Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Say what?

Just in time for the global warming debate to move from the House to the Senate, the Grist online magazine, which calls itself “a beacon in the smog,” has an interesting research project on its site.

Grist writers looked at the official Web sites of all U.S. senators to see how clearly they express their views on the environment. It didn’t matter what the views were. All that mattered was how well a visitor could understand the senator’s point of view.

Our Republican Texas senators had a mixed showing.

Out of a possible 25 maximum points, John Cornyn came in with 13 points, a solid C. Not a bad showing against people like New Mexico Democrat Jeff Bingaman at 8 and Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, at 10.

Not that a Republican do better than some Democrats on being transparent on their environmental stance. In fact, the project showed no real pattern by party.

Then there’s Kay Bailey. Senator Hutchison earned an F with 4 points. Now she did beat out Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa, with a 2, Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, who got a 0, and couple of other people. So I hope Rick "I-Never-Met-A-Can-Of-Hairspray-I-Didn’t-Like" Perry doesn’t use the poor showing against her. But maybe he uses a pump bottle instead of a spray.

There were several surprises, like Republicans Orrin Hatch, of Utah; Olympia Snowe, of Maine and James "Greenhouse-Warming-Is-A-Hoax" Inhofe, of Oklahoma, all trouncing Ted Kennedy.
The big winner with 24 out of 25 points? That would be Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota. Never heard of her. But I’m sure she’s very popular up north, and they can be proud she’s their senator.

By the way, the other Democratic Minnesota senator, Al Franken, didn’t have a Web site to survey at the time.

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