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ClimateWire reports the following:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants to debate a "comprehensive clean energy bill" next month and today asked key Democrats to offer up ideas for how to respond to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

In a letter to eight Democratic committee chairmen today, Reid directed the senators to by July 4 either mark up bills or submit recommendations aimed at dealing with the oil spill in the Gulf, in order to be included in a larger energy package to be debated on the floor before the August recess.  

Oddly, Reid wants all eight committee chairs to have hearings, draft their portion of the legislation and draw lots of attention to the gulf spill to build momentum for...his global warming bill, to which he will append their ideas for lots of new rules to stop what hasn't happened in 40 years from happening for another 40 years, I suppose. By stopping offshore drilling, is probably the plan.

And that latter bill, the utter dog of a global warming cap-and-tax energy rationing bill to be wagged by this tail? Well, Reid told the press last month that he was suspending the committee process for that, and would write the -- "comprehensive", mind you -- bill himself. His rationale was that the global warming bill would invoke the jurisdiction of up to six Senate committees and, well, apparently the poor dears would get confused. Which you should read as developing a public record on this in the tax-writing Finance Committee just sends the wrong signal.

So, six committees looking into a big ol' energy tax and a global warming scheme that -- as I detail in Power Grab -- Democrat pollsters told them the public wasn't buying and needed to be rebranded, as "clean energy" and "green jobs"? Nope. That's just too many committees. Eight committees to grandstand on the tail that's supposed to wag that dog? Why, that's just fine.

And some people still wonder how our energy and economic policies end up in such a mess.