HI and AK Senators have a long history of scratching each other's backs. AFAIK, it is indeed snce they came into the Union at essentially the same time...

They have no indigenous energy resources save wind and sun. Heavily dependent on expensive (no pipelines to Maui) oil. Alaska is, for them, a realtively cheap source.

I'm more curious about the Republicans who voted against ANWR. Well, one of them. Most of them make sense--a handful of moderates who want to be moderate, and Norm Coleman, who naturally wants more ethanol, not more oil. But what's with DeWine. It seems like he should like the idea, considering.

interesting. There was a pretty well funded campaign here to whip up indigene co-interest against drilling. For a while, you couldn't turn around without bumping into an Alaskan who subsists on nuttin' but raw caribou and grants.

Must not have made any impression on the senators.

Harry:

Do folks want to drill there?

OJ-

Does a polar bear on the ice?

What ice?

Rumors are Mary Landrieu will support Social Security private accounts in return for help for Big Sugar which is in a dead match with Johnson & Johnson over Splenda.

We've supported sugar for worse reasons...

Stevens & Inouye go way way back...I imagine Inouye brought Akaka along.

Regular unleaded was $2.37.9 this morning in East Honolulu.

"But what's with DeWine."

DeWine is a moron and an unreconstructed wet. Typical of the Ohio Republican party he is a "moderate" The Ohio party was shaped by Jim Rhodes, who did not have an ideological bone in this body. DeWine also opposed the heteronormative amendment to the Ohio Constitution.

The only conservative in the Ohio Republican party is Ken Blackwell, which is why the establishment hates him.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal Monday "Ohio Offers Clues on Cause of Low Growth" by Clare Ansberry (no URL) that discussed why Ohio is draging behind neigboring states in economic growth.

One big factor is our excessive and anti-investment tax code. Taft now claims he wants to do something about it. Now in the 6th year of his term. It is only Blackwell's threat to the establishment that has caused Taft to act 6 years too late.

If anybody has acess to the WSJ on line, please email a copy of the WSJ article.

Thanks, Robert. I looked up DeWine's record, and he certainly looked more conservative than the others, but this is the sort of thing that easily allows people like that to make themselves "moderate."

Timothy, Dewine's record on the Poole ratings has him on the more liberal end of the Republican spectrum. But, you have to believe me on this. I know these people. He undoubtedly makes party line votes. But his entire bunch just hates the Conservatives. Just get them alone sometime.

The GOP members of the Ohio General Assembly are quite conservative but the establishment is not. Very strange party here.