DLC caves on offshore drilling

When you see stories like this, we're at the point where the Democratic Party as I once knew it has effectively ceased to exist.

Offshore oil drilling has been banned by federal law since 1980 because it was so environmentally risky. But now a bipartisan "compromise" would gut this decades-old safeguard.

The DLC - the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (which is about the only wing represented in Congress these days) - has joined the Republicans in supporting offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic.

Nancy Pelosi calls it a "compromise." A "compromise" with what??? How do you compromise when the Republicans are so inflexible?

The GOP/DLC policy is indeed "drill, baby, drill." They think you can drill your way out of the energy crisis - while doing hardly anything to advance alternative energy or conservation and doing nothing to halt suburban sprawl.

One element that's completely missing from the debate is the fact that the waters that would be affected are actually international. True, they're in the U.S. economic zone (as long as they're within 200 nautical miles of the coast), but they're not U.S. territorial waters by any stretch of the imagination.

As an example of Capitol Hill doublespeak, this proposal says that the states that are closest to the drilling wouldn't even be allowed to prevent it unless it's less than 100 miles from land. OK, so are these waters part of the U.S. or not? You can't have it both ways.

But now the Republicans are saying the DLC's proposal isn't going far enough. They want drilling in the Pacific and around Alaska too - in addition to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, of all places.

(Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/5992569.html)