The Hill reports today, “An Obama administration official apologized this week after a Senate Republican released a video in which the official compared enforcement of environmental laws to crucifixion. ‘I apologize to those I have offended and regret my poor choice of words. It was an offensive and inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential violations of our nation’s environmental laws,’ Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz said in a statement that the Daily Caller obtained Wednesday night. ‘I am and have always been committed to fair and vigorous enforcement of those laws.’

“The apology came several hours after Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a vocal critic of the EPA, released a 2010 video in which Armendariz stressed the importance of ‘making examples’ out of companies that violate environmental laws. He compared his enforcement philosophy to that of Roman soldiers who crucified villagers in towns they wanted to conquer. ‘I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement. And I think it was probably a little crude, and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’m going to tell you what I said,’ Armendariz says in the video. ‘It is kind of like how the Romans used to conquer the villages in the Mediterranean, they’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere and they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. Then that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.’ . . .”

“Inhofe highlighted the comments Wednesday during a Senate floor speech. ‘His comments give us a rare glimpse into the Obama administration’s true agenda; no matter how much President Obama may pretend to be a friend of oil and natural gas, his green team constantly betrays the truth that the Obama administration is fully engaged in an all out war on hydraulic fracturing, and indeed all fossil fuels,’ Inhofe said.”

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the tens of thousands of jobs it would create, “I am not going to help in any way I can,” adding, “The president feels that way. I do, too.” And on Tuesday Interior Secretary Ken Salazar accused Republicans of supporting “fairy tale” energy policies.

It’s amazing the extent to which the Obama administration and Democrat leaders in Congress are impeding American energy development. As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said recently, “For years, Washington Democrats have had the same rigid opposition to expanding domestic energy exploration. The only people they seem to listen to are extremists. . . . [W]ith gas prices at about $4 a gallon, it’s time somebody called them out on it. Ten years ago . . . Democrats voted down a bill to open up a tiny area in Alaska known as ANWR to drilling. They relied on the non-argument that it would ‘take too long’ to get the oil to market. Every Democrat who was asked about it said the same thing; that it would take too long to get the oil to market. I’ve got two pages of quotes from Democrats saying it would take at least seven to 10 years to get the oil to market. Well, here we are, 10 years later. In some places gas now costs three times what it did in April of 2002. The U.S. still imports half its oil. ANWR is still off-limits. And if you ask Democrats why they oppose more domestic exploration, they’ll tell you the same thing they did 10 years ago.”

The revealing comments from Obama’s EPA official, his Interior Secretary, and his ally in the Senate, Harry Reid tell an important part of the story as to why Washington still can’t approve a commonsense project like the Keystone pipeline, even with Americans paying ever-higher gas prices. It’s long past time for the Democrat status quo on energy to change.

Rasmussen Reports: 57% Say U.S. Economy Is In Recession

Comments

comments