[Program Note: This was yet another one of those stories which were largely ignored by the mainstream media last year. Perhaps regional media in Appalachia covered it, but the national organizations mostly took a pass on reporting it. Which is a shame, because it seems to suggest the closing of a very dark era in the history of U.S. mining. Anyone who doubts the severity of the ecological destruction this practice causes should really check out this article on Crooks And Liars by fellow blogger Matt Osborne (of the intrepid Osborne Ink site), and view his two videos -- which lay bare (brutal pun intended) this rapacious mining technique's devastation in a very moving way. As you can see from Matt's article and his documentaries, even though the E.P.A. has taken baby steps in the right direction, there's still a long path to travel in order to ban this practice forever. If the whole subject is too depressing for you, then I guess you can read the article I wrote last month which shows some optimism in the American mining field, in a story that has recently gotten some attention due to China's announcement this week that they'll be cutting back their shipments of rare earth minerals to the rest of the world (which is more than just "significant," as they currently control 97 percent of the world market).]

[Originally published 4/22/10]

Happy 40th Earth Day, everyone!

Earth Day, as we all know, got going through the efforts of some starry-eyed idealistic hippie-types four decades ago. The "ecology" movement scored some of its biggest victories almost immediately, under (gasp!) President Richard Nixon, with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and passage of some updated federal anti-pollution laws. Since that time, it has become the very mainstream "environmental movement." Today (for instance), most people recycle things without a second thought for where the concept came from.

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[Note: Since it's Tuesday, I thought I'd run a favorite Tuesday-type article from last year. I promise, tomorrow I'll get back to being serious.]

[Originally published 3/2/10]

The title of this piece quotes the well-known philosopher Jeremy Hilary Boob, PhD. The full quote is, of course:

Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo
So little time! So much to know!

and comes to us from the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine, right before singing a song about Boob, Nowhere Man.

If you think this is building up to some deep and meaningful point, well, it's not. Sorry to disappoint you.

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[Note: This article ran the day before Barack Obama's first year in office concluded. It also ran one day before Massachusetts' special Senate election to replace Teddy Kennedy. I thought it was appropriate to run today because the White House, over the weekend, indicated that it needed to address this very problem -- getting outside Washington more often. I've added links to the note at the bottom, to another interesting article from last year, from two guest authors.]

[Originally published 1/19/10]

It is significant, to me at least, that President Barack Obama's true first anniversary in office is about to be overshadowed by a special election to fill a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Think about it for a minute -- Obama's milestones have been obsessively tracked by the media, with countless stories about his "first 100 days" in office (and even quite a few on his "first 50 days"), lots of followup "second 100 days" articles, and then a truly bizarre paroxysm of stories on the anniversary of his election night. But as we approach the real milestone, tomorrow at noon (East Coast time), any "first year" stories are likely to be buried beneath microscopic analysis of whatever happens tonight in the Bay State. This is a stunning turnaround from not just a year ago, but from a few months ago. And, as I said, it is significant, because many are now left wondering: how did we get here? How did Obama get to the point he occupies now, from where he was a year ago?

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First, the bad news -- we'll be running repeat columns all week here at CW.com. I'm going to start a tradition here, I think, of running my five personal favorite columns from the past year in the last week on the calendar. This tradition may need some adjustment in the future, but the way the calendar falls this year, it's going to work out perfectly between the two year-end holidays.

One of the main reasons I'll be running past favorites this week is to devote my time, instead, to fixing up the site a bit. I'm almost done with updating (and, in some cases, writing) all of the static-text pages here (such as "About The Blog"), so that's one item I can almost cross of the list already. My next priority is to get the "Email Chris" page working again, as it has been broken for about nine or ten months, which is simply inexcusable (sorry about that). And my third priority will be to fix some annoying site bugs. I'll also be doing some chores that have slipped my attention in the past few months, and exploring a few writing projects that have been on the back burner for too long.

As for the good news -- the first person who commented last Wednesday on my article over at The Huffington Post was right -- Lawrence O'Donnell did indeed lead off his MSNBC show that night (12/23/10) by reading a quote from that day's article. Here's the transcript of his opening remarks:

As one blogger for The Huffington Post puts it, quote, "Obama had two choices after the midterm election. He could either have had a battle royale with Republicans over tax cuts for the wealthy and risk losing this battle. Or Obama could have cut a deal quickly in return for allowing the Senate time to move on many other important issues. He chose to deal." So, did the gamble pay off?

This quote was provided by the Daily Howler site, where they thankfully dug out my name to add to the story (which O'Donnell somehow neglected to do). I have written to MSNBC's The Last Word folks requesting a video of this segment (since it was not posted on their show's website for some reason), which I hope to provide here in the near future (or, at the very least, provide a link to view the video).

Anyone with too much time on their hands who is bored by repeat columns this week, feel free to send the show an email asking them why this clip isn't up on their website. Maybe they'll fix this oversight if enough folks show an interest. It's worth a try....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!

