Inside Politics

Planet saver

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is “trying to save the planet” by preventing a vote on offshore oil drilling.

Mrs. Pelosi used those words in an interview with David Rogers of the Politico. His article on the California congresswoman appeared Tuesday at www.politico.com.

“With fewer than 20 legislative days before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the entire appropriations process has largely ground to a halt because of the ham-handed fighting that followed Republican attempts to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration,” Mr. Rogers wrote. “And after promising fairness and open debate, Pelosi has resorted to hard-nosed parliamentary devices that effectively bar any chance for Republicans to offer policy alternatives.

“‘I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,’ she says impatiently when questioned. ‘I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.’”

Green and black

Climate change is now a racial issue, according to global-warming activists and a high-ranking Democratic congressman, the Business and Media Institute’s Jeff Poor writes at www.businessandmedia.com.

“It is critical our community be an integral and active part of the debate because African-Americans are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change economically, socially and through our health and well-being,” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina said Tuesday.

Mr. Clyburn, who is black, spoke at the National Press Club to help launch the Commission to Engage African-Americans on Climate Change, a project of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

The launch came on the heels of a separate report by the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, which claims blacks are more vulnerable than whites to the effects of climate change. EJCC describes itself as a “climate justice” advocacy group.

“Though far less responsible for climate change, African-Americans are significantly more vulnerable to its effects than non-Hispanic whites,” the report says. “Health, housing, economic well-being, culture and social stability are harmed from such manifestations of climate change as storms, floods and climate variability.

“African-Americans are also more vulnerable to higher energy bills, unemployment, recessions caused by global energy price shocks and a greater economic burden from military operations designed to protect the flow of oil to the U.S.”

Newsweek’s cover

“The problem with the New Yorker’s Obama bin Laden cover was owed to a certain confusion about the moral status of wit,” Leon Wieseltier writes in the New Republic.

“The image was the creation of people for whom there is almost nothing more mortifying than not being in on the joke. That is the bridge and tunnel of the soul. So it is worth interjecting that the duty to get a joke is always followed by the duty to judge a joke. More, it is possible to get a joke and to hate it. I make such jokes often: I wish to be funny because I wish to offend. The New Yorker wishes to be funny but it does not wish to offend. No, that’s not fair. It is prepared to offend Dick Cheney. But now its urbanity has backfired and it has offended Barack Obama, than which there is no greater blasphemy. …

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