California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) repeatedly touts the environment as his top priority — he even changed his official campaign color to green.

Yet Schwarzenegger recently announced his opposition to the Clean Alternative Energy Initiative, a landmark ballot measure that would finance alternative energy research and development by imposing a tax on oil companies. (The initiative is backed by dozens of California green groups, and would boost the state’s economy according to UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.)

The governor’s opposition might have something to do with the nearly $2 million in campaign contributions from oil companies he’s received since 2002. Chevron gave a total of $600,000 to his campaign and paid for his trip to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Chevron also reportedly enjoyed “considerable influence” over the content of the Governor’s major reform proposals in 2004, which included significant benefits for the oil industry.

And which oil company is the #1 donor to the group opposing the clean energy initiative? Chevron, which has given a whopping $3,740,000, more than three times the amount of the next 14 donors combined.

Today, Senate Coverup Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) attacked the media for writing about the SWIFT bank records tracking program, and he called for a “formal damage assessment” to be done by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. (Dan Froomkin today explained how the “existence of SWIFT itself has not exactly been a secret.”)

Roberts began his attack on the media yesterday:

If another attack occurs because of this information going out…the people who have written these stories and the people who have made their decisions should look in the mirror.

But Roberts is the one who needs to “look in the mirror” about the effects leaks have on national security. The National Journal’s Murray Waas reported in April that during the start of the Iraq war, Roberts disclosed sensitive intelligence in a speech he delivered (ironically enough) to the National Newspaper Association:

[T]hree years ago on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Roberts himself was involved in disclosing sensitive intelligence information that, according to four former senior intelligence officers, impaired efforts to capture Saddam Hussein and potentially threatened the lives of Iraqis who were spying for the United States.

On March 20, 2003, at the onset of military hostilities between U.S. and Iraqi forces, Roberts said in a speech to the National Newspaper Association that he had “been in touch with our intelligence community” and that the CIA had informed President Bush and the National Security Council “of intelligence information from what we call human intelligence that indicated the location of Saddam Hussein and his leadership in a bunker in the suburbs of Baghdad.”

The former intelligence officials said in interviews that Roberts was never held accountable for his comments, which bore directly on the issue of intelligence-gathering sources and methods, and revealed that Iraqis close to Hussein were probably talking to the United States.

As former intelligence officials told Waas, the incident showed “how rank and file intelligence professionals now have much to fear from legitimate and even inadvertent contacts with journalists, while senior executive branch officials and members of Congress are almost never held accountable when they seriously breach national security through leaks of information.”

House Majority Leader Boehner (R-OH) yesterday released a package of bills called the “American Values Agenda” aimed at “energizing social conservatives five months before the midterm elections.” The first bill, to keep the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, has already failed. “Republicans could not muster a simple majority on the issue in a committee where they outnumber Democrats by six.”

The Legal Times reports that another Bush administration official is expected to plead guilty as a result of the ongoing Abramoff probe:

Roger Stillwell, the desk officer for the Mariana Islands at the U.S. Department of the Interior who dealt closely with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is expected to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of false certification, his attorney confirmed Wednesday.

Stillwell has previously acknowledged that he accepted dinners at Abramoff’s restaurant and tickets to Washington Redskins games. He also said he sent Abramoff copies of e-mails he sent to his boss, but he claimed that there was nothing “wrong with doing that.”

The guilty plea will come on the heels of a conviction handed down by a jury last week against former White House procurement chief David Safavian. “So far five people “” Abramoff and former associates Michael Scanlon, Tony Rudy, Neil Volz, and Adam Kidan “” have pleaded guilty.”

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands was a major client of Abramoff, paying him over $1 million to stop legislation aimed at cracking down on sweatshops and sex shops in the American territory. (That legislation still hasn’t passed).

More at TPMmuckraker. Read about the Abramoff scandal HERE.

in Iraq with Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI). The “congressmen planned to persuade the U.S. military commander to lend them the equipment and men to go digging by the Euphrates” for a cache of WMD believed to be there.

A new report on electronic voting machines by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice — “billed as the most authoritative to date” — finds that “it would take only one person, with a sophisticated technical knowledge and timely access to the software that runs the voting machines, to change the outcome” of an election. Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), who leads Congress on the issue, has much more.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has retracted its false report that Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) called the United States the greatest threat to world peace:

Correction: An article in Sunday’s editions misinterpreted a comment from U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., at a town hall meeting in North Miami on Saturday. In his speech, Murtha said U.S. credibility was suffering because of continued U.S. military presence in Iraq ,and the perception that the U.S. is an occupying force. Murtha was citing a recent poll, by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, that indicates a greater percentage of people in 10 of 14 foreign countries consider the U.S. in Iraq a greater danger to world peace than any threats posed by Iran or North Korea.

The purported quote was seized upon by right-wing pundits, who claimed that Murtha had put “all Americans in danger” and was “in the thrall” of anti-American activists. Now they need to correct the record and let their viewers know that Murtha was quoted erroneously.

Email Bill O’Reilly, Brit Hume, Joe Scarborough, and Tucker Carlson — oreilly@foxnews.com, brit.hume@foxnews.com, joe@msnbc.com, Tucker@msnbc.com — and urge them to correct the record for their viewers. (Feel free to repost your letters in the comments section, and let us know if you hear back.)

On the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said there was nothing the Senate could be doing that was more important than banning flag burning. Watch it:

Is Hatch familar with the Iraq war, terrorism, the energy crisis, the 45 million Americans without health insurance or the 37 million Americans living in poverty?

Transcript:

I was asked this afternoon by a large body of media: Is this the most important thing the Senate could be doing at this time? I can tell you: You’re darned right it is.

Since 1996, at least 10 current and former lawmakers have attended an annual “Waterfall Fishing Tournament” at the expensive Waterfall resort in Alaska. Marketplace, which reported on this story yesterday, noted that the event benefitted a charity run by former Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK). Some facts on the trip:

The trip was an opportunity for “the energy industry’s top brass” to influence lawmakers. In addition to the lawmakers, high-ranking executives from the nation’s top oil firms — including British Petroleum, American Petroleum Institute, and Amoco — attended the Waterfall excursions. Companies with business before Congress occasionally provided free trips to Waterfall for lawmakers and top executives on private company jets.

Lawmakers may have violated congressional ethics rules by not paying for the trips. A 1996 letter to Murkowski from the Senate Ethics Committee “expressly forbid senators from accepting free travel or lodging to attend the event.” A separate 1996 rule also banned House members. Nevertheless, nine out of the 10 lawmakers who attended the Waterfall trips accepted free travel or lodging. (Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI) was the only lawmaker who personally paid for the total costs.)

Marketplace could find no PAC, personal, or campaign payments for the trip from Hastert, Lott, or Murkowski. While the House lifted its ethics restrictions in 2003, Hastert went on the Waterfall trips in 1999 and 2000 and was therefore bound by the rules.

View more images from the Waterfall trips here.