Stop Another Bad Idea From Alaska

landscapes for much of the year. Despite many of tremendous positive contributions the state offers to our nation, some really bad ideas that come from Alaska too. Think of that recent Vice Presidential candidate who shares the same first name as me, or the legal shooting of wolves from helicopters or perhaps eating moose burgers. The land of people who are in many ways literally and figuratively separated from the continental US by a few thousand miles of snowy Canuk-landscape have given us US Senator Lisa Murkowski. She is the daughter of the former senator Frank Murkowski, who after serving a couple of decades in the US Senate, named his daughter to his seat. I hope this isn't a local custom up there or else it could mean that we might have to also weather the political reign of one of Sarah Palin's relatives too.

Like her father who had a lot of bad ideas, Lisa Murkowski is bringing another pro-oil, pro-pollution position to Washington that threatens all Americans health and our environment. The Clean Air Act, passed 40 years ago, is monumental legislation that regulates pollution to protect human health and our environment. For many years, environmental forces fought to have greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming, regulated by this law. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that global warming pollution is covered by the Clean Air Act. As a result, it has allowed the Obama Administration's Environmental Protection Agency to make significant inroads in cutting global warming pollution by regulating car emissions and ensuring that factories and power plants use the least impactful technology.

With a seal of approval from the US Supreme Court and the Obama Administration, it seemed like we were finally moving forward to making greater impacts in reducing dangerous global warming pollution. However, like the Arctic winds that blow south from Alaska through the Great Plains, Murkowski has sent a chill down our spines by trying to put the brakes on these important efforts. She is offering an amendment to an unrelated bill that would block the Environmental Protection Agency from using the Clean Air Act to regulate global warming pollution. If this proceeds, it will further endangered our health and the environment.

Murkowski's proposal puts oil ahead of people and this isn't pro-American. Being pro-American is saying yes to policies that protect all of our health by cutting global warming pollution. Tell your Senator to say yes to our health and the environment and no to Murkowski.