Why does he make it so easy?

Planet earth’s noble knight never seems to tire of surpassing himself in brazen displays of sanctimoniousness, but it feels like every time he opens his mouth he’s simply offering everyone another opportunity to take him still less seriously. Via The Hill: “There’s no such thing as ethical oil. There’s only dirty oil and dirtier oil,” [...]

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Adding fuel to the fire.

Presumably hoping to light a fire underneath the Obama administration’s fully political dilly-dallying on the issue, the Senate went on record in support of the Keystone XL pipeline with a (frankly symbolic) 62-37 vote on an amendment in March — and now the House is getting ready to move on the (not just symbolic) Northern [...]

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Irregularities.

Environmentalists went into fits of delight when the EPA left some critical comments on the State Department’s draft environmental impact review of the Keystone XL pipeline on Monday (apparently, “the State Department is incapable of doing a proper analysis of the climate, wildlife, clean water, safety and other impacts of this disastrous and unneeded project” [...]

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Geniuses.

Do you suppose the eco-trendy crowd really, carefully thought this one through before jumping on the self-righteously outraged bandwagon? I have some pretty severe doubts on the matter, but they’re in this thing, and they’re certainly not going to back down now that they’ve invested so much time, money, and media coverage to the issue [...]

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Taking their sweet time.

Just FYI, President Obama is officially the last man standing in the trumped-up battle over the Keystone XL pipeline’s construction; the state of Nebraska, the State Department, the House, and now even the Democrat-controlled Senate have all given the project very much on-the-record green lights. As fond as the president is of intoning on the [...]

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Walking away?

House Republicans’ big meeting with President Obama on the Hill yesterday didn’t yield any sudden changes of heart on reaching some kind of big deficit bargain (shocking, considering how pure and straightforward I’m sure the president’s motives were, hem hem), but the president also kept his cards close to the vest on energy and how [...]

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Unlike these guys.

Just in case the Obama administration had any doubt as to whether or not the general American public is supportive of the Keystone XL pipeline’s construction while they continue to bend over backwards catering to well-monied, radical environmentalist interests, a new Fox News poll confirms that, why yes — the overwhelming majority of Americans are [...]

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Friday afternoon news dump.

TransCanada has only been waiting for the go-ahead for the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline for, oh, four or so years now, and the State Department has now several times concluded that the pipeline poses no real reason for environmental alarm — despite the vociferous protestations of its eco-critics. After having released an environmental impact review [...]

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Truth.

Like Ed noted after Sunday’s rather underwhelming anti-Keystone XL pipeline protest in DC, the project really is a no-brainer across all imaginable fronts — and the Obama administration’s continue stalling is getting politically incorrigible. It’s completely understandable that the president would want to wait to make such a controversial high-profile decision until after the election, [...]

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Mum's the word.

This entire time, I thought that there was hardly a real chance that the Obama administration would ultimately reject the Keystone XL pipeline when it really came down to it. Sure, they’ve been stalling out the wazoo — presumably hoping the PR furor over the proposal would die down a bit, and/or to think up [...]

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Curious.

Ambassadorships are the fairy dust of domestic goodwill for every President, and usually go to either big donors or prominent political supporters.  While some go to professional diplomats, a significant percentage usually go to cronies for loyalty, both present and future.  With that said, the latest trial balloon from State and the White House is [...]

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Stall tactics.

A couple weeks back, Nebraska Governor Heineman approved the portion of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would run through his state, obliterating the Obama administration’s last, best excuse for continuing to delay on what has become a politically explosive project. After what have already amounted to years of various reviews with positive results, the [...]

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What's the holdup, people?

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman signed off on TransCanada’s revised route through his state earlier this week, effectively clearing what the Obama administration has cited as a major hurdle to green-lighting the entire Keystone XL pipeline. Having already been through years of multiple State Department reviews, and with the southern portion of the project already under [...]

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Follow the money.

When conservatives insist that spending cuts — actual spending cuts, and not reductions in the rate of federal expansion — the common rebuttal is that reductions in federal outlays would touch off a massive recession.  But would that actually be true?  Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy look at the experience of Canada in the [...]

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"We feel that it's no longer safe to have representatives of the government of Canada in Tehran."

Does Canada know something about Iran and Israel the rest of us don’t? More than a couple of Hot Air readers posed that question after Canada announced that they would cut all diplomatic ties with the Iranians and pull their embassy out of Tehran. In fact, all of their diplomatic personnel had already left by [...]

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Questions and delays

In case you missed it – and judging by the content of the news cycle lately, you may well have – there has been some progress in the long delayed Keystone XL pipeline project. The progress is in the form of the last permits being approved for at least one of the three major sections [...]

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Entire families shot in their homes by Assad's forces.

Remember when the Obama administration demanded that Hosni Mubarak had to go “yesterday,” bombed Moammar Qaddafi, and then insisted that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad was a “reformer”?  The city of Houla became the latest recipient of Assad’s “reforms,” as 108 people got massacred by government forces and their allies: The U.N.’s human rights office on [...]

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More power to the IRS?

Time for another showdown over energy policy.  House Republicans included a provision in the new highway bill extension (five months) that would force the Obama administration to approve the complete construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.  The White House reacted about as well as one would imagine: The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto [...]

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Just great.

The damage is done. Even if President Barack Obama decides to approve the Keystone XL pipeline at some point in the future, he already sent a message to Canada that our northern neighbor can’t rely on us as its only energy customer — and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper heeded it. In an interview with [...]

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We love you, eh?

Andrew Malcolm brings us some good news on the front of international peace and love, but some bad news for the Great White North. It turns out that of all the many nations in the world, aside from our own, Americans love Canada the best. A new Gallup Poll finds that it’s become Americans’ most [...]

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That was fast

Last month we discussed the rather alarming news that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was planning a trip to China to discuss possible natural resources deals with the economic superpower. It seemed no coincidence that the trip was announced close on the heels of Barack Obama’s decision to kick the can down the road on [...]

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"We have a kerfuffle."

Via Yahoo Sports, which notes that this is airing on Sunday exclusively in Canada because “Canadians are much more likely to buy beer based on something like this than a maudlin, tedious slice of Americana involving children and Clydesdales. And vice versa.” Really? The eight-millionth iteration of the Clydesdales trotting in slo-mo is more likely [...]

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I really hate it when I'm right

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve reported on the delicate balance between Canada and the United States when it comes to energy supplies and the politics of petroleum here at home. As recently as last month, Ed was sounding the warning bells, noting that Canada has plenty of buyers for their oil and, [...]

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Operators are standing by ... in Beijing.

Canada has patiently waited for Americans to help themselves improve our energy policy by installing a pipeline from Canada’s oil sands to our refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, but this week Prime Minister Stephen Harper signaled that their patience has limits.  Speaking to CTV, Harper reminded the US that they have a very thirsty [...]

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“It allows us to continue to create jobs and growth in Canada."

How big a deal is this, really?  Yes, Canada became the first country to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, dealing a body blow to the anthropogenic climate-change hysterics movement.  However, it’s not as if the rest of the countries that signed it have been successful in implementing it.  In fact, the US achieved a [...]

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