Yet another sinister lawmaker with the sort of enviro record that suggests he grins and murmurs creepy sexual come-ons to himself during Bambi when Bambi’s mother gets shot has ever so briefly stumbled out of the oil-black night into the sunny dawn of eco-consciousness. Conrad Burns, pictured here during his audition to play J.R. on Dallas, is a Montana senator who made the League of Conservation Voters’ Dirty Dozen list. But this week he inserted language into the 2007 Interior Appropriations Bill that would prevent all new oil and gas leases on federal land along the Rocky Mountain Front.
Burns has a terrible environmental record. He opposed this idea a year ago when it was suggested by Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and has voted to preserve mercury contamination in rivers, protect pesticide testing on humans and roll back mileage efficiency standards in cars. He even used a recycling plant as a front to build a giant fishnet out of plastic soda can rings and harvest the ocean’s endangered species, in order to grind them up into Burns’ patented “slurrey.” (Or else that was Monty Burns on The Simpsons – I get the two mixed up.) Anyway, whatever strange celestial being visited the foot of Burns’ bed and threatened to haunt him every sleepless night until he died if he didn’t propose this bill deserves an ever-burning stick of incense on the mossy, wooded altar of nature worshippers.
Burns Moves To Stop New Drilling On Rocky Mountain Front (New West)