The big beer brewers often admonish us imbibers of their products to "Drink Responsibly." Well, I say back to them: Lobby Responsibly.

In particular, I point to a disgusting binge of besotted lobbying by Anheuser-Busch and other beer barons this year in the Nebraska legislature. At issue was the town of Whiteclay, smack dab on the Nebraska-South Dakota border.

Although only about 10 people live there, it's home to four beer stores. Why? Because right across the state line is the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Oglala Sioux tribe, which has a devastating problem of alcohol addiction, combined with intractable poverty. The sale of alcohol is banned on the reservation.

Whiteclay exists solely so booze peddlers can profit from the Oglala tribe's miseries. They sell 4 million cans of beer a year to Pine Ridge residents, including high-alcohol malt liquor. So much for that "Drink Responsibly" slogan. One in four children on the reservation is born with fetal alcohol birth defects. The life expectancy of tribal members is less than 50 years.

Responding to this grotesque exploitation of an epidemic illness, Nebraska state senator LeRoy Louden introduced a bill that would designate Whiteclay as an "alcohol impact zone." This legislation would allow authorities to limit store hours and ban high-alcohol beers. Of course, Busch and its responsible beer buddies backed it, right?

Not a chance. Like gators on a poodle, their lobbyists leapt on the legislature, calling in chits from key lawmakers who'd taken thousands of dollars in campaign cash from the industry. The chair of the senate committee considering the bill had pocketed $4,000 in beer money. He dutifully refused to let the bill even go to a vote during the state's recently concluded 2012 legislative session. "We're not here to protect people from themselves," he declared.

Surely there's an ...

Big brewers like Anheuser-Busch frequently admonish us imbibers of their grain products to "drink responsibly." Well, I say back to them: Lobby responsibly.

In particular, I point to a disgusting binge of besotted lobbying by Anheuser-Busch (now owned by the Belgian beer conglomerate InBev) and other beer barons this year in the Nebraska legislature.

At issue was the "town" of Whiteclay, smack dab on the Nebraska-South Dakota border. I put "town" in quotes because only 10 people live there — but it is home to four beer stores. Why? Because right across the state line is the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Oglala Sioux tribe, which has a devastating problem of alcohol addiction among its 20,000 members, combined with intractable and dispiriting poverty.

Whiteclay exists solely so booze peddlers can profit from the Oglala tribe's addiction miseries. They sell more than 4 million cans of beer a year to Pine Ridge residents! This includes literally making a killing by peddling high-alcohol malt liquors, such as Busch's aptly named "Hurricane High." So much for "Drink responsibly."

A fourth of the children on the reservation are born with fetal alcohol birth defects. Life expectancy of tribal members is less than 50 years. And more than 90 percent of the violent crime on the reservation is attributed to drunkenness. On Pine Ridge itself, the tribe bans the sale and consumption of alcohol — the Whiteclay stores, positioned only a short walk away, are the source of the addictive drug and its consequences.

Responding to this grotesque exploitation of an epidemic illness, Republican state Sen. LeRoy Louden introduced LB 829 this year, a modest bill to designate Whiteclay as an "alcohol impact zone." Used successfully in Tennessee, Washington state and elsewhere, these zones allow authorities to take such steps as limiting store hours and high-alcohol ...

Bullying American landowners and stockpiling pipe for a rejected project show the arrogance of the Canadian pipeline company TransCanada as it tries to reanimate the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The latest news is that TransCanada is proposing to split the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in two in order to get around the U.S. process to review international pipelines for their national interest. TransCanada says that it will seek the presidential permit for the border crossing, but move ahead separately with the southern portion of the rejected Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Oklahoma to the Gulf. This is a ploy to avoid a review that will show how the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will raise U.S. oil prices, send tar sands overseas, endanger U.S. homes and waters, and contribute to worsening climate change.

What part of “no” does TransCanada not understand? Texans, Nebraskans, and folks all across the country are saying that whether in a hundred pieces or one piece, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in the national interest. At a time of public worry about rising gas prices, lawmakers should be concerned about a project that will in diverting oil from the Midwest gasoline refining operations to Gulf Coast diesel refining operations thereby raising U.S. oil and gas prices.

So what exactly has TransCanada proposed? TransCanada announced that it has let the State Department know that the company will submit a new application for a presidential permit for the northern portion of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from the border crossing in Montana to Steel City, Nebraska on the Kansas border where an already existing part of the pipeline starts. ...