Rachel Maddow had a segment about last weekend’s prayer rally at Ford Field that includes video footage of organizer Lou Engle saying more crazy and extremist things. Video below the fold.

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TransCanada, owners of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, have agreed to reroute the pipeline to avoid the Nebraska Sandhills, a particularly sensitive ecosystem.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Sen. Mike Flood, speaker of the Nebraska Legislature, announced on the floor that TransCanada Corp. would move the pipeline to another area of the state. Sources in Nebraska said it would likely be located farther east, nearer an existing Keystone pipeline that already carries Canadian tar sands oil into the U.S…

“We were at the Capitol building, they were in special session, and Speaker Flood stopped everything and said that everything was over, and TransCanada has voluntarily moved the pipeline out of the Sandhills of Nebraska,” said Todd Cone, a rancher who has been one of many battling the route through central Nebraska.

The Nebraska legislature was considering legislation that could have forced the project to be rerouted.

Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm appeared on CNN with Fareed Zakaria recently and pointed out that during her administration, all the tax breaks and wage concessions offered to businesses didn’t keep them from leaving for other countries.

A controversial prayer rally took place at Ford Field Friday and Saturday but many mainline Christian leaders protested the event, calling out organizers for their anti-Muslim, anti-gay and even anti-Catholic views.

The Detroit Free Press reports:

Organizers for Engle’s prayer event were expecting 50,000 to 70,000 people to show up, but the crowd size was markedly smaller than that, with much of the stadium unfilled. They also were heavily targeting African Americans in Detroit, but most of the crowd was white.

“Their message is not one of inclusion; it’s of hate,” said Jennifer Teed of Detroit, who opposed Engle’s prayer event. “I don’t see how that’s religious.”

She held up a sign that read, “All are people” and “Standing on the Side of Love.”

The protest against Engle featured Catholic, Baptist and Methodist pastors from Detroit, as well as gay rights and women’s activists. Chanting “Stop the hate” and “Spread the love,” the protesters said the prayer rally inside the stadium promotes division and intolerance.

“God did not call us to hate,” said the Rev. Charles Williams of Historic Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit.

Organizers of the rally have made many statements of an extreme nature in the past, including claiming that a member of the Michigan Senate gave them access to the chambers at the Capitol to declare a divorce decree between American and Baal.

Defenders of the Keystone XL pipeline have argued that the project is important for creating up to 20,000 new jobs in a struggling economy, but TransCanada, which owns the pipeline, said late last week that the number of permanent jobs would only number in the hundreds.

This is video of an interview on CNN with Robert Jones, VP of the pipeline for TransCanada:

Critics have argued that even the number of temporary construction jobs for the project have been inflated by the company.

A Department of Energy advisory panel that was criticized by environmentalists for having too many members connected to the oil and gas industry has issued a second report calling for stronger regulation of hydrofracking by state and federal agencies.

Pro Publica reports:

A federal energy panel issued a blunt warning to shale gas drillers and their regulators today, saying they need to step up efforts to protect public health and the environment or risk a backlash that stifles further development.

“Concerted and sustained action is needed to avoid excessive environmental impacts of shale gas production and the consequent risk of public opposition to its continuation and expansion,” said members of the Energy Department’s Shale Gas Subcommittee in a draft report released today…

The report calls on the EPA to revise a proposed rule on air emissions to include limits on methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and criticizes recent moves by the agency that have hindered efforts to get better data from the oil and gas industry, a crucial step toward improving controls.

The report also concludes that joint federal and state efforts to ensure water quality are “not working smoothly” and urges the EPA to move unilaterally to improve oversight as it carries out a study on potential effects of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water.

The panel’s recommendations are not binding, but Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said they carry significant weight.

The NRDC is calling on President Obama to issue an executive order forcing agencies to implement the panel’s recommendations.

An ongoing EPA investigation of possible contamination from hydrofracking in Wyoming has found significant amounts of cancer-causing fracking chemicals in a freshwater aquifer in that state.

ProPublica reports:

A pair of environmental monitoring wells drilled deep into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing, according to new water test results released yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The findings are consistent with water samples the EPA has collected from at least 42 homes in the area since 2008, when ProPublica began reporting on foul water and health concerns in Pavillion and the agency started investigating reports of contamination there.

Last year – after warning residents not to drink or cook with the water and to ventilate their homes when they showered — the EPA drilled the monitoring wells to get a more precise picture of the extent of the contamination.

The Pavillion area has been drilled extensively for natural gas over the last two decades and is home to hundreds of gas wells. Residents have alleged for nearly a decade that the drilling — and hydraulic fracturing in particular — has caused their water to turn black and smell like gasoline. Some residents say they suffer neurological impairment, loss of smell, and nerve pain they associate with exposure to pollutants.

