The Wonk Room

Global Boiling: Grassley Calls Tornado A ‘Wake-Up Call,’ Filibusters Climate Legislation»

Of the “the first F–5 tornado to strike Iowa since 1976″ that killed eight people Memorial Day weekend, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) rose on the Senate floor on June 5 to say:

In some ways, the storm may serve as a wake-up call to those of us who have become somewhat complacent about severe weather warnings.

Watch it:

The next day, Grassley joined 37 of his colleagues to filibuster climate legislation, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

This week, Grassley continued to ignore Mother Nature’s message. On Monday, June 9, he wrote on his blog:

My hometown of New Hartford was evacuated last night due to flooding just weeks after a tornado caused a lot of damage.

The next day, Grassley joined 43 other senators in a party-line vote to filibuster the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008.

UPDATE: Matt Stoller at Open Left writes:

I just got off the phone with a Congressional staffer, who couldn’t quite focus on the issue we were supposed to discuss because she is working overtime on the floods in the Midwest. So I turned on cable news, and found out that the floods are plastered all over, much as the wildfires in California were in October of 2007. And just like 2007, the major environmental groups are AWOL on the most covered climate event of the year so far.