I guess it was a slow news day

SCANDAL IN WASHINGTON! Apparently Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was demanding that she be given a plane with all the comforts to fly nonstop between her district in San Francisco and Washington D.C. Except for one problem.....she wasn't. Apparently as protection as she is third in the line of succession, this is automatically granted to her. I'm not a huge Pelosi fan myself, but to show how utterly meaningless the story is here's a quote from Tony Snow.

"This is a silly story and I think it's been unfair to the speaker."

Who is this Tony Snow? This ultra left wing liberal who only criticizes Republicans and defends Democrats at a moment's notice?? Oh. The White House Press Secretary. And he used to work for Fox News. Never mind.

So even though the White House doesn't even have a problem with the policy, that didn't stop some of the more pathetic and desperate Republican lawmakers from complaining about the plan. Afraid he hadn't made enough of a fool of himself during last year's InternGate scandal, my Congressman Patrick McHenry raked Pelosi over the coals.

"The jet that Pelosi has produces 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide an hour, far more than the previous speaker used,"

Obviously, the environment is very important to Mr. McHenry. He is concerned about how carbon emissions will affect our planet and if there's one thing he stands for, it's a cleaner planet for all. He is so believing in these ideals, that he is willing to take a stand and say "NO SIR" to allowing rampant pollution even if the policy is to protect the line of succession.

Inspired by my Congressman's courageous stand, I went to the league of Conservation Voters website. They are a non-partisan group. Here is their mission as stated on their website.

"To secure the environmental future of our planet, LCV’s mission is to advocate for sound environmental policies and to elect pro-environmental candidates who will adopt and implement such policies."

So as you can tell, their goal stated simply pro-environment. As many groups of an issue-oriented nature do, they publish scorecards of Congressional voting records as based on selected votes that the group feels is important to their cause. That scorecard can be found here.

I felt sure that Congressman McHenry's strong pro-environmental record would be reflected in the scores. Sadly, that is not the case. During the Congressional section, McHenry's voting record scored 11% for the environment. That is out of a possible 100%. 2006 was even more dismal. Not one vote that the League of Conservation Voters tracked did McHenry vote in the pro-environmental way. Therefore he laid a goose egg of 0%. Here's the list of those stats.

I am not affiliated with the League of Conservation Voters in any way. I think it's important in some cases to be for the environment, but I guarantee you that I am not what you'd call a "green" activist. I just thought I'd share some of these statistics with you since Congressman Patrick McHenry is going to grandstand and try to pretend he care's deeply about an issue when he's only trying to score political points.

Oh and by the way, I checked my SiteMeter a little while back and noticed that someone from the house.gov domain was reading my blog. I don't know if this was Patrick McHenry or a member of his staff. It could have been anyone on the House network. But if by chance it was and you come across this blog again, a word of advice. If you're going to try to grandstand, be a little wiser in this day and age where it's so easy to quickly find information. I'd appreciate it if you at least pretended you didn't think all of your constituents were total morons. Thanks!