2/17/17, "Senate Confirms Scott Pruitt to Head Environmental Protection Agency," NBC News, Leigh Ann Caldwell
"The U.S. Senate Friday confirmed Oklahoma attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA in a party-line 52-46 vote."...
"Two Democrats crossed party lines to vote for Pruitt: Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.). One Republican, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), did not vote for Pruitt."...
(continuing): "Democrats did all they could to delay the final vote, holding another all-night session to highlight their opposition to the Oklahoma attorney general for his past battles with the regulatory agency he is now tasked to run.
Their opposition intensified after a judge ruled late Thursday that Pruitt must release a tranche of emails pertaining to his relationship with the oil and gas industry during his time as attorney general. It's a request he's denied for more than two years until a judge said he must comply.
As attorney general, Pruitt has sued the EPA and fought the agency trying to regulate the fracking boom in his state of Oklahoma. He has also questioned the impact of climate change, and during his confirmation hearing said his own views on the issue are "immaterial."
Democrats took particular issue with Pruitt's seemingly cozy relationship with the oil industry. He faced sharp questions over a letter his office sent to the EPA accusing the agency of overestimating the amount of methane released into the air from drilling natural gas wells. The New York Times found the letter was written almost entirely by lawyers from one of Oklahoma's largest oil companies.
Pruitt has attributed political contributions from oil and gas companies and his close ties to the oil industries to the importance the companies have to the Oklahoma economy.
Democrats urged that his confirmation vote be delayed until February 27 when they return from their week-long recess and after the first batch of judicial-ordered emails are to be released on Tuesday.
"No lawyer in a trial would ever go to trial without known the evidence in the case," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said.
But Republicans went forward, saying those calls were another excuse for delay.
"If it wasn't one thing it would be another," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "The effort has been to delay the nominations that they make controversial as long as possible in order to play into their left wing base which will not accept the results of the election."
Pruitt is the latest nominee to be approved on mostly a party line vote. Because Democrats changed Senate rules in 2013, cabinet nominees are able to pass with the support of just a simple majority instead of the previously required 60 votes."
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More on EPA'a genocidal first Administrator, William Ruckelshaus (1970) who remained a Beltway darling his entire career:
9/21/2006, "Day of Reckoning for DDT Foes?" Steve Milloy, Fox News, Junk Science
"Last week’s announcement that the World Health Organization lifted its nearly 30-year ban on the insecticide DDT is perhaps the most promising development in global public health since… well, 1943 when DDT was first used to combat insect-borne diseases like typhus and malaria.
Overlooked in all the hoopla over the announcement, however, is the terrible toll in human lives (tens of millions dead — mostly pregnant women and children under the age of 5), illness (billions sickened) and poverty (more than $1 trillion dollars in lost GDP in sub-Saharan Africa alone) caused by the tragic, decades-long ban.
Much of this human catastrophe was preventable, so why did it happen? Who is responsible? Should the individuals and activist groups who caused the DDT ban be held accountable in some way?...
It was, of course, then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator William Ruckelshaus who actually banned DDT after ignoring an EPA administrative law judge’s ruling that there was no evidence indicating that DDT posed any sort of threat to human health or the environment. Ruckleshaus never attended any of the agency’s hearings on DDT. He didn’t read the hearing transcripts and refused to explain his decision.
None of this is surprising given that, in a May 22, 1971, speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Ruckleshaus said that EPA procedures had been streamlined so that DDT could be banned. Ruckelshaus was also a member of — and wrote fundraising letters for — the EDF."...
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8/3/2013, "On climate change, politicians should stick to politics," NJ Star Ledger, Paul Mulshine
NY Times op-ed 'Republican' climate terror promoters like Christine Todd Whitman and anti-science William Ruckelshaus apparently get all their news from broadcast tv.
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8/2/2013, "DDT genocide instigator William Ruckelshaus urges GOP to surrender on climate" Junk Science, Steve Milloy
"William Ruckelshaus’ anti-science DDT ban helped lead to the deaths of tens of millions in Africa — now he wants to do the same via energy bans.
Ruckelshaus, Lee Thomas, Bill Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman write in the New York Times."...
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