Getting Pombo

Oh, this is good. Enviros are ganging up on CongressThing Richard Pombo, the addle-brained faux cowpoke Republican slimewad from California's 11th District, chair of the House Resources Committee.

When last we saw him he was opining on the benign nature of mercury:

"After an exhaustive review of all the science surrounding the mercury debate, it is clear that some special-interest groups are crying wolf," said the panel's chairman, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif. (SFGate)

Pooling resources to get rid of this bottom-feeder is a great investment, especially as he is especially vulnerable by virtue of being in bed with indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff (he is number five on the list of Abramoff money recipients). Pombo was plucked from obscurity by Tom Delay to Chair the Resources Committee and in exchange he has compliantly ravaged the environment:

Pombo's 11th District is a Republican anomaly in the otherwise heavily Democratic Bay Area of Northern California. The 11th contains some of the agricultural Central Valley and stretches into the Bay's tech corridor, spreading across four counties. In the more than 12 years he's been in Congress, Pombo's district has become home to some of the most horrendous stretches of strip malls and cultureless housing tracts in California. According to the East Bay Express, Pombo's father and uncles have made tens of millions of dollars selling farm and ranch land to developers. And on Pombo's watch, his district also has come to have some of the worst air quality and drinking water in the country.

While Pombo, who embodies the Republican archetype of the fake rancher, waxes on about "the land" and the generations of Pombo farmers, he has quietly worked his legislative powers to sell his family's acreage to the government for an unnecessary freeway add-on. (via Alternet)

Pombo has made it his goal in life to kill the Endangered Species Act, doing so in the face of the Republican he replaced, Pete McCloskey, who authored the bill (and was a courageous opponent of the War in Vietnam to boot). McCloskey, now 78, is said to be considering a primary challenge of Pombo. But the real opposition comes from the Enviros:

Pombo's manner in making these radical cuts at his Resource Committee hearings is a sight to behold; he reads from his staff-prepared statements dispassionately, mumbling word-to-word as he announces death sentences to whole bird species and proposals to sell off our national parks to mining and timber interests.

Environmental groups now laying the groundwork for the campaign against Pombo seem almost to relish the fight ahead. Rico Mastrodonato, California director of the California League of Conservation Voters said, "There's no single individual that is more openly hostile, more potentially dangerous on the environment than Richard Pombo." As Grist Magazine reported, Defenders of Wildlife has started its own voter-outreach project and is coordinating with the Sierra Club to assemble a coalition of enviro groups to hire canvassers and organizers collectively.

Go for it. Let's get this miserable scumbag sonuvabitch.