Republicans will press Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on offshore drilling restrictions when he appears before two committees to defend the Interior Department’s fiscal year 2012 budget plan. ...
...With gas prices rising, Republicans have seized on the crises to ramp up calls for the Obama administration to begin issuing the first deepwater drilling permits since last year’s BP spill, and to speed up shallow-water permitting.
A top Interior Department official said Friday that the agency is “quite close” to resuming issuance of deepwater permits, but it’s unlikely the agency will act aggressively enough on drilling to defuse GOP attacks. ...The Hill
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President Obama declared by executive order Friday night that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and the country's unrest present a threat to the U.S.
Obama ordered sanctions on Gadhafi that include the freezing of all his assets in the U.S. or in American financial institutions abroad. Gadhafi's children and Libyan senior political officials are included in the sanctions. ...
...In his order, Obama said that the unrest in Libya and violence employed by Gadhafi against his own people "have caused a deterioration in the security of Libya and pose a serious risk to its stability, thereby constituting an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat." ...
...Obama informed House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) by letter that he had issued the executive order under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The president's letter informed Boehner that Obama has determined that Gadhafi is a threat, and "the order declares a national emergency to deal with this threat." ...The Hill
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Can't we develop a more responsive, less hamfisted and bellicose way of dealing with our dependency on oil and with democratic uprisings in other countries? Or is this more or less what we face when we demand sustainable energy sources and a return to democracy in America?
