I first started this blog almost 14 months ago. I was not one of the political bloggers that came from a site like Daily Kos or MyDD, instead I just went out and did it.

I have always had a deep passion for politics, and that was one of my motivations to jump into the world of blogging. I have also taken a great interest in the weather, which should be obvious – I mean what other blog offers current weather conditions, forecasts and weather maps. When these two passions collided, IntoxiNation was born.

One of my first posts was regarding a bill sponsored by Rick Santorum, S.B. 786, which attacks the National Weather Service. This bill is meant to remove all the free data the National Weather Service has available via their website. Santorum’s argument is that “the NWS should focus on Hurricanes”. Of course they also focus on other issues like tornadoes, floods and forest fires.

The actual motivation behind this bill lies in one of Santorum’s contributors. Joel Myers, the President of AccuWeather is a Santorum contributor and a major contributor to the Republican Party as a whole. He has donated close to $50,000 to Republican’s and Republican PACS.

This bill is so absurd that it doesn’t even deserve debate in this do nothing session of Congress. Santorum feels the NWS should only focus on actual hurricanes, yet as anyone with a little intelligence knows, you must forecast the good weather to know when the bad weather is coming. Further, constant forecast models add to the accuracy of future forecasts and also help decrease the time needed to issue life saving warnings. This was evident last year when Katrina hit and it was the NWS that was sounding the alarms. The President and other’s were the ones who chose to ignore those warnings.

Now you may be wondering why I have decided to bring this issue back up over a year later. Last night I was surfing over at Daily Kos and noticed one of the diaries on their nightly rescue involved this very issue. It seems it has become a hot topic again:

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There’s some irony to this as well. There was recent flooding that was quite significant across the state of Pennsylvania. The Weather Service was instrumental in getting warnings out and saving lives. The very weather service that Santorum wants to kill.

The bill would likely stop up-to-date weather reporting and funnel it instead to private sector organizations such as Accu-Weather. Many may not realize but there is an incredible wealth of information on the National Weather Service’s websites that delight professional meteorologists, amateurs such as my self, weather nerds and storm trackers, and other researchers. All issued for free (in a sense, because you’ve already paid for it through your tax dollars.) Santorum’s bill would make you have to pay for it. Even though you’ve already paid for it.

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Now thankfully, it appears that the bill has few if any sponsors. It’s just Santorum’s pet bill to give a little something back to Accuweather (who I generally refer to as CrapUWeather. They’re a bunch of jerks.)

Contact your Senators and don’t let Santorum get his way.

I want to join in with Terrypinder from Dkos in asking everyone to call their Senators and ask them to stop this bill. While this bill is motivated by a pure greed that Santorum loves, it will have a far worse outcome. The boating industry relies heavily upon the information from the NWS and so does the fire and police services. They need this information to survive and make life or death situations. Santorum would rather throw that away for some petty cash.

I am asking everyone to call or email your Senators and tell them this bill must be stopped. Don’t let the Republican greed claim more lives in our country.