I’m basically posting this so I can send the same response to multiple readers. In response to my talk at Madison some folks have taken exception to my description of ANWR as an “ugly virgin.” One reader sent me this picture asking how I could call it ugly.

This is fair and unfair. I normally try to make the important distinction that much — indeed most — of ANWR is beautiful. But ANWR is the size of South Carolina. The area where they want to drill is the size of Dulles airport. Even the most rabid defender of South Carolina’s beauty would concede there are spots the size of an airport which are less than glorious-looking. If I did not make that distinction in the speech, I should have (though I think I did). The beatiful pictures of ANWR almost invariably are pointed in the wrong direction — toward the mountains, rather than toward the Arctic. The proposed drilling is right on the coastal plain, far from the mountains and all the pretty pictures. It looks more like this. More pictures are in this column (scroll down to second half).