There have been a bunch of stories lately about how Democrats in the House were all in disarray over energy legislation. It seemed that John Dingell (D-Cars) and Rick Boucher (D-Coal) were planning to craft a not-so-green bill that would toss money at coal-to-liquid fuels (the biggest boondoggle of them all), put in place weak fuel-economy standards, and override California's newly proposed tailpipe-emissions rules. Not surprisingly, all the other Dems on the committee started rioting--or at least writing angry letters.
But now Dingell and Boucher are backing away from the controversial bits in the bill. It's not clear if that's because Nancy Pelosi put them in a headlock and made them surrender, or if they're just biding their time (in his memo, Dingell does say that he still wants to revisit coal-to-liquid subsidies, among other things, at a later date). Either way, the "Dems in disarray" stories can probably abate for, I don't know, a few days, at least.
--Bradford Plumer