... Democrat in the White House, right?

Clearly you don't and neither do I- nor should anyone else.

It is wise to doubt all politicians but I don't doubt them all the same.

Tuesday was truly a black day & we're just now hearing about it. It should have been on every headline Wednesday! Canada will probably try to get around British Columbian objections, too.

It's a messy issue.

There's the issue of jobs. How you count them varies. The thing is, how you count the number of jobs created by highway construction funds varies in precisely the same way. Now we count short-term jobs that build infrastructure; now we ignore them. Now we count jobs that result from the knock-on effect of what the infrastructure gives us; now we discount them.

There's the issue of pollution. Now it's how the shale oil is produced that's the real concern. Years ago it was the fact it was thick, sludgy, difficult to process oil that was the real concern. Now that the old real concern isn't a real concern anymore, the newest real concern is that the oil has too many volatile components and isn't thick and sludgy enough.

Of course, this is as we ponder the glories of Russian oil and gas and the out-sized control it has. But I digress.

Then there's the debate over whether the Congress is stripping away the President's constitutional authority. The answer appears to be not really. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/04/10/can-congress-overrule-obama-on-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/ was the story a year ago, and nothing much has changed. Congress is well within its enumerated rights--the executive has only been in charge of approving such things because Congress hasn't stepped up the plate much in the last century or so. In the absence of "international commerce" we've relied on "foreign affairs"--as though they were the same thing. The real question is whether Congress, having failed to exercise that right for so long, can suddenly start exercising it. At what point does precedent start overruling text? Of course, the precedent was decided by progressives who *wanted* the president to stripped of the authority to approve such things, whereas now progressives want to the president to have sole authority to approve such things. It's not about the Constitution, it's just about power. And power is a damned crappy moral principle.

Moreover, I find this to be a silly point. For the last 70+ years Congress has failed to declare war before the president goes to war. Does that mean that only the President is is allowed to declare de facto war on his own and that Congress has forfeited any right to declare war de jure? (Presumably the anwer has to lie in whether progressives consider the war to be one that they personally want, and who's in favor of it, not in any concern for the actual Constitution.)

have thought about this. Years ago he was President of the Portland Pipeline. I do know that, in his era, they were really pro-active in being ready to handle any oil spills in Casco Bay.

to D.C. to help our country, not themselves. What we have now are a bunch of thieves.

I suppose we have to do the opposite.

They wouldn't want to disappoint their corporate masters, would they?