The White House formally threatened a veto of the House version of a surface transportation bill, opening the question of whether any long-term bill will get signed before March when current funding on roads and bridges expires. Between the terrible House version and the Senate’s, it’s choosing between one with a bunch of disastrous elements, and another which has none of those but which is too small for the task at hand.

TransCanada still has not settled on a route for its Keystone Pipeline that bypasses or protects the aquifer in Nebraska, as requested by Nebraska (GOP) officials. That delay means the project couldn’t come on line until 2015 at the earliest, despite GOP attempts to co-opt the Obama Administration’s permit regime.

When I turned on the TV last night, I wanted to stand up and cheer. While watching President Obama’s State of the Union address, I felt much like I did when I watched his 2008 acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium in Denver. OK, that’s not true–not hardly. Reality has not been kind to Obama’s rhetoric, after all. But when Obama got to the energy section of the speech, I found much to applaud, not unlike in 2008. . . with some obvious caveats for his praise of dirty, dangerous, failed or flat-out fictional forms of energy production.

Dan Choi’s trial after being arrested protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline during the TarsandsAction last August continues today. We’re looking forward to hearing the government’s excuse as to why out of 1250 people arrested at the White House during the Tar Sands action, Dan Choi was singled out for prosecution.

The joy in some quarters over the Obama decision to deny the permit to TransCanada to build the Keystone XL pipeline to carry tarsands oil from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. I’m glad for the decision, but it was hardly a ringing endorsement of either concerns about potential damage caused by spills from the pipeline or concerns about what tapping into the tar sands will do to the climate. Rather, it was political posturing for effect by DC politicians on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The GOP forced a rider into must-pass legislation saying “You’ve got 60 days to approve or deny” and State said — back then — that with that kind of a time limit, they’d have no choice but to deny. And this week, they did just that.

As Bill McKibben says, “We’ve won no permanent victory (environmentalists never do) but we have shown that spirited people can bring science back to the fore.”

Come Tuesday, Bill will be taking a group of spirited people to Capital Hill, to take the fight to the science-deniers who live off the money from Big Oil. It should be quite something.

The Obama Administration officially denied the Keystone Pipeline permit pending before the State Department. The White House statement supporting the decision blamed it on the unreasonable time restriction imposed by Congress and the GOP, while leaving the door open for a renewed application.

Before Congress even passed its two-month stopgap payroll tax/UI legislation, the State Department had a warning. The bill included a mandate that the Administration give an up-or-down approval or rejection on a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline within 60 days. The State Department said flatly that this would force them to reject the permit, because it would not give them enough time to complete their environmental review. Today they announced they’ll do what they promised.

It seemed like the afterthought in the payroll tax cut extension fight. But the two-month clock is now ticking on whether Obama will approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada’s environmentally disastrous tar sands. If we want him to make the right decision and deny the permit, maybe it’s time to Occupy Exxon, with creative protests at local Exxon/Mobil stations.

The Keystone XL pipeline will now either receive or be denied its construction permit by February 21, according to the schedule worked out in the two-month stopgap deal to extend the payroll tax, unemployment insurance and the doctor’s fix. But the ultimate fate of tars ands oil may not be decided for years.

In their pro forma session, the Senate passed by unanimous consent the latest – and final – version of a two-month stopgap bill to extend the payroll tax cut, unemployment insurance and the doctor’s fix. They actually deemed this version passed pending approval from the House, which must originate any tax bills. The House followed suit, without objection, so now the bill has passed, and I would expect the President to sign it expeditiously.