Insleee, Larsen, Dicks and Smith, all Democrats, voted YES on this slimy bill that undercuts last month's court victory wherein the Navy agreed to limit its use of destructive sonar. Baird voted "present." Of the Democrats, only good old McDermott voted no. I hope that if any of those other Dems are your representative, you will write and tell him that you are disappointed in him. At the very least, this exemption had no place in a spending bill. They should have voted no, unequivocally.
The Seattle P-I has good coverage of this in today's edition.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/147453_sonar08.html<snip>
Fifty-one House members, including Inslee, Baird and Blumenauer, unsuccessfully appealed Oct. 21 to the Armed Services Committee chairmen to leave the issue alone for now, citing a study by Spanish and British scientists that came out Oct. 9.
The study said whales near naval exercises where sonar was used appeared to get a sometimes-fatal version of the bends, the nitrogen sickness suffered by human scuba divers. The study followed a string of whale deaths in the vicinity of naval exercises in several places around the globe. All involved common midfrequency sonar, not the newer, more-powerful low-frequency version.
"Marine mammal scientists have said that this study may be the so-called 'smoking-gun' linking sonar use with marine mammal strandings," the House members wrote. "It provides a plausible and credible scientific explanation for an abundance of circumstantial evidence that has linked sonar use to marine mammal stranding."
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This just makes me ill.
s_m