If you like politics as blood sport, this is great stuff. On the other hand, if you worry about people, their lives, their health, how their money is spent and how their government protects their lives, their health and how their money is spent, well, then, this sucks.

If you had been waiting for the three-month follow-up to the Senate Environment and Public Works committee hearing on the Fukushima Near-Term Task Force recommendations–the one Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) promised in August at the last hearing on this issue of vital importance to US nuclear safety–well, that hearing was yesterday, Thursday, December 15. . . and whether you watched them or not, you are still waiting.

Readers of this space know that the pace of safety reforms for America’s nuclear facilities, especially in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima disaster, has been alarmingly slow. The recalcitrance–if not active hostility–exhibited by the nuclear operators and their government handmaidens borders on the criminal. So, it might sound more than a little bit shocking to hear that the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, is now under attack. . . for trying to implement new safety standards too quickly.

That’s not how House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is putting it, of course. In doublespeak that would make Orwell proud, Issa has written to the White House, issued a report, and fallen just shy of calling for Jaczko’s head.

The War on Christmas will be televised.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid added to his energy/oil spill response bill a measure from Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey that would force companies engaged in hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) to disclose the chemicals used to extract natural gas from rocks. This mere act of disclosure has put Republicans up in arms.

When a German reported called Sen. Inhofe an idiot, he showed America’s media how to treat frauds. Our press should be using that lesson when confronting the White House and Senate leadership for the travesty of a health “reform” bill.

Boxer refused to give in to Republican obstruction. Fed up with waiting for the Republicans to stop their boycott, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed their climate and energy bill without a markup, sending the chairman’s mark directly out of committee.

James Inhofe (R-OK) appeared briefly today at a climate bill markup in the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, simply to drop off a letter with a series of Republican demands on how to move forward on the bill. The letter basically asks the EPA for a “full assessment” of the Senate bill, including modeling that they are probably not even equipped to do. It’s just a stall tactic, and Democrats treated it as such: “Thanks for stopping by,” Boxer told Inhofe.

Global Warming denial has a warm and cozy home on the minority side of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. Yet again, on the eve of the Christmas holiday, Jim Inhofe and side-kick Marc Morano have released a shrill and utterly deceptive “report” falsely claiming a large number of scientists rejecting Global Warming theory. Yet again, the Majority side seems to have gone on vacation while the Minority uses the Commitee platform for propagating disinformation and deceit.