Gore Testimony; Tobacco Trial; Blanco Quits; Novak on Defensive; GOP Phone Jam Reversal; Hurricane Forecast

A lot of little things on the Curmudgeon's mind this morning:

Gore Testimony Revives Dinosaurs On Hill

One of the things Al Gore's global warming testimony did yesterday is remind us why it's so important to win additional Senate reaces in 2008. Gore's appearance brought out some of the GOP's most strident dinosaurs, especially Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who held up a picture of icicles in Buffalo and asked "where is global warming when you need it?" We guess that the Senator from Exxon figures since it's still cold and icy in the Arctic, global warming is a fiction.

At least some Republicans are embarasssed: Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, Republican of Maryland, stated "it's possible to be a conservative without appearing to be an idiot" after some silly comments by his colleague Joe Barton from Texas.

DOJ Tobacco Lawyer Charges "Politics"

Today's Washington Post has a front page story featuring a charge by former DOJ lawyer Sharon Eubanks, who headed the federal government's civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry, that political appointees at Justice interfered with the case's prosecution by career lawyers.

The Curmudgeon worked on the tobacco case (representing defendant Brown & Williamson). We doubt "politics" was what was going on. Instead, it appears that Eubanks, who is clearly disgruntled and taking advantage of the flap over U.S. Attorneys, was engaged in a legal dispute with her superiors at Justice.

There was a clear legal issue about the scope of remedies being pursued, with a mid-trial decision by the court of appeals putting major constraints on the DOJ's strategy. It appeared the DOJ trial team wanted, essentially, to ignore those constraints, while the higher-ups (who were political appointees, but also decent lawyers in private practice before joining DOJ) were trying to come up with a strategy that would fit within those constraints.

Disputes over application of the law and the trial strategy to accommodate legal constraints are frequent in a major trial. Resolution of those disputes does not necessarily mean politics were involved, and we doubt that was the case here.

Blanco Quits in Lousiana

We're happy to see that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco has decided not to seek re-election, paving the way for former Senator John Breaux to run for the Democrats. We were never impressed with Blanco's Katrina performance and would like to see the Lousiana state house stay in the blue column.

Bob Novak: Plame Defensive On CIA Leak

Today, conservative columnist Robert Novak, who outed CIA agent Valerie Plame in his column after being urged to do so by various Bush administration stooges, tries to justify his actions by arguing, among other things, that since Plame drove her own car to CIA HQ in Langley, she must not have been covert.

Give it up, Bob. You know full well that if something like this had happened in the Clinton administration, you and your GOP hackster friends would've been all over it every day, 24/7. You just couldn't resist. And now you have the nerve to attack CIA Director Hayden for suggesting that Plame's status was, in fact, covert.

Here's some advice: loose lips sink ships. When in doubt, leave it out. (I.e., unless you are dead positive a CIA employee is not in any way covert, why write about her publicly.)

If you were the patriot you claim to be, you would've said to Armitrage, your original source, "shame on you, I'm not going to print that and you shouldn't be calling reporters with info on CIA operatives."

Sorry Reversal of GOP Phone-Jam Conviction

We're sorry to report that an appellate court has overturned the conviction of New Hampshire GOP operative James Tobin, who was sentenced to a trifling 10 months in prison for his role in a scheme to jam Democratic Party get-out-the-vote phone lines on election day in 2002. The appellate court questioned whether prosecutors had shown that Tobin intended the scheme to "harass" anyone.

Duh! Is it possible the 800 hang-up calls that jammed the Democratic line on election day were all just accidental wrong numbers coming from a group of confused callers who just happened to be working for Tobin?

We hope prosecutors will re-try Tobin.

Busy Hurricane Season Forecast

Forecasters at Tropical Storm Risk, a London-based group used by insurers to estimate their risks, predict a much busier than average Atlantic hurricane season this year, with 17 tropical storms, of which four will turn into major hurricanes.

Where have we heard that before? Last year, similar forecasts by U.S. prognosticators turned out to be quite wrong. The hurricane season was instead a mild one. The year before, the experts were wrong in the other direction, predicting a slightly worse than normal year when it turned out to be the worst year on record.

We'll be watching to see if these "experts" get it right this year. We'll let you know around Thanksgiving, after the storm season ends.

Gore's Energy Consumption Is An Issue

While we like former Vice President Al Gore and his Inconvenient Truth campaign to educate the public of the global warming peril, we are disappointed to learn of the massive electric bill at his Nashville home.

The fact that the initial report came from a right-wing Tennessee political organization (not a "think-tank" as some media reported it) doesn't change its significance.

