Senate Democrats’ 14-hour global warming “talkathon” produced enough hot air to make up for the “15-year pause” in worldwide temperature increases. But for all the senators’ dire warnings, the gabfest ended with little to show.
After talking from 6:30 p.m. Monday through 9 a.m. Tuesday, Democratic senators ended up with no plans for legislative action.
Many red-state Democrats up for reelection this fall — Arkansas’s Mark Pryor, Alaska’s Mark Begich, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan — skipped out on the night of long speeches. But the 28 other senators who showed up provided more than their share of head-scratching and odd moments on the floor.
Here are some highlights:
1. Senator Harry Reid (Nev.) launched the “talkathon” by arousing fears of his favorite boogeymen as of late: “the oil-baron Koch brothers, and their allies in Congress.” The Senate majority leader warned, “Climate-change deniers still exist — there’s lots of them. They exist in this country. They exist, I’m sorry to say, in this Congress.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bDyf6Qipvdw
— Andrew Johnson is an editorial associate at National Review Online.