The American Spectator

p> GRID LOCK br> On Thursday, as states in the Northeast reeled from power outages, Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe got on the horn to current New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson , who in a previous life, served as key Clinton apologist and as Energy Secretary. /p>

“They saw this as a political anvil that could be dropped on the Repubicans’ head,” says a DNC staffer. “With Richardson’s background, he could go out there and really highlight the energy crisis created by Republicans.”

The only problem is, the Clinton cabal is probably more responsible for the blackout mess than anyone. According to a career Energy Department staffer, early in his tenure Richardson met with a number of no-growth environmental groups committed to blocking expansion of power resources around the country, including the ceding of land for regional installation of expanded power lines and the like. “He committed the department to not seeking that kind of expansion,” says the department staffer. “They even blocked the study of the power grid that [current secretary of energy Spencer] Abraham ordered when he came into office. That study could have been completed more than three years ago.”

As well, Clinton adminstration energy nuts blocked a number of different projects that would have sought ways to increase power availabilty around the country from a variety of sources, instead of depending on major power plants in the Northeast. “It was all about tearing down the energy establishment to satisfy their radical left anti-energy crowd,” says the staffer.

Richardson, who went on national TV and blamed the Republicans for not expanding the grid, received no tough questioning about his tenure as head of the Energy Department. But who could blame the reporters? After all, Richardson did little in his time there. He failed to detect North Korea’s early stages of nuclear weapons research (part of his portfolio at Energy), he blocked power grid studies and improvement, and he became famous in-house for his junkets overseas. His security detail was known for talking about the trips Richardson and senior staff would take overseas on the public dime. Perhaps most famous was a cruise down the Bosphorus in Turkey, after which the department had to struggle to find a suitable governmental reason for the trip.

p> BOWLES OVER br> Sen.