The Waxman fan club goes wild

This probably isn't going to be that big of a story as it should be as there are no teams, rivals, or teams of rivals involved, but Henry Waxman has just defeated John Dingell for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. What does all of this mean? Well namely that this House body holds sway over the five points energy, the environment and health care. Now this isn't going to mean any real change in health care but it is going to make any proposed changes Obama, or the House for that matter, wants to make for the environment and energy, specifically dealing with cars and mileage and emissions standards.

Dingell, more or less, was a Detroit man who stood in the way of things like increasing CAFE standards for mileage and any real substantive action on global warming that affected the car industry. Waxman has no such entanglements, thus we're likely to see a huge new push on the environment and global warming. This will also be helped by the fact that Waxman's former chief of staff, Phil Schiliro, is now Obama's director of legislative affairs. So score one for the good guys, you might not choke to death of smog or drown in a global flood.