I will continue to update this post as new information is available.
A newsflash from Josh Fox:
NEWSFLASH. URGENT. Today there is an important fracking hearing in DC. The House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment will hold hearings on EPA’s testing in Pavillion Wyoming. Josh and his crew are being told they cannot film the hearing. CALL OR EMAIL CONGRESS NOW! Tell them Josh should be allowed in to film the hearing. It’s guaranteed in the first amendment! Call!!!
Thank you!
Please repost!
Committee Phone:
202-225-8844Committee Contact Form:
http://science.house.gov/
contact-us/email-us (Entire Committee)
Eye witness accounts coming soon on EARTHblog.
Photo taken by Earthworks
Comment from Earthworks’ Facebook page:
And after this happened, the senior chairman of the subcommittee, Mr. Miller, made a motion to let Josh back into the meeting. But…since there weren’t enough members of the committee present to have ua quarum, the whole thing went into recess. If you wanted to express your anger, find out who else was supposed to be there and send them asking why this wasn’t important enough for them to attend! At the end of the day, this will probably go on Josh’s record and cost him $$. That isn’t right!
I agree with another commenter, they have the wrong guy in handcuffs.
‘Gasland’ Journalists Arrested At Hearing By Order Of House Republicans (UPDATES)
So the House Republicans become the paid protectors of the frackers and help the Big Gas Mafia hide their dirty secrets from the American people.
From EARTHblog:
The committee made their agenda clear with the hearing’s title: Fractured Science – Examining EPA’s Approach to Ground Water Research: The Pavillion Analysis.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Just another example of why we (as ordinary citizens) cannot trust our government at any level, including all three branches! It is now designed to extract money from the peasants and deliver it onto high–peasants have NO rights!
LET JOSH GO!
Congrats! The politicians have just ensured that Gasland 2 will be an even bigger hit than Gasland. Whatever power Josh had a few days ago, has just increased 10 fold.
I can’t think of a better way to get attention to this issue than Josh getting handcuffed. He’s tough and can take it. Way to go Josh! You could never buy this much free publicity.
Outrageous. And wrong.
I wanna be locked up with Josh!
So, not following the rules is good for the goose?
He applied for credentials like he always does and has. Interestingly, since Republicans took over the House, he has not been granted credentials once. So they exercised a law that has been previously widely ignored.
Are you for freedom of the press or do you support secret “public” hearings?
The rules said America could not exist, so I guess we are all rule breakers. There are rules which should be broken, Just like in the military you only have an obligation to abide by a just and moral order. Just because your officer says “Shoot those 5 unarmed prisoners”, doesn’t mean you do it. Yes, Josh “broke the rules”, but his justification was 1/10 of the Bill of Rights. in my book, the Bill of Rights wins over a House subcommittee procedural rule often put aside when there are not a lot of reporters which would fill the room any day of the week.
A number of pro O&G sites have had comments applauding this action, but that’s VERY shortsighted. What happens to open Government? Remember when a Rush Limbaugh cameraman had his camera wrongly seized before Hillary Clinton gave a presentation about universal healthcare around 1994? While I don’t agree much with Rush, I felt that was wrong to do.
Didn’t we learn from the Watergate power abuses of Government?
If anybody needed more evidence that the fossil-fuel industry is subverting government, democracy, rights and freedoms in order to further its rape and destruction of the environment in furtherance of profit, this is it.
The webcast and several discussions have been posted. http://science.house.gov
I encourage everyone to listen to this outrageous display of Big Gas Mafia boosterism by the GOP. It’s truly sickening!!!
Here’s “the arrest”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/house-republicans-order-j_n_1246971.html
Oops!
The LA Times corrected an earlier version of this post which had several errors. The piece also stated that Fox was arrested after walking into the hearing, but it was only the videotaping that violated committee rules and was cause for arrest. Anyone can attend the hearing. Also, the earlier piece said that now infamous footage of flammable gas bursting from water faucets, used in the film “Gasland,” were from Pavilion, Wyoming. Those images were from Colorado and were not linked to oil and gas activity.
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