UPDATE ON US CONGRESS from Myron Ebell

The House Republican leadership responded to our concerns very quickly once they started hearing from us and have pulled H. R. 1891 from the floor this afternoon.  Many thanks to Speaker Boehner’s office and Majority Leader Cantor’s office.  And again, many thanks to Larry Hart of the American Conservative Union for noticing that this obscure bill had been put on the suspension calendar.  And thanks to all of you who responded with no notice.  The House Republican Leadership had placed H. R. 1891, a bill sponsored by Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), on the suspension calendar for Tuesday afternoon, 10th September.  The bill would create the position of Science Laureate.  If enacted, the President will be able to appoint up to three scientists each year to the honorary position of Science Laureate.  This will allow this and future leftist presidents to put in positions of authority (without responsibility) and prominence activist scientists, who will then be able to use junk science to promote their political agendas.  Think Paul Ehrlich, James Hansen, Peter Gleick, etc.

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PRIME Minister-elect Tony Abbott has personally instructed his new departmental secretary to make preparations to axe the carbon tax and activate Operation Sovereign Borders to stop asylum boats.

Mr Abbott got down to business this morning after his landslide election victory, with a briefing with Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Ian Watt.

Meetings were scheduled with Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson and Finance Department head David Tune, while Mr Abbott was also due to hold talks with senior Coalition colleagues later in the day.

He told Dr Watt to prepare the ground for the Coalition to implement its agenda swiftly, and he was confident the public’s “reasonable expectations” could be met.

“Obviously, a very early item of business is scrapping the carbon tax,” he told Dr Watt at the commencement of their meeting.

“There’s border security, there’s economic security and the people expect, quite rightly, that the incoming government will build a strong and prosperous economy for a safe and secure Australia.

“I deeply respect the professionalism in the Australian Public Service. You are experts at policy implementation and I’m confident that we will be able to successfully implement our agenda because that’s what people expect of us.”

As Labor enters a period of deep introspection over its future, Mr Abbott has also begun to field calls from world leaders, receiving a congratulatory call from UK Prime Minister David Cameron earlier this morning.

Voters last night delivered an emphatic verdict on six turbulent years of Labor rule, sending the party packing on the back of strong results in NSW, Tasmania and Victoria.

Mr Abbott has a packed agenda for his first 100 days in office. On the top of his agenda is rescinding the carbon tax.

But senior Labor figures have warned they are unlikely to recognise his claimed mandate to axe the measure, and are likely to frustrate the measure if the Senate numbers allow it.

Coalition finance spokesman Andrew Robb said the economy was in for a confidence jolt, declaring an Abbott government would “reboot” the mining boom and “massively” boost jobs.

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For more than a decade Australia had one of the world’s most successful center-right governments, and on Saturday it voted overwhelmingly for a restoration. After six years of Labor Party melodrama and leftward economic policies, Australians returned a Liberal government to power under new leader Tony Abbott. There are lessons here for conservatives in the U.S. and Europe. One lesson is to beware the faddish politics of climate change. Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 9 September 2013

The World Wide Fund for Nature financed full-page adverts in Australian newspapers that awarded him a fail grade on every key environmental issue. Mr Abbott doesn’t care and neither, it seems, do Australian voters. In a decision that could not have been more different from Mr Cameron’s decision to mimic the environmental priorities of the Left, Mr Abbott has refused to accept inflated energy prices, fewer manufacturing jobs and higher carbon taxes as the price for not saving the planet. “Not” is the key word. Australia might be willing to bear sacrifices if global emissions were falling, but they aren’t. Unilateral action by nations such as Australia produces drop-in-the-ocean benefits if the likes of China and India continue to guzzle energy. Tim Montgomery,