While the EPA has not claimed certainty that the contamination came from fracking at this point, the presence of 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE), a chemical used in fracking, and the lack of contamination with nitrates and fertilizers that would indicate an agricultural source, suggest a link.

The Nebraska legislature, meeting in a special session to deal specifically with the Keystone XL pipeline that would cross their state, may be on the verge of passing a bill that could give the governor control over the route that pipeline would take.

On Wednesday, the Natural Resources Committee voted 7-1 to send a bill to the full legislature that would require all oil pipeline companies to have the routes of their pipelines certified by a state panel headed by the governor before starting construction.

It is an open legal question whether the passage of such a bill would be legally viable, since the approval of the project is up to the federal government at this point.

The Michigan House of Representatives passed an anti-bullying measure this afternoon that does not include the religious exception language that was in a similar bill passed by the Senate last week. The bill passed 88-18.

The House bill, like the Senate bill, is unenumerated — that is, it does not include a list of groups that are routinely subjected to bullying or reasons why kids are often bullied, such as religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity and so forth. Advocates of strong anti-bullying legislation have long favored an enumerated bill. Emily Dievendorf of Equality Michigan issued this statement about the bill:

“Equality Michigan applauds the Democratic legislators in the House that pushed for the addition of the strong language that would actually protect our students from bullying. Unfortunately, the pressure to pass just anything squashed their ability to make this bill something effective that we can celebrate. We have the case studies and data to know how to create a strong bill the first time. Oregon recently had to amend its anti-bullying law after 10 years when data showed that the students most bullied in Oregon schools, African-American and Native-American students, had not experienced relief from its anti-bullying policy. Michigan has lost at least ten students to bullying related suicide since 2001. We cannot afford to waste any additional time on a version of the anti-bullying bill that neglects to address this devastating and debilitating problem in our schools. Equality Michigan calls on the Michigan Senate to put partisan politics and political ideology aside in favor of standing up for all Michigan students.”

Rep. Kate Segal voted for the bill but said it should only be a first step:

Today, this bill is not a cause for celebration, because it is only one very small step. I hope my colleagues will join me in using this bill only as a starting point and to keep working until we can get real anti-bullying legislation — with real teeth –that helps every child in Michigan.

The actions taken by my Republican colleagues in the Senate last week made Michigan the target of ridicule and mockery in the news and on comedy programs across the country. With the eyes of the entire nation upon us, why aren’t we using this opportunity to pass real, strong and comprehensive anti-bullying laws, instead of passing the weakest acceptable bill possible.

All of Michigan’s children deserve to be protected from bullying and while this bill lets us talk about how we have finally caught up to 47 other states–states that had more foresight and more courage–it will still leave us lagging far behind when it comes to protecting our kids.

While I voted yes on House Bill 4163, because I recognize that we needed to pass something, this bill is not nearly enough. I will continue fighting for strong anti-bullying laws that protect all of Michigan’s children and provide real protections against cyber-bullying.”

SB 137, the Senate bill passed last week, will not come up for a vote in the House. That bill is essentially stuck in committee. This House bill, HB 4163, will now go to the Senate for passage on its own. Whether Republican Senators will seek to put the religious exception language into that bill by amendment remains to be seen.

As some observers predicted earlier this week, the Obama administration has decided to delay a final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election.

The Hill reports:

The Obama administration will announce Thursday that it is reevaluating the route of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a move that will likely delay a final decision on the project until after the 2012 election, sources briefed by the administration said…

Sources briefed by the administration said the decision to consider a new pipeline route would likely delay a final decision on the pipeline until after the election. The administration initially planned to make a decision on the project by the end of the year, but the State Department recently acknowledged that the timeline could slip.

Environmentalists who are opposed to the project are praising the decision and hoping that it kills the project entirely. Bill McKibben, who organized the massive protests around the White House over the last few weeks, said in a press release:

A done deal has come spectacularly undone. The American people spoke loudly and today the President responded, at least in part. Six months ago, almost no one outside the pipeline route even knew about Keystone XL. One month ago, a secret poll of “energy insiders” by the National Journal found that “virtually all” expected easy approval of the pipeline by year’s end. As late as last week the CBC reported that TransCanada was moving huge quantities of pipe across the border and seizing land by eminent domain, certain that its permit would be granted … We take courage from today’s announcement. It’s an unspoken salute to the power of people who come together in the open to demand action; it gives us some clues about how to fight going forward.”

But he also warned the Obama administration that the ultimate goal of the project’s opponents remains the same, saying, “The president should know that nothing that happened today changes our position–we’re unequivocal in our opposition. If this pipeline proposal reemerges from the review process intact we will use every form of nonviolent civil disobedience to keep it from ever being built.”