Welcome to Thursday and welcome to your open thread. As usual, I’ll provide a couple of links for you to talk about if you wish but there is nothing that is off-topic in an open thread.
A story spread all over the rightwing news media about a ban on fishing by the Obama administration. The source appears to be an unsourced ESPN article (from Media Matters):
ESPN column: Federal strategy “could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.” On March 9, Robert Montgomery wrote for EPSNOutdoors.com: “The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters. This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is ‘fluid’ and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.” Montgomery’s post, which was also featured on The Daily Caller, has since been updated to state that the strategy “could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation’s oceans coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.”
Of course, this is nothing close to the truth but it certainly feeds into the rightwing paranoia:
Task force plan seeks to “better manage,” not ban recreational fishing alongside other uses of ocean, coasts, lakes. In its September 10, 2009, interim report, the Interagency Ocean Policy task force recommended that the administration implement “coastal and marine spatial planning,” which has been described as ocean “zoning.” The interim report states that such a system “will allow for the reduction of cumulative impacts from human uses on marine ecosystems, provide greater certainty for the public and private sector in planning new investments, and reduce conflicts among uses and, between using and preserving the environment to sustain critical ecological, economic, and cultural services for this and future generations.” A December 9, 2009, task force report discussing coastal and marine spatial planning in more detail states that “CMSP provides an effective process to better manage a range of social, economic, and cultural uses, including” commerce and transportation, commercial fishing, conservation, mining, oil and gas exploration and development and recreational fishing, among many others. Nowhere in the September 10 or December 9 reports does the task force propose a ban on recreational fishing.
A lot of media attention has been turned to gropy-handed predator Congressman Eric Massa but Senator John Ensign may be in more hot water. His story about not being involved in trying to find a job for his mistress’s husband is not holding up to scrutiny:
Mr. Ensign, Republican of Nevada, suggested that a Las Vegas development firm hire the husband, Douglas Hampton, after it had sought the senator’s help on several energy projects in 2008, according to e-mail messages and interviews with company executives.
The messages are the first written records from Mr. Ensign documenting his efforts to find clients for Mr. Hampton, a top aide and close friend, after the senator had an affair with his wife, Cynthia Hampton. They appear to undercut the senator’s assertion that he did not know the work might involve Congressional lobbying, which could violate a federal ban on such activities by staff members for a year after leaving government.
The e-mail messages also hint at what Mr. Ensign’s office now says was an effort by the Las Vegas firm, a small energy investment business called P2SA Equity, to improperly link Mr. Ensign’s possible assistance to a promised donation.
So infidelity, corruption and bribery. Will this story get the attention it deserves?