2016 March 17^th

I call your attention to a misleading advertisement from the oil and gas industry: A young woman is hiking in a mountain area, probably the Rockies. She says of the trees, “These are my skyscrapers” and she is clearly concerned about preserving this wilderness. Next comes the message that we must maintain our energy independence by continuing reasonable oil and gas production. Fracking, the ad claims, has been safely done for 65 years.

What the ad doesn’t tell you is that the fracking that has a 65 year history of safety is vertical fracking. The fracking causing problems with Pennsylvania’s household wells producing flammable gas and the recent earthquakes in Oklahoma is quite different; it is horizontal fracking. This produces enormous amounts of gas, oil and profits. It also produces millions of gallons of wastewater so contaminated that it is unusable, cannot be allowed to enter the water table and must be pumped deep underground for everyone’s safety….So much for “Truth in advertising!”

For more truth in advertising we turn to politics. President Obama has nominated D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland to be a Justice of the Supreme Court. Judge Garland is as close to a centrist as anyone could expect from a Democratic President. He is 63 years old and his appointment to the D.C. Circuit Court was confirmed by a vote of 76 to 23 with 32 Republicans supporting his confirmation. None of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee dispute his qualifications for the job; they dispute the timing of the President’s nomination. The chief Republican honchos, Senator Grassley of the Judiciary Committee and Senator McConnell claim that any nomination should be delayed until after the election, “So that the people can decide.”

The Constitution is quite clear about most of this. It says that the President shall nominate someone to fill any vacancy and that the Senate shall give its advice and consent. It says nothing about, “…but not in an election year.” The Republican poohbahs are adamant about this; they will not talk to Judge Garland. Today he was in the Senate building talking to Democratic Senators. If a Republican Senator happened by I assume he would have hurried past to avoid having to be introduced to Judge Garland. This is what the Republican Party is reduced to.

Finally, the whole rationale for much of the Trump rebellion is that we have a “do nothing” Congress; this bunch of Republicans has been called the “party of no.” It is hard to fight that image if the party leaders refuse to even meet with the President’s nominee. Republicans want to defeat Trump while they provide him with evermore ammunition against themselves.