I am often critical of the near-death Newsweek — see Why has a Newsweek economics editor, Stefan Theil, written “basically a condensed version of the climate denier viewpoint”?

But they have a great science editor (see Why climate change is “even worse than we feared”).  And Sharon Begley has written another good piece:

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Absent the extra-constitutional 60 vote ‘requirement’ in the Senate, today would probably be marking a real anniversary for the nation and the world.

As it is, intransigence and demagoguing by the anti-science ideologues, coupled with the unbearable lameness of being (Rahm and Axelrod), have killed a market-oriented, business-friendly, economy-wide emissions-reduction bill, which is based on a strategy once strongly embraced by moderate Republicans like President Bush’s father.  Today, however, there simply is no reasonable middle ground that mainstream (aka pro-pollution) U.S. conservatives won’t demonize “” a sharp contrast to conservative leaders in a country like, say, the UK.

But the House climate bill deserves to be remembered — in part because parts of it may yet come back from the grave (see “It’s alive!“).  So I’m excerpting my June 26, 2009 piece, “The U.S. House of Representatives approves landmark (bipartisan!) climate bill, 219 – 212. Waxman-Markey would complete America’s transition to a clean energy economy, which started with the stimulus bill.”

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The federal judge who presided over a challenge to the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling simultaneously owned stock in an oil company affected by the ban, according to a financial disclosure statement released Friday.

U.S. District Judge Martin L.C. Feldman sold the stock in Exxon Mobil 14 days after the case was filed in New Orleans by a group of oil service firms — and less than five hours before he struck down the moratorium.