This morning, President Bush gave this keynote address at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC), a ministerial-level conference hosted by the U.S. government.

Trying to stamp down what he called “stereotypes,” Bush insisted the US was leading the effort to combat global warming:

Now, look, I understand stereotypes are hard to defeat. People get an image planted in their head, and sometimes it causes them not to listen to the facts. But America is in the lead when it comes to energy independence; we’re in the lead when it comes to new technologies; we’re in the lead when it comes to global climate change — and we’ll stay that way.

Watch it:

Bush’s claim defies the imagination. At the UN conference in Bali in December, the US objected to the proposal — backed by Britain and the EU — to cut carbon dioxide emissions 24-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. “We have problems with defining the numbers up front,” the White House’s head climate negotiator explained.

Six months earlier, Bush single-handedly killed a statement of commitment to halving emissions by 2050 by the leaders at the G8 summit.

While the US remains only industrialized nation that has refused to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, other nations are taking the lead:

–Britain has set a strong goal to cut CO2 emissions by 60 percent by 2050, leaving the door open for steeper cuts.

–Sweden will half its CO2 emissions by 2050.

–The European Union created a cap-and-trade system more than two years ago, in 2005.

–French President Nicolas Sarkozy has supported caps on airplane emissions.

–Japan announced last month that it would consider a cap-and-trade system.

Rather than taking real action to address our warming planet, as these nations have, Bush chooses to frequently — and grossly — inflate his record on combating climate change.

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Today, a bipartisan group of 14 senators introduced a bill “to stop regulators from easing media-ownership rules in the nation’s 20 largest cities.” The 32-year old ban — whose loosening is being pushed by Bush’s FCC chairman — is meant to “keep major media companies from monopolizing newspapers and broadcasters in their market.”

During a House Foreign Affairs hearing yesterday on future U.S. commitments to Iraq, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) pressed State Department Coordinator of Iraq Adm. David Satterfield to say whether it was “a constitutional requirement” for the administration to “consult with Congress…in the commitment of U.S. forces in a battle zone.”

Satterfield refused to answer, however, saying only that “the administration will comply fully with all of our constitutional requirements.”

Unsatisfied with Satterfield’s answer, Ackerman pressed further. “I’m not asking a hypothetical question,” said Ackerman. “I’m asking if this administration believes that it is duty-bound and constitutionally required to consult to go to war.” Ackerman then agreed to give Satterfield 24 hours “to respond in a formal fashion”:

SATTERFIELD: … I would ask at this point if you would please allow us to respond in a formal fashion to that as a taken question. [...]

ACKERMAN: How much time do you need?

SATTERFIELD: Twenty-four hours.

ACKERMAN: We’re waiting. Will the staff set the clock? Send out for dinner.

Watch it (the fun starts at about 3:00):

In a follow-on panel after the hearing, Yale law professor Oona Hathaway said that “anything that includes an authority to fight” — which Satterfield implied the administration’s agreement with Iraq would — “becomes an agreement that really must be submitted to Congress for approval either as a treaty or as a congressional-executive agreement.”

It has been 24 hours since Satterfield testified. ThinkProgress was unable to get a reply from Rep. Ackerman’s office when we inquired about whether they have received a response yet.

Transcript: Read more

Last month, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia sparked controversy when he defended torture on BBC radio, claiming that it’s “absurd” to say that the government “can’t stick something under the fingernails” of a suspect to get information. In Missouri last night, Scalia again said torture should be allowed. “It’s a bad thing to do,” said Scalia. “But not everything that is bad is unconstitutional.”

I suspect the drawn-out Democratic primary campaign will help John McCain and he’d better hope it does because things look terrible for him in this WaPost/ABC poll:

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama leads McCain, who captured the delegates needed to claim the Republican nomination Tuesday night, by 12 percentage points among all adults in the poll.; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) enjoys a six-point lead over the presumptive GOP nominee. Both Democrats are buoyed by moderates and independents in the head-to-heads and benefit from sustained negative public assessments of President Bush and the war in Iraq.

Of course early polling is basically worthless but what you’d expect to see is, over time, early polling converging with the fundamentals. Like maybe big picture indicators make things look good for one party, but the other party nominates someone with a super-awesome reputation so he has the lead. Then comes campaigning, attacks, slime, and basically the fundamentals take over. But the fundamentals for McCain are terrible — bad economy and an unpopular war.

For whatever it’s worth, I think the considerable evidence (seen in this poll and elsewhere) that a larger number of people are open to voting for Barack Obama than are open to voting for Hillary Clinton is a better indicator of electability than is the fact that Clinton is more popular than Obama among Democratic loyalists in several large states, but I don’t think either data point is worth very much.

I knew all about John Hagee’s views on Catholics and his belief that John McCain has the foreign policy vision necessary to bring about the end of the world, but I’m just now focusing on this business:

All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

This is the brand of Christianity that President McCain is going to be promoting?