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Defending Ann Coulter
It happens, however, that along with several hundred thousand other people, I have actually read her new book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism." I herewith stipulate that I have read her previous books as well. Oddly, while I am constantly entertained by her columns, I am frequently put off by her appearances on television in which she comes off as someone who knows she is the smartest person in the room and makes no pretence about it. A little humility, please! While promoting her book on television, Coulter made reference to a group of New Jersey women whose husbands were killed in the attack on the World Trade Center because, these "Jersey girls", having received huge compensations for their loss, then went public blaming President Bush for having failed to anticipate and prevent the 9-11 attacks. The mainstream media made much of them while ignoring some very key factors that undermined their views. Coulter, of course, did not. Following Coulter’s television appearance, on June 7 the two Senators attacked her and her book. Sen. Lautenberg said, "Ms. Coulter’s shameless attack on the victims of the worst act of terrorism in American history engenders disgust." Sen. Clinton suggested that "Perhaps her book should have been called ‘Heartless’", and called Coulter’s comments "a vicious, mean-spirited attack on people whom I’ve known over the last four and a half years to be concerned deeply about the safely and security of our country." Noticeably missing from the press reports was any mention of what Coulter actually wrote. "The 9-11 Commission was a scam and a fraud, the sole purpose of which was to cover up the disasters of the Clinton administration and distract the nation’s leaders during wartime. Not only did the Jersey girls claim credit for this Clinton whitewash machine, they spent most of the hearings denouncing the Bush administration for not stopping the 9-11 attacks from the weak position handed it by the Clinton administration." The gist of what Kristen Breitweiser, Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg, and Patty Casazza claimed was that the August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing should have alerted Bush to order immediate action to prevent 9-11. Coulter notes in her book that "all the information about bin Laden in the August PDB comes from the nineties. Not one fact in the PDB is more recent than 1999." This inconvenient fact was rarely, if ever, mentioned by the media. "Mostly the witches of East Brunswick wanted George Bush to apologize for not being Bill Clinton," was Coulter’s take on the Jersey girls, but "The rest of the nation was more interested in knowing why the FBI was prevented from being given intelligence about 9-11 terrorists here in the United States more than a year before the attack…" The answer is that Clinton’s deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, "had specifically prohibited intelligence agents from telling law enforcement agents about suspected terrorists in the country." And who did the Democrats put on the 9-11 Commission? Jamie Gorelick! Adding to her criticism of the Jersey girls, Coulter wrote, "Needless to say, the Democrat ratpack gals endorsed John Kerry for president." A whole lot of partisanship was going on! The Associated Press rendition of Sens. Lautenberg’s and Clinton’s comments contained no balancing statements of support for Coulter except to note at the very end, "Coulter’s new book was Amazon.com’s most popular selection last night." If, at this point, you want to read some vicious, mean-spirited quotes by Sen. Clinton, they and others have been gathered together in a new book, "I’ve Always Been a Yankees Fan": Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words" by Thomas D. Kuiper. In a foreword by Dick Morris, he writes, "Hillary thinks that nobody is keeping track and that her quotes will never catch up with her." Following her now classic statement that a "vast right-wing conspiracy" had been "conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president", Hillary reportedly told her aides, "That’ll teach them to f—k with us." History, of course, would reveal that President Clinton was guilty of having sex in the Oval Office, lying to a federal judge about it, was disbarred, and, in his final hours as president, engaged in an orgy of very questionable pardons. Et cetera! In a speech to religious leaders in 1997, Hillary said, "I have to confess that it’s crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian." The author of "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" does a very good job making her case and if some Jersey girls get a public spanking in the process, so be it. As the price of gasoline and the myriad products that utilize petroleum in their manufacture rises, Americans are going to ask why the Congress has resisted accessing the billions of barrels’ worth of oil and natural gas in our offshore continental shelf. As the realization of how dependent we are on the importation of Middle Eastern oil, plus the fact that U.S. dollars fund avowed enemies such as Iran and, in South America, Venezuela, Americans are going to ask why we do not tap our own Alaskan and offshore resources. As a matter of national security and as a significant boost to the American economy, it makes no sense to not assure and achieve a higher level of energy independence. So why, in mid-May, did the House of Representatives reject an end to the quarter-century ban on oil and natural gas drilling in 85 percent of America’s coastal waters? At the time, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, issued a statement that both defied logic and flatout lied, saying the vote against offshore drilling was great victory for consumers who have seen prices rise prodigiously. "In the meantime, working families are turning their wallets inside out to fill their gas tanks. It is outrageous to ask families to dig even deeper to subsidize oil drilling on undersea lands that belong to the American people." Americans are paying more because the global price of a barrel of oil has been increased by fears of military conflict in the Middle East, probably initiated by Iran. Americans are paying more because, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes destroyed 115 oil platforms and damaged another 50, along with 183 pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico and refineries in Louisiana. Despite this, the U.S. Mineral Management Service (MMS) reported that there were no significant oil spills from offshore platforms and no oil reached the coastline.
