In a tiny, but magnificent rider tucked inside the massive 1,200-page budget deal that funds the federal government through the end of the current fiscal year, is a brightly-glowing gem for all lovers of the traditional 100-watt incandescent light bulb — and personal freedom of choice.
Congressional Republicans succeeded in pushing the deadline for the ban on the sale of these treasured reading and task lights until September 30, 2012 — a time that one hopes will be the seven-week lead-up to the lame duck presidency of one Barack Obama, post November 6, 2012..
For now, the president is set the sign the bill which will keep, among other items, our beloved bulbs in hardware stores, Home Depots and Lowes, and available to freedom-loving Americans, until fall.
This morning’s Washington Times reports the joyous news:
Congressional Republicans dropped almost all of the policy restrictions they tried to attach to the bill, but won inclusion of the light bulb provision, which prevents the Obama administration from carrying through a 2007 law that would have set energy efficiency standards that effectively made the traditional light bulb obsolete.
Stopping the bulb ban was a chief GOP priority coming into this year, with all of the candidates seeking to become chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee saying they would push through a repeal. That bill cleared the House but Democrats blocked its consideration in the Senate.
This is a day for rejoicing. The forces of liberty have overwhelmed the forces of a world so green one would not have been able to read a traditional book by a traditional light bulb.
What the lobbyists for the so-called “environment” seem to have forgotten is that human beings are part of the environment, too. And we –unlike spotted owls and baby seals, whom I wish well in their struggle for life — vote, and have Members of Congress who listened to our calls for a repeal of this pernicious, malevolent ban.
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