Maine, Year Zero

Sen. Collins has an op-Ed today in Foster's (her second this week?) with all the usual talking points on energy independence.

We've written before about the junior senator's timid approach to the energy crisis, one that won't come anywhere near solving the core problems.

But this piece gets our attention for a different reason: Reading it, you could be forgiven for concluding that the energy debate had no recent history; it's hard to get to the end without wondering what Collins, a member of the Senate majority for most of the last eight years, has been doing to tackle the issues.

And if you didn't know better, you'd be surprised to learn that the junior senator backed the Cheney energy bill, which lathered on subsidies for oil and gas companies while increasing mandates for ethanol use.

If Collins was working to reform US energy policy before her re-election campaign began, she sure was quiet about it.