Justice Prosser and blah blah blah. It’s so easy to be a hot-headed partisan. And so risky! Because you make it so easy for someone to show what you are.

. . .

It’s too much like the attack from Bill Wineke that I felt I had to respond to yesterday. Both writers are attacking me as a law professor at the University of Wisconsin. I think they would like to destroy my reputation in this town, where they so casually assume the benefits of inclusion in what is a political majority here. I think they carelessly and lazily believe that local readers will eat up the sloppy attacks they’re serving, because local readers agree with their political ends.

As they rush at me from across town shaking their balled-up fists in my face, I feel I must extend my fingers in self-defense . . .