Iraq’s Descent Back into Civil War Makes the Case for American Energy Independence

By: Repair_Man_Jack (Diary)  |  May 2nd at 10:45 AM  | 

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

-George Santayana (HT: Wikiquote)

America now faces a typical conundrum that has plagued all of our recent Presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower all the way forward to President Barack Obama. We depend upon the Middle East for much of the energy that provides our motive power. As a result of this debilitating dependence upon people who hate us and practice a system of ethics and morals totally alien to our own, we are increasingly compromised and forced into courses of action that do not benefit our national commonweal. If we produce enough of our own energy, while curbing our domestic consumption, we can break this cycle of self-sabotage. If we don’t break the cycle, every US President going forward will wage his own, pointless version of a Punic War in Western Asia. I describe the current state of play below.

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Energy Week in Review

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  March 23rd at 10:39 AM  | 

Dispatch from the Oil Patch, March 23, 2013.

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Need a job? Go. To. North. Dakota.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  December 23rd at 01:00 PM  | 

After reading this plaintive essay by the New York Times about young voters discovering what happens when they vote against their class interests by voting Democratic (short version: they end up on the street), my first reaction was simply to shrug.  But that’s not nice.  What is nice is offering these people actual advice, because passages like this: Two months ago, Mr. Tano gave up | Read More »

The Real Franking Scandal With Rick Berg

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  March 20th at 11:03 AM  | 

There has been somewhat of a scandal percolating in the local North Dakota media relating to Rick Berg’s prodigal use of his franking privileges in Congress.  Throughout the history of Congress, congressmen were afforded “franking privileges” as a way of facilitating communication between a member and his constituents.  In plain English, this refers to the right of members to mail correspondence to constituents at no | Read More »

Twitter’s Uneasy Relationship with Free Speech and North Dakota’s Oil Boom

By: Brad Jackson (Diary)  |  January 30th at 10:00 AM  | 

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Twitter’s decision to sensor tweets, North Dakota’s oil boom and the challenges their rapidly growing economy faces. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do | Read More »

Harold Hamm and the North Dakota Miracle

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 2nd at 06:00 PM  | 

Unlike most of his peers, Harold Hamm didn’t get his start in the oil field with degree in geology or engineering. Hamm drove a truck. Maybe the lack of a college degree made it easier for Hamm to imagine the possible and focus on making it happen. “Imagining the possible” allowed Hamm to build the nation’s 14th-largest oil company, Continental Resources, based in Enid, OK. | Read More »

Keystone XL Pipeline: Bureaucratic Hacky-Sack

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  August 10th at 03:00 PM  | 

The Obama Administration continues to play bureaucratic hacky-sack with what could be a key element of our nation’s secure energy future: the Keystone XL pipeline project. The new line would increase the export capacity of the Keystone Pipeline (placed in service 2008) by 700,000 barrels of Canadian oil-sands oil per day. The expansion would also facilitate the domestic movement of crude from the key storage | Read More »

Obama’s Energy Ideas: Running on Empty

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  April 5th at 07:00 AM  | 

In his Wednesday address at Georgetown University, President Obama took another stab at elucidating his muddled energy policy: It was just three years ago that gas prices topped $4 a gallon. I remember because I was in the middle of a presidential campaign. Working folks certainly remember because it hit a lot of people pretty hard. And because we were at the height of political | Read More »

BREAKING: Kent Conrad (D, ND) to retire.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  January 18th at 10:00 AM  | 

Admittedly, this revelation is coming from Chris Cillizzia, so take it with a grain of salt – but it’s hardly unexpected news; the Senator almost certainly feels like he has a target on his back these days*.  This immediately makes the seat a strong Republican pickup prospect: Senator Conrad was in that seat largely out of personal popularity, and is unlikely to pass that popularity | Read More »

Pomeroy’s not finished yet

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 27th at 03:30 PM  | 

From Unlikely Voter: Today is apparently the day for House races, because we have another one to look into: the North Dakota at-large race. We’ve looked at this race before, and it wasn’t promising for incumbent Democrat Earl Pomeroy, but right now he seems to be closing into Republican challenger Rick Berg.

Your money? The government’s “income”

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  July 22nd at 11:48 AM  | 

There was an interesting comment made on the floor of the United States Senate yesterday. I first noticed in from Senator Jim DeMint’s twitter feed. DeMint tweeted, “Sen. Dorgan just said a vote for tax cuts is a vote to ‘reduce this country’s income. To Democrats, it’s the government’s money. Not yours.” Really? I mean it wouldn’t surprise me, but we rarely hear the Democrats | Read More »

Lots of Primaries today.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  June 8th at 08:23 AM  | 

According to RCP, we’ve got primaries in California, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia.  The news has been dominated by California’s, Nevada’s, and of course South Carolina’s – but they’re all important, so if you’re a voter in that state, hie yourselves and any reliable Republican voters within reach to a polling station.  You can let the | Read More »