By Greg Pollowitz

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning a high-risk, high-stakes strategy for bringing climate and energy legislation to the floor ahead of the August recess.

The gamble: yoking a bipartisan, fast-track measure to overhaul offshore drilling rules with a broad, contentious bill capping greenhouse gas emissions that otherwise would have almost no chance of passage on its own.

Reid’s own Democrats are mixed on the strategy for notching 60 votes. Some argue that public perception of fossil fuels in the wake of the BP oil spill will sway enough of the party’s swing votes and open Republicans to attack if they oppose the measure as their reelection campaigns head into the homestretch.

“Republicans are not supporting virtually anything to transform our energy system,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “That’s not what the American people want. So I think you bring forth a strong bill, you rally the American people and I think the Republicans will respond as a result of that.”

The rest here.

Obama Administration vs. Bobby Jindal

The WSJ reports on the now halted berm project that’s supposed to protect Louisana’s wetlands:

In the latest twist in a controversy that has dragged on for weeks, the administration effectively ordered Louisiana officials Tuesday evening to temporarily stop building a line of sand berms east of the Mississippi River that the state officials see as crucial to protecting their fragile coastal marshes from incoming oil. Federal officials described the construction halt as necessary to prevent long-term environmental damage. Louisiana officials warned it could allow more oil to hit their shores right away.

Tom Strickland, the U.S. Interior Department’s assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, said Louisiana officials had been building the berms in a way that violated conditions set out by the Obama administration when it approved the berm plan in late May. He said the state was dredging sand to build the berms from an offshore area that is too fragile, potentially intensifying erosion of the Chandeleur Islands, a chain of barrier islands the berms are designed in part to protect.

“You don’t want to destroy the village to save the village,” Mr. Strickland said in a call with reporters. “It’s a question of whether we’re going to impair that island chain in a way that it may not ever be able to be restored.”

But Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican who has been critical of the Obama administration’s handling of the oil spill, decried the federal government’s move to curtail construction of the berms.

“We don’t have time for red tape and bureaucracy,” he said in his own news conference Wednesday. “We’re literally in a war to save our coast.” He added that he was “calling on the federal government to get out of the way.”