McCain to make Palin energy czar

The Sunday Telegraph is reporting that John McCain wants to put Sarah Palin in charge of US oil and energy policy if he becomes president:

The Republican presidential candidate will make his running mate the public face of the country's drive for energy independence, according to a McCain campaign official.

The campaign official said: "The Democrats say that Governor Palin is inexperienced, but she has vast experience in the energy sector. She will be at the forefront of the push for energy independence. She's popular and she's very persuasive." A Republican Party official, who has discussed Mrs Palin's role with members of Mr McCain's team, added: "She can say: 'I'm from Alaska. I know all about this and I support drilling, even in ANWR."

"No one has more experience of getting oil out of the ground and to the market than Sarah Palin," he said. "It is the issue that most distinctively divides the two parties and it is one that has proved popular for Senator McCain.

"No political figure in the US has more experience of taking on privilege and vested interests than Sarah Palin."

On another note, Governor Palin opposed the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species and recently went so far as to sue the Department of the Interior over the issue.

August 4, 2008, Fairbanks, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin announced today the State of Alaska has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

This action follows written notice given more than 60 days ago to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne of the Department of the Interior and Director Dale Hall of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that the regulation listing the polar bear as threatened be withdrawn.

“We believe that the Service’s decision to list the polar bear was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available,” Governor Palin said.

The Service’s analysis failed to adequately consider the polar bears’ survival through prior warming periods, and its findings that the polar bear is threatened by sea-ice habitat loss and inadequate regulatory mechanisms to address sea-ice recession are not warranted. The Service also failed to adequately consider the existing regulatory mechanisms, including conservation measures within Alaska and the international community, which have resulted in a sustainable worldwide polar bear population that has more than doubled in number over the last 40 years to 20,000-25,000 bears.

Bravo for Governor Palin. Who better than Alaskans to know the real story of the polar bear? Polar bears are not threatened and the greens managed to browbeat Kempthorne into listing them as such when it was completely unwarranted.

It was just another move by the greens to make it more difficult to drill for oil in the Arctic. Let's hope Governor Palin's suit is successful and this obstacle to energy independence can be removed.

Related.

Update & Note: the term "Czar" or "Tsar" does not appear in the above article from the Sunday Telegraph. It was a term I used in the title of this post. Actually, the more appropriate use of the word in this case would be the feminine "Czaritsa" or "Tsaritsa".

At any rate, in the strictest sense it refers to a ruler or monarch, which is not a position you will find in the government of the USA. Its use here is in the more informal meaning of an:

...official having special powers to regulate or supervise an activity: a racetrack czar; an energy czar.