Source: The Daily Beast

Will lightning strike twice? Bob Turner, the Scott Brown of the Rockaways, aims to take his act statewide.

Anthony Weiner’s sex scandal gave Bob Turner 15 seconds of fame and 16 months in Congress starting last September. Now, the new Republican congressman from Queens who won a stunning upset in last year in the special election to replace Anthony Weiner wants to extend his time in the spotlight for another six years by running for the U.S. Senate. Unfortunately for Turner, it’s not likely to happen.

Turner, a 70-year-old retired television producer who’d made a small fortune working with a bipartisan array of loudmouths from Jerry Springer to Rush Limbaugh, was briefly a national figure with his win in what had seemed a safely Democratic seat, the Scott Brown of the Rockaways. But the upset also meant the district was likely to be drawn off the map by New York’s Democratic Assembly.

Despite that, Turner took his time deciding to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand—the surprise pick by then-governor David Paterson to fill the Senate seat that Hillary Clinton left to become secretary of State—joining the fray just days before the state Republican convention this weekend. That move has alienated some of the state’s conservative leaders, who’ve already thrown their support to other candidates in a field of Republican longshots the right-leaning New York Post has dismissed as “non-entities.”





Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/16/bob-turner-weiner-slayer-takes-aim-at-kirsten-gillibrand.html

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Why bother?

#!

What happens when the fox builds the hen house?

The drilling industry helped get some of the most influential lawmakers elected with lavish donations to their campaigns. It paid millions to lobbyists to influence legislation, and it has hired many of the experienced regulators away from public service

Now the industry will pay to train the people who set policy and enforce it.

ExxonMobil and GE will be investing $1 million each to establish new training programs at three universities, including Penn State, “to ensure that regulators and policymakers have access to the latest technological and operational expertise to assist in their oversight of shale development,” according to a Penn State press release issued Thursday.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/03/gas_drilling_industry_paying_p.html



One of Chesapeake Energy's Marcellus Shale wells sits high on a bluff over the Susquehanna River in Windham Township, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A dozen earthquakes in northeastern Ohio were almost certainly induced by injection of gas-drilling wastewater into the earth, state regulators said Friday as they announced a series of tough new rules for drillers.

Among the new regulations: Well operators must submit more comprehensive geological data when requesting a drill site, and the chemical makeup of all drilling wastewater must be tracked electronically.

The state Department of Natural Resources announced the tough new brine injection regulations because of the report's findings on the well in Youngstown, which it said were based on "a number of coincidental circumstances."

For one, investigators said, the well began operations just three months ahead of the first quake.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/nation_world/20120309_ap_ohiogasdrillinginjectionwellledtoquakes.html?c=r#ixzz1oh0tWgCP

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-last-word/46598857/#46598857

Lawrence O'Donnell with a personal remembrance of Andrew Breitbart.
(Sorry about the commercial)