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Feb. '12

[Louisiana Democrat Mary] Landrieu and a Republican senator from Ohio named Rob Portman have joined their oily hands to jack around with an upcoming EPA report on fracking-related groundwater contamination in Wyoming. The EPA already has made it known that the report will be both specific and damning as regards the reckless way the fracking procedures have been used in Wyoming and the terrible consequences that may result…

Now why should a senator from Ohio and another one from Louisiana want to slow-walk an EPA report about groundwater contamination in Wyoming? Because they’re both a couple of [corporate whores], that’s why. Landrieu’s been in the pocket of the extraction industries for so long that she probably has dryer lint in her ears, and Portman wants to be re-elected and so needs some of that sweet-sweet crude cash to do so. So the two of them draft a letter [to the Obama Administration] complaining that the EPA might go too harshly on the frackers in Wyoming…

[The letter contains] a threat, pure and simple. Get the EPA to soft-pedal its report or there will be hell to pay over this during an election year. And to hell with what might be going on right now with the water people are drinking in Wyoming.

—Charles Pierce (via ryking)