Arctic Drilling Here We Come

The Republican leadership rammed through legislation opening up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling by attaching it to a military spending bill. This came after they failed to convince enough of their own moderates to support drilling as part of the budget bill that was also passed late last night. Drilling for oil in Alaska has become a major objective for the Republican right wing: the promise of oil from up there has them all in a lather. I suppose this means that they won’t have to do anything about conservation which is a better and more reliable source of energy independence and therefore national security, but which offends too many of the Republican Party’s business supporters. I can hear the oil industry reaching for their check books already! Every time drilling in the Arctic has been debated it has been prevented by a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans. So the hardliners had to slip it through the backdoor. So much for democracy!