Press Release

Briefly Noted: February 2007

We told you so. A series of mishaps at BP–including a Texas refinery explosion that killed 15 workers, oil pipeline spills in Alaska, and alleged U.S. market manipulation–has led BP president John Browne to resign (effective July 2007). Lord Browne led the rebranding of the company, launching its controversial “Beyond Petroleum” campaign to fool the public into believing BP was an alternative-energy company instead of an oil company. It has invested $8 billion in alternative fuels development while cutting costs at refineries. On January 16 an independent panel found the cuts undermined BP’s maintenance programs. Capital Research Center President Terrence Scanlon chastised BP in a Washington Times op-ed last year for contributing to environmental advocacy groups instead of maintaining its Alaska pipelines.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is shaking up Congress with her plan to create a special committee on global warming. The move seems certain to anger House Energy Committee czar, John Dingell, Detroit’s defender of the internal combustion engine.

The National Council of Churches is becoming beholden to left-wing secular groups that have “very little demonstrated interest in religion beyond recruiting faith communities to support their favored social and political causes,” said the Institute on Religion and Democracy. NCC donors in 2004 and 2005 included the Sierra Club, Ford Foundation, United Nations Foundation, and Connect US Network, a spinoff of George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Washington Times reported January 11.

Former GOP Senator Rick Santorum has become a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Santorum will head a program on “America’s Enemies,” focusing on identifying threats to America by anti-Western forces.

To fight terrorism, the IRS is allowing federal agencies to tap its databases, which include tax returns for nonprofits and charities, the Los Angeles Times reported. The “Reveal” data-mining program uses powerful software that enables investigators to analyze massive quantities of data quickly and identify patterns of activity that are difficult to spot when focusing on individual returns.

Yum Brands, which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, offered $1 million for a site in Norfolk, Virginia, not knowing the identity of its owner, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Foundation. PETA said it would give the company the property for free if KFC adopted new chicken treatment guidelines. Yum refused, the New York Times reported. “We don’t do business with corporate terrorists and, therefore, we no longer have any interest in this property,” a KFC spokeswoman said.

Dell Computers plans a “Plant a Tree for Me” program that asks customers to give $2 for each notebook computer they purchase and $6 for each desktop computer. The money would go to the Conservation Fund and the Carbonfund, which promote the reduction or offsetting of carbon emissions.

Eyebrows were raised when Representative Alan Mollohan was named the new chairman of the House appropriations panel on the Justice Department’s budget. Critics note the West Virginia Democrat is under DOJ investigation regarding $200 million in federal money he directed to nonprofits in his congressional district. Some of the organizations were headed by his campaign donors. Mollohan quit a House ethics panel last year and has recused himself from working on DOJ’s budget in his new assignment.

Al Gore’s eco-horror movie, An Inconvenient Truth, hasn’t been well received in the nation’s classrooms. Even though the film’s producer, liberal Hollywood activist Laurie David, offered 50,000 free copies to the National Science Teachers Association, the group refused to distribute it to teachers. NSTA said David had demanded it endorse the film, which it refused to do. One Washington state school board put conditions on showing the movie in its classrooms, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported January 11. Teachers who show the movie have to ensure that a “credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented,” and obtain the approval of senior local education officials, according to the new school board policy.

Fourteen members of the Carter Center’s advisory board quit to protest former President Jimmy Carter’s new Israel-bashing book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Citing Carter’s “strident and uncompromising position” on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the board members wrote in a letter to Carter, “It seems that you have turned to a world of advocacy, including even malicious advocacy,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Steve Berman, a board member who quit, said “the book was not steeped in fact.”

A federal grand jury in New York has indicted Benon Sevan, former head of the U.N.’s $64 billion oil-for-food program, accusing him of accepting $160,000 in bribes. Also indicted was Fred Nadler, a brother-in-law of former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Both men are reportedly living abroad, and the Bush administration intends to seek their extradition. The U.N. was criticized last year after announcing that it would not release a financial disclosure form filed by then-Secretary General Kofi Annan following reports that his son and other U.N. officials were involved in the oil-for-food scandal.