I was scanning your "Climate Warriors and Heroes" and was shocked to find our own dear Governator on the list. The man proudly drives Humvees, for crying out loud! And while he has proposed some worthwhile measures, he still insists upon business trumping all when there is even a whiff of conflict. Regretfully his inclusion makes those on the list whose actions I am unfamiliar with suspect, which I doubt most deserve.

Why on earth did anyone feel there was value to his inclusion? He may not be a pure villian on this issue as our beloved War President is, but he sure as hell is not a "warrior and hero" in it either, and shouldn't be allowed to believe that he is.

Cheers,

Patrick Ellis

Berkeley, CA

Kennedy's anger at Specter was misplaced. He should have instead been directing that anger against Alito for blatantly lying to the committee with his claim that he couldn't remember his association with CAP. Look at the original application (p. 16, URL below) and it becomes obvious how clearly Alito was lying, because it's not like this membership was part of a long list of associations in the application, it is rather one of just a few he lists. Either he's not a "joiner" or he felt it was particularly worth highlighting, but either way he's going to remember having been a member and why.

Feinstein also could have nailed him to the wall on abortion using the same document and reasoning. Again, in a fairly sparse application, he chose to note how "particularly proud" he was of his work to "advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly." Again, he chose to list only two such areas that made him so proud, one of which was the Reagan Administration's attempts to argue "that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." She worked these words, but from what I've heard she also failed to note how little else is said in the document and so how obviously these particular words were carefully choosen (or, if not, do we really want someone who chooses their words so casually writing Supreme Court rulings?).

Read all about it: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/alito/8105.pdf

In the end, it seems that decorum seems to matter more to the senators than revealing truths about Alito's agenda. This is as disheartening as watching Thomas get away with claiming he'd never given the issue of the legal basis for abortion any thought. Or, for that matter, watching Congress vote nearly unanimously to give Bush a blank check for the Iraq War.

Do they have any appreciation for just how important their jobs are?

It's heartening to know that the president has "...objections with spending federal money on something that is morally objectionable to many Americans." Somehow I never got the impression before.

Back in the early '80s I was working at a major engineering construction firm that built a lot of power plants. I was working in the finance department doing research for the senior economist & was assigned to pull together some numbers on electrical demand projections.

I was pointed to NERC data because they were considered the most authoritative source in the industry. When I looked at their projections it was both easy and hard to understand why--easy because they always projected hyper growth in demand, so they provided endless justification for investment in more plants; hard because every year actual demand growth was well below their projection of just a few years prior. A graph I produced compiling a decade of their projections looked like a bunch of curved blades of grass, each curving sharply upward, but each starting at close to the same level because actual demand growth was much, much slower than NERC's projection.

Any growth using the currently dominant power-generating technologies is problematic, to say the least, so I don't differ with the author's conclusions. However, NERC should be seen as the industry hack they are and their projections should be read as pure marketing palbum. That the media uncritically trumpets these projections and stirs the pot of scarcity fear for the industry's profit is sadly just another manifestation of the dysfunction of our system, and is as much or more to blame for the fix we're in as all the knuckle-dragging of the Bush administration.