In case you missed it, Part 1 of our "McLaughlin Awards" (named for the television show where we get these categories, of course) ran last week, so check it out.

Also for your convenience, here are all the previous years of these columns as well:

[2009, Part 1] [2009, Part 2]
[2008, Part 1] [2008, Part 2]
[2007, Part 1] [2007, Part 2]
[2006, Part 1] [2006, Part 2]

   Destined For Political Stardom

If I was taking the category literally, here, I would award this to Kim Jong Un, the dictator-in-waiting in North Korea. In the first-ever-of-its-kind dynastic communist state (I don't think Marx or Lenin approved much of familial royalty-style dynasties, personally, but what do I know?), the third in the line of Kim Jong Il (father) and Kim Il Sung (grandfather) certainly is destined for a personality-cult stardom in North Korea, one way or another.

In our own dynastic political world, here in America, we have our runner-up for the "political stardom" award, none other than Rand Paul, son of the revered-by-libertarians Ron Paul. Paul (the younger) just won a Senate seat, besting Paul (the elder) who is only a lowly House member. On the Republican side of the aisle, though, Rand Paul seems destined for much more attention than most incoming freshmen senators -- due to his last name, but also due to some (shall we say) creative ideological positions he took during the campaign. One way or another, my bet is that Rand Paul's name is going to be in the news a lot in the coming year.

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[Program Note: This column originally ran three years ago, and every so often I dust it off and run it again, to allow me to do some Christmas shopping and whatnot. What with Part 2 of our "McLaughlin Awards" running tomorrow, there just wasn't time to put together a column today. Don't forget to check back here tomorrow (or over the weekend) for the second part of our year-end roundup, and for today I hope you'll enjoy my "go to" Christmas column. Thanks again to everyone who has donated in our 2010 Holiday Pledge Drive, allowing us to exceed our fundraising goal. And hope you've all got your shopping and wrapping done, too.]

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President Barack Obama gave an afternoon press conference today, and he sounded a lot more confident than he has sounded for quite a while. The reason for this is that the 111th Congress is ending with a bang, and not the expected whimper. After the Democrats' "shellacking" (to use Obama's preferred term) in the midterm elections, few inside-the-Beltway prognosticators figured much of anything would get done in the lame duck session of Congress before the newly-elected Congress is seated in January. As it turned out, this conventional wisdom was wrong. The lame duck Congress produced more weighty legislation than most lame ducks manage -- a fitting end to two years with more significant legislative victories than any Congress since Lyndon B. Johnson (or even Franklin D. Roosevelt, depending on how you score these things). Which is why President Obama had good reason to sound as confident as he did today.

Of course, what the lame duck Congress actually achieved has not pleased everyone. Detractors from the Left and the Right denounced this action or that which Congress achieved in these few short weeks. But most Americans are actually pretty satisfied with the results, if the polls are to be believed.

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In what has become an annual tradition here, one of our first columns of the new year will highlight the yearly "official banished words" list. As always, the intrepid folks at Lake Superior State University are putting the finishing touches on this year's list, but there is still time to get in on the action. Surf over to the L.S.S.U. site (does anybody still use the verb "surf" in this fashion anymore, one wonders...) and submit your nomination for a word or phrase you feel has become so annoying that the only possible answer is banishment. The list is traditionally announced on New Year's Day, so you've got a little over a week to convince them (for reference, check out last year's list on their site).

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Both houses of Congress have now passed the bill which repeals the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (DADT), which did not allow gay Americans to openly serve their country in military uniform. President Obama has scheduled a signing ceremony for the repeal bill this Wednesday. While this is a significant achievement on the civil rights/gay rights front, it is also a significant political achievement. And one man stands out as the driving political force behind the successful effort to repeal this discriminatory federal policy. Which is why, today, I'd like to publicly thank Senator Joe Lieberman.

As the old saying goes: "success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan." This political success is no different, really. Senator Lieberman didn't singlehandedly repeal DADT. He had a lot of help, and a few other Democrats showed both some real leadership and some real political savvy in the last few weeks. In fact, the three most powerful Democrats in Washington all had a hand in this victory -- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and President Barack Obama. They deserve thanks as well, as does every Democrat and Republican member of Congress who voted for this historic step forward.

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My apologies to anyone tuning in who was expecting to see the 150th "Friday Talking Points" column, since it will be pre-empted for two weeks here. But the good news is we're doing so to bring you our annual "McLaughlin Awards," which are even more fun!

I admit we're jumping the gun a bit on the whole "year-end wrapup season," but this is due to the vagaries of the calendar. This is the first of a two-part article, and last year I published these on Christmas Day and New Year's Day -- which interfered with my holiday enjoyment too much. This year, the columns normally would have fallen on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so the decision was made to bump them both up a week.

So welcome to our review of 2010, via our annual homage to the McLaughlin Group television show's award categories. "Homage" sounds ever so much nicer than "blatant ripoff," don't you think?

Ahem.

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