New York Times reporter Anthony DePalma today perfectly demonstrates the mantra of much of the modern press: Never pass up an opportunity to bash Bush.
In his front-page story entitled “9 States in Plan to Cut Emissions by Power Plants,” Mr. DePalma adroitly accomplishes this credo in paragraph two:
The cooperative action, the first of its kind in the nation, came after the Bush administration decided not to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
The beauty of this sentence is its derision without specificity. For instance, Mr. DePalma doesn’t elaborate on how Bush blocked such environmental regulations until the second page of the story buried inside the main section in paragraph 23:
The Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocols has caused deep divisions nationwide, with many local governments attempting to force the administration to taking action by passing their own carbon dioxide rules.
OF COURSE! This is about KYOTO!
However, Mr. DePalma, like most of his press colleagues and the majority of Democrats, seems to continually forget that the Senate in 1997 unanimously voted to prevent America from participating in this Protocol.
As S. Fred Singer of the National Center for Policy Analysis stated in an October 13, 2003 briefing:
The Protocol was negotiated in November 1997, mainly through the personal intervention of then-Vice President Al Gore. However, on July 25, 1997, the Senate had unanimously approved a resolution introduced by Senators Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) that stated the President should not sign any Protocol that required greenhouse gas reductions without commitments from developing countries, or that would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.
On November 9, 1998, with the signing imminent, Sen. Byrd sent a letter to President Clinton stating that "[s]igning the Kyoto Protocol now would be contrary to the plain language of the [Senate Resolution]… [s]igning now implies a commitment to the Protocol that may undermine our future leverage with the biggest emitters [of greenhouse gases] in the developing world."
Fascinating. The extraordinarily liberal Robert Byrd not only authored legislation to block Clinton’s signing of this Protocol, but he also sent a letter to Mr. Clinton specifically stating why the president should not sign it.
Moreover, the most recent Congressional attempt to raise this issue again failed in the Senate, and never got to President Bush’s desk. As CBS News reported on October 30, 2003:
The U.S. Senate rejected a plan Thursday to curb carbon dioxide emissions from industrial smokestacks as a source of global warming. It was the chamber's first vote in more than six years on the controversial issue of climate change.
The 55-43 vote against the measure co-sponsored by Sens. John McCain, a Republican, and Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, capped a two-day debate that the two senators described as the opening shot in what they acknowledged will be a lengthy effort to get Congress to address global warming.
Hmmm. 55-43, huh? Never got out of the Senate, huh? So, Mr. DePalma, how is this the president’s fault?
Makes you wonder if this article wasn’t written by Louie DePalma?
