Obama's Interior Department stalls 'clean energy' query

President Obama, confronted yet again by House and Senate investigators probing the cronyism in his green energy programs, did what he often does. He simply ignored Congress. "Last November, a request was made of the Department of the Interior for information and answers about its role in the Department of Energy's green energy loan guarantee program, as well as favorable loans and federal land-use deals provided to certain corporations," wrote Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in a letter to Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last week. "It is suggestive and troubling that more than half a year has passed without DOI providing the requested documents and information." The lawmakers fear that several politically connected green energy companies received special treatment from the Interior and Energy departments due to their relationship with Obama. They focused their inquiry on six companies in particular: Abengoa Solar, BrightSource Energy, First Solar, Nevada Geothermal Power, NextEra Energy Resources and SolarReserve. Issa and Sessions suspect that Salazar initiated a "fast-tracking" process that allowed some companies to receive regulatory and environmental approval and permission to use government lands for clean energy projects without adequate vetting...more