STAUNCH EPA OPPONENT TAKES HELM OF SENATE’S TOP OVERSIGHT PANEL:

[Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.] said the committee’s “early” priorities will be:

• Confirming Trump nominee Scott Pruitt as administrator of the EPA.
• Pass “badly needed reforms to problematic EPA regulations issued over the past eight years.”
• Finding ways to “better empower rural communities by addressing aging roads, bridges and dams.”

That last bullet point shouldn’t be a problem at all. While early in Obama’s first term, then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Deanna Archuleta (D-NM) promised that at least during the Obama administration, “You will never see another federal dam,” dam building still enjoys wide support on both sides of the aisle – just ask NBC’s Rachel Maddow (and presumably her commercial’s director as well, Maddow’s fellow archleftist, Spike Lee):