Hearings this week:

[TayTay]

Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Monday at 3:00 pm (on C-Span 3)
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
Bringing Climate Change
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) chairs
a Senate Foreign Relations Subcmte. hearing on a clean technology solution for a U.S.-international climate change approach. The hearing looks at incentives and direct investment tools that can be used to promote technological innovation from research to deployment.
MONDAY, C-SPAN, 3PM ET

This sub-committee.
Subcommittee on International Economic Policy, Export and Trade Promotion
Chuck Hagel, Chairman
Lamar Alexander
Lisa Murkowski
Mel Martinez
George V. Voinovich
Paul S. Sarbanes, Ranking Member
Christopher J. Dodd
John F. Kerry
Barack Obama

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Doubtful for a Kerry sighting. The debate on the Iraq War on the floor today might be pretty good.

[TayTay]

1. SFRC on Wed

High Costs of Crude:
The New Currency of Foreign Policy
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HEARING
before the

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION

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Wednesday, November 16, 2005

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Time: 9:30 AM
Place: 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Presiding: Senator Lugar

Witnesses:
The Honorable James R. Schlesinger
Senior Advisor
Lehman Brothers
Washington, DC
The Honorable R. James Woolsey
Vice President
Booz Allen Hamilton
McLean, VA

Full committee. This means both Allen and Coleman might be there. The doofus and the showboat. OIh Gawd, Tums for everyone.

[TayTay]

6. This hearing is Wed. Morning

Anytime you get to question Schlesinger and Woolsey, well, that's a good day.

[TayTay]

2. Commerce Comm on Tues morning

Public Policy Options for Encouraging Alternative Automotive Fuel Technologies
Full Committee Hearing
Tuesday, November 15 2005 - 10:00 AM - SD-562
http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1679

Description: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Co-Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) have scheduled a Full Committee hearing on Tuesday, November 15, 2005, at 10:00 a.m. in Room 562 of the Dirksen Building on Public Policy Options for Encouraging Alternative Automotive Fuel Technologies. Witnesses will be announced when available.

Panel 1:

Mr. Jeffrey N. Shane
Under Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department of Transportation

Panel 2:

Mr. Stevens Plotkin
Transportation Energy Analyst, Center for Transportation Research of the Argonne National Laboratory

Mr. Fred Weber
President and CEO, Auto Alliance

Mr. David Friedman
Senior Analyst, Clean Vehicle Program, Union of Concerned Scientists

Mr. Jason Grumet
Executive Director, The National Commission on Energy Policy

***********************************

Oh come on. He's gotta show. This is great stuff. This is red meat for Democrats, especially strong environmental people like Kerry. But there may be stuff on the floor left over from the Iraq War votes. Sigh! (Or other stuff.)

[TayTay]

3. Commerce: Fisheries bill

Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization
Full Committee Hearing
Wednesday, November 16 2005 - 10:00 AM - SD-562

http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1673
Description: Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Co-Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) have scheduled a Full Committee hearing on Wednesday, November 16, 2005, at 10:00 a.m. in Room 562 of the Dirksen Building to address the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2005.

The following witnesses are scheduled to appear:

Panel 1:

Mr. James Connaughton
Chairman, President's Council on Environmental Quality

Mr. Jack Dunnigan
Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Mr. George LaPointe
Commissioner, State of Maine Department of Marine Resources

Admiral (Ret.) James Watkins
Chairman, U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy

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Fisheries! He has to show. He reps Gloucester and New Bedford. Dear Lord, this is big stuff at home. I would expect a sighting. (Unless the idea that Allen is there is just too much. Why does Barfbag have to be at all these hearings? God has a sense of humor?)

[TayTay]

7. Who doesn't love a fisheries hearing?

Come on, it can't be just me! (Okay, but I bet there is a sighting near the end.)

[TayTay]

4. Nothing on the Finance Committee yet

mostly because Olympia Snowe blew up the Budget Reconciliation hearings last week when she refused to sign off on the cuts the House wanted. (The House cuts were medieval and would have punished a whole lot of people just so that $70 Billion dollar tax cut could go into effect. Bravo Sen. Snowe!)

I will post if a FinComm hearing comes up. The one last week was not web-casted. (Bastards!) And Sen. Allen is not on this Committee, so I always look forward to watching these.

[TayTay]

5. FinComm tonight on C-Span around 6:00 pm

This is to debate the Reconciliation Bill on the budget. This could be really good. We will see what Sen. Snowe was able to accomplish on her holdout for less cuts to the poor.

