“Electricity” on The Daily Caller

Fox News personality Glenn Beck called for a restoration of faith in the United States at his “Divine Destiny” event Friday night at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (more)

In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the country of what he called the “military-industrial complex,” a reference to the growing relationship between the military industry in the private sector and the federal government. Today, there is another industrial complex taking shape. Only this time, the president is not warning anyone about it – he’s actually directly involved in its growth. (more)

In rural communities of Africa — where more than 95 percent of homes have no access to electricity — solar energy has the power to transform lives. (more)

PALMDALE, Calif. — