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Rep. Rick Boucher in Virginia's Fightin' 9th, who had a critical role in shaping the House climate change bill, has taken heat from some environmentalists, who argue it doesn't do enough to lower carbon emissions, and opponents who argue it goes too far and will damage the economy by hurting industry, including the coal companies in Boucher's own district. The natural gas industry comes down on the side of the environmentalists.

Natural gas has lower carbon emissions than coal. Lobbyists argue that the way to lower greenhouse gases quickly is to encourage manufacturers to switch from coal to natural gas as their energy source - and the House bill won't do that, thanks in large part to Boucher's efforts.

TheHill.com reports:

"The House bill requires businesses to lower their greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. The alliance contends that actual emission reductions could be put off for a decade or more because the bill allows companies to purchase carbon offsets to help meet those targets. Offsets are projects that absorb carbon dioxide in the air and serve as a counterbalance to emissions at the smokestack.

"[America’s Natural Gas Alliance President and CEO Rod] Lowman also said the House bill gives away too many credits that cover a company’s emissions. Supporters say the approach protects against sharp rises in energy prices because of the carbon cap, but Lowman said it could keep the carbon costs so low that utilities and other emitters will have little incentive to switch to less polluting fuel sources."

This should be reassuring to conservatives who accuse the longtime congressman of putting a liberal cause ahead of his district's economic interests. As if.

A lobbying firm opposed to cap-and-trade legislation sent a letter to U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th Dist., on the eve of the vote urging him to oppose the bill. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be so unusual. But the letter was sent on the letterhead of a nonprofit group in Perriello's district that concentrates on issues important to Hispanics, signed by a nonexistent staff member.

From the Charlottesville Daily Progress;

"They stole our name. They stole our logo. They created a position title and made up the name of someone to fill it. They forged a letter and sent it to our congressman without our authorization," said Tim Freilich, who sits on the executive committee of Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit network that tackles issues related to Charlottesville's Hispanic community.

Adding insult to injury, when it was exposed, officials from the lobbying group apologized for "the mistake."

“This was not a ‘mistake,’” wrote Freilich, who is also legal director of the Immigrant Advocacy Program of the Legal Aid Justice Center. “This was a deliberately and carefully forged letter that used the logo, address and name of Creciendo Juntos without authorization. Additionally, I understand from Ms. Hegyi that our organization was not the only Charlottesville-area organization whose reputations were used in an unauthorized manner to try to influence Congressman Perriello on this particular vote.”

As near as we can tell, Del. Phillip Hamilton of Newport News hasn't broken any laws or rules.  He's a powerful member of the House of Delegates who sponsored a bill in 2007 to provide state funding to create a Center for Teacher Quality and Educational Leadership at Old Dominion University.  The program continues to receive half a million dollars annually.

And Hamilton receives $40,000 of that each year as a consultant to the program.  He says there is no conflict of interest because he wasn't working for the school in 2007 and he has done nothing since getting the job to push funding. Plus he's upfront with voters about the whole thing, filing his finance reports dutifully.

No, he doesn't appear to have broken any rules, and that tells us the rules are broken.  We're writing an editorial for Monday that will urge lawmakers to take a close look at this situation and see how they can adjust their ethics rules to prevent it from happening again. Lawmakers should not be able to benefit directly from state spending they sponsor.

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The facts of life

Abstinence-only education simply does not work.

Health care is not a right

Sean Dice
Dice, of Lynchburg, is an electrical engineer graduate of Purdue University School of Technology.

Since the first announcement that the federal government wants to provide national health care and/or national health care insurance, I've heard many people say that health insurance and care is a right covered by the "life" portion of the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Assuming this is a correct statement, which it is not, I want to know by what right you have to compel me by force of law to sacrifice my "pursuit of happiness" for your "life"?
Read more.

Dealership closings, the first lady's staff, roundabouts and more in today's letters to the editor.

But seen from out here everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man's ego. I feel lonely. That's about it. Tell me, though. Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his neighbor's children starving?

How are you seeing things today?

David Carr's Media Decoder blog at The New York Times brings us the news of a 24-year-old business school grad whose plan to reverse the fortunes of the newspaper industry is ... start a p.m. newspaper. Um. Hmm.

The afternoon World-News already had been combined with the morning Roanoke Times when I first set foot in the building here on Campbell Avenue, but a p.m. edition of The Roanoke Times & World-News remained in the weekday cycle for Roanoke Valley subscribers. A few years farther down a road of declining circulation, though, the newspaper killed it off.

Toward the end, I recall from my newsroom days, we gave it a push. No more scrambling for enterprise stories and news update to give the p.m. something fresh. Diehard p.m. readers didn't like the change, but - atypically for Roanoke - the brouhaha quickly died down. At least, that's the way I remember it.

Now Carr reports that this young fellow in Toronto has noticed "the afternoon represents an unmolested day part in the media cycle and presents a real business opportunity." Must send memo to publisher asap.

The U.S. House of Representatives is working on a Defense appropriations bill expected to contain about $6.9 billion worth of equipment the Pentagon says it neither wants nor needs. It is, however, equipment made by influential donors to representatives, including representatives on the House Ethics Committee - who are currently investigating shady earmarks to Defense contractors.

If House leadership won't rein in the madness, President Obama must take a firm stand and promise a veto if the pork remains in the final bill - or so we'll argue in an editorial we're working on for next week.