As for those big profits enjoyed by "Big Oil", it’s worth noting that a single offshore drilling platform costs about $100 million dollars to build and that comes after the equally enormous costs of exploring for oil and natural gas resources. And "Big Oil" not only pays big taxes on its profits, but also employs thousands of Americans in the process. According to the Consumer Alliance for Energy Security, the Offshore Continental Shelf (OCS)—85 percent of which is off-limits to exploration—is estimated to have enough natural gas to heat 100 million homes for the next 60 years and enough oil to drive 85 million cars for 35 years. Thanks to the vote in the House, it remains off-limits. When the House of Representatives voted to open the Arctic Refuge to oil drilling in late May, Rep. Pelosi again issued a statement decrying "the same, tired ideas on energy such as opening the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. We should not sacrifice the Arctic coastal plain, one of America’s last truly wild places, for the sake of a small amount of oil." Small? Well, if anyone considers an estimated 10.4 billion barrels to the nation’s oil supply "small", then one wonders what they consider large? The vote was 225 to 201. In truth, only 2,000 of the nearly 20 million acres of ANWR would be needed for oil and gas production, contributing billions in tax revenue, and creating or sustaining thousands of American jobs. Opening ANWR and the Offshore Continental Shelf would bring many benefits. Put simply, more oil and natural gas means lower prices. With it come greater national security and more independence from the vagaries of Middle Eastern politics. Speaking for the Democrats and echoing the cries of environmental organizations opposed to energy independence, Rep. Pelosi called for "home-grown renewable energy, innovative technologies, and efficient use of energy in our homes, vehicles, workplaces, and factories." Blah, blah, blah! This is the kind of empty environmental rhetoric that has left Americans paying higher prices for oil and natural gas than ever before. It posits the use of wind and solar energy on a scale that is neither viable, nor realistic because neither will ever produce enough energy to replace conventional sources. Rep. Pelosi said that, "America’s farmers will fuel our energy independence", apparently by "rapidly expand[ing] the production and distribution of biofuels, encourage[ing] the deployment of new engine technologies for flex fuel, hybrid and biodiesel vehicles; and encourage[ing] cutting-edge research to develop the next revolution in renewable energy." The notion that America or any of the other industrialized nations of the world will be able to depend on energy sources from corn and other agricultural products in the near future is absurd. Moreover, it ignores the vast reserves of known and yet to be discovered of oil and natural gas that exist. The problem, of course, is getting Congress to permit America to actually access its own resources! The effort to open a relatively small portion of ANWR has been stalled for three decades. The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act was passed in 1953! It authorized the Department of the Interior to lease defined areas for development. According to the Energy Information Administration, "The offshore has accounted for about one-quarter of total U.S. natural gas production over the past two decades and almost 30 percent of total U.S. oil production in recent years." "In 2003, MMS estimated that there was 406.1 trillion cubic feet of remaining undiscovered technically recoverable natural gas and 76 billion barrels of oil in U.S. offshore regions." So why, in 1990, did former President George Walker Bush enact a blanket moratorium on all unleased areas offshore of North and Central California, Southern California except for 87 tracts, Washington, Oregon, the North Atlantic coast, and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico coast? The moratorium was extended in 1998 by former President Clinton through 2012. Why has the Congress of the United States refused to permit the exploration and extraction of our nation’s own natural gas and oil resources? Why does a coalition of 27 of the nation’s leading environmental organizations continue to campaign against access? And why do ordinary Americans have to remain at the mercy of Middle Eastern nations and major suppliers like Venezuela? There are literally trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and billions of oil barrels extant in the offshore continental coast of the United States. Every day on 4,000 offshore platforms natural gas and oil is extracted from Federal waters in an environmentally sensitive manner. There is an extremely dangerous game being played by the White House, Congress, and environmental organizations that is placing the economy and the security of America at great risk. If energy independence is what this nation needs—and it does—it is ours for the taking. Like many independent think tanks, the Center relies on your donation to maintain its communications program. If you feel you have benefited from this edition of Warning Signs, please consider making a small donation. If you prefer, you can send a check to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you!
©
2006 Alan Caruba. |
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Defending Ann Coulter who has come under attack by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) seems an oxymoron. She is the last person who needs to be defended, given the fact that she is a lawyer who presumably can defend herself and possesses a positively frightening intellect and wit.
And, no, Americans do not "subsidize" oil drilling. Pelosi’s boogeyman of "Big Oil." Indeed, as a report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration noted in 2005, the MMS "collects and disperses billions of dollars in revenue from the sale of mineral leases. Offshore leases brought in revenues of $5.2 billion in 2000. This represents 73.1 percent of the $7.1 billion in revenues collected from all Federal and American Indian mineral leases that year."