It appears undisputed that Gore's home used approximately 221,000 kwh's of electricity last year. That is a LOT. Comparing Gore's use to the average American home--which uses roughly 10,500 kwh's per annum--is probably unfair. Certainly Gore's home is larger than average.

It appears to us, however, that Gore's energy use far exceeds what even a larger home, even a mansion, should be using. There may be some extenuating circumstances: for example, the Gore household has some security features that no ordinary home would have. There could be other factors as well. For example, we learned that an old electric greenhouse heater we inherited from the previous owners of our home was gobbling up 12,000 kwh's of electricity a year--nearly half our total--before we replaced it. Since we can't imagine how Gore could use such a vast amount of electricity absent some extraordinary circumstance, we'd be curious to hear the full story.

What we can't accept, however, is the argument of some Gore supporters sho say that whatever his electric consumption, it's ok, because Gore is enrolled in the GreenPower program of his local utility. Under such programs, consumers opt to pay a premium to their utility in exchange for a promise that the utility will obtain that electricity from renewable sources (usually wind).

The problem we have with this argument--i.e., that enrolling in GreenPower exempts Gore from scrutiny--is that it kind of assumes unlimited renewable resources. Gore is using up a lot of wind and solar, which means less to offset the carbon emissions of others. Wind and solar are better than oil and coal, but they still consume other resources, such as steel. There's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to energy.

That's why we harp on conservation here. We're in favor of reasonable energy conservation--that is measures that don't significantly reduce our standard of living--combined with heavy investment in and development of renewable energy sources.

As we've reported here before, the Curmudgeon household has significantly reduced it's electricity consumption through a combination of conservation measures and installation of solar panels. In February, we reached a new monthly low of 625 kwh's, which is darn good for a house as large as ours. (That's almost half our usage in February '06, which was 1115 kwh's--most of the savings is from fluorescent lighting and simply turning our electronics off each night.) While that's a good start, we're still concerned that our carbon footprint (from our natural gas usage, cars, beef consumption, etc.) is still quite massive.

Gore says that he, too, is renovating his house to make it more energy efficient, and that he plans to add some solar panels to his home. By our calculation, he'd have to install more than 1000 of the Curmudgeon's 190 watt Evergreen panels--at a cost of more than a million dollars--to offset his current use of electricity. We doubt if his roof is big enough for that.

Gore can't just talk the talk. He needs to walk the walk. Home is a great place to start.

Al Gore Should Wait

Following the long and boring Academy Awards, many folks are renewing their efforts to get Al Gore to run for President again.

We have no idea whether Al is inclined to do so--we'd think he's having a lot more fun, and arguably doing more good, with his current gig.

But, if Gore is motivated to give it another try, he should wait. As they say in the movies (now that he's a sort of movie star) "wait 'til you see the whites of their eyes."

Conventional wisdom is that the '08 presidential race will be so expensive that a candidate has to get in now to be able to raise enough money. Indeed, the money race has already claimed Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack as a victim, and deterred others from entering.

That conventional wisdom doesn't apply to Al Gore (or to Newt Gingrich on the GOP side, either). If Gore decides to run, he'll be able to raise a boatload of money in short order.

Better off to wait as long as possible, which we think is probably until about September. During that period Hillary, Obama and Edwards will be clawing each other to death, to the point that none of them will be all that attractive come the end of summer. In fact, we're already getting pretty sick of them. Moreover, it looks like both the Democratic and Republican nominating races are going to devolve into three-way contests where no candidate has a decisive advantage.

Thus, the longer Gore can wait, the cleaner he'll look. In the meantime, he can take the high road, possibly even earning a Nobel Peace Prize along the way. He doesn't have to criticize any of the other Democratic candidates--indeed, he can praise them all. Then, when he does enter, it can be "for the good of the party."

In contrast, if Gore enters now, he'll soon get bogged down in sniping, especially with Hillary's crowd, about all kinds of issues besides global warming. His initial momentum will soon fade--just look what's happened to Obama. Come September, he'll be just another muddy Democrat in what could be a four-way race with no decisive leader (or, he could knock out Edwards--Gore is even cleaner than Edwards on Iraq, and we're not sure what else Edwards really has to offer besides a pretty face).

It's an interesting scenario historically. In 1960, Richard Nixon lost a squeaker to JFK--many Republicans claimed the race was stolen from Nixon in Chicago. Eight years later, he came back to win (during a very unpopular war) with a much more "checkered" past (couldn't resist) than Gore's is now. After LBJ bowed out in '68, the race was almost as wide open as this time around. Could history repeat itself 40 years later (without the subsequent downfall of Nixon, of course)?

Only time will tell. Gore can afford to wait.