6:00 pm... C-SPAN

[TayTay]

8. Future of Science Hearing on Friday

Future of Science
Full Committee Hearing
Friday, November 18 2005 - 10:00 AM - SR-562

http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1696
Description: Washington, D.C. – The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has announced a Full Committee hearing on the Future of Science, at 10 a.m., on Friday, November 18, 2005, in Room 562 of the Dirksen Building. The hearing will investigate the changes the U.S. scientific research community has experienced over the past few years. Witnesses will also address concerns that the U.S. is slipping in research, technology innovation, and education, which have been identified as pillars of success for the 21st Century. The scheduled witnesses include:

Opening Remarks:

Dr. Peter Agre
Vice Chancellor for Science and Technology, Duke University

Dr. Eric Cornell
Senior Scientist, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technology Administration - U.S. Department of Commerce

Dr. James Heath
Elizabeth Gilloon Professor of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology

Professor Samuel C.C. Ting
Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Sen. Kerry has to show here. He has given whole speeches recently on science and how we are neglecting it and kicking sand in it's face and stuff. (Plus, he went to MIT and spoke at the Brain Research Center opening. Please tell me that wasn't just to find a cure for Rethuglican disease and Kos. Do't tease me that way, it's not nice.) OMG! It's like they are holding a hearing just for him. (Be still my geeky heart.) He has to show. Then he can go on Thanksgiving break!

[Mass]

9. An hearing on the Friday before Thanksgiving recess

Clearly, this hearing is important for Stevens :sarcasm:

[TayTay]

10. I agree. But at least he got him to hold one.

Did you hear or see Inhofe on the floor of the Seante this week again trying to debunk Global Warming as bad science? (He is a complete danger to everyone around him. He might just be the most irritating neanderthal in all of Congress. Sigh!) The REthugs hate science, hate people who understand science and hated math class to boot. This is payback.

It's a start.

[whometense]

11. Tangentially Kerry-related,

but VERY interesting. Check out this post from the Carpetbagger this morning.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/5847.html

Last week, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing over escalating energy prices, featuring testimony from the CEOs from the nation's biggest oil companies. Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) rejected calls to have the executives testify under oath. Today, it's a little clearer why.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) asked the five CEOs if their company, of any of its representatives, participated in Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001. They denied involvement.

That apparently wasn't quite true.

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 — something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.

Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that "gave detailed energy policy recommendations" to the task force. In addition, Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive, according to a person familiar with the task force's work; that meeting is not noted in the document.

In one sense, the revelation about Cheney's dependence on Big Oil to shape the nation's energy policy isn't new. Despite the White House's refusal to cooperate with a Government Accountability Office investigation, we learned in 2003 that Cheney "collaborated heavily" with chief executive officers of petroleum, electricity, nuclear, coal, chemical, and natural gas companies, including a series of private sessions with Enron's "Kenny Boy" Lay. It's the reason the White House fought so hard to keep the secret meetings hidden from the public.

But it's the Lautenberg angle that makes this particular revelation interesting.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who posed the question about the task force, said he will ask the Justice Department today to investigate. "The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force," Lautenberg said. <…>

The executives were not under oath when they testified, so they are not vulnerable to charges of perjury; committee Democrats had protested the decision by Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) not to swear in the executives. But a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making "any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation" to Congress.

Here are a few questions to ponder:

* Did Ted Stevens intentionally skip the swearing-in process because he knew this might come up? Would a committee chairman intentionally help witnesses hide information from his own committee?

* Will the Justice Department follow up on the CEOs possibly having lied to Congress, which is a felony?

* Does Cheney, who remained silent while his Big Oil buddies were misleading lawmakers, have even more interesting secrets his energy task force files?

* Can the administration really withstand another political scandal right now?

Stay tuned.

[TayTay]

12. Yeah, the heads of the Five Families have a lot of explaining to do.

They all remind me of scenes from The Godfather:

Emilio Barzini: Times have changed. It's not like the Old Days, when we can do anything we want. A refusal is not the act of a friend. If Don Corleone had all the judges, and the politicians in New York, then he must share them, or let us others use them. He must let us draw the water from the well. Certainly he can present a bill for such services; after all... we are not Communists.

Now really, that doesn't even take much tweaking to make you think of the oil companies and their 'sharing' of the contacts with The Dark Lord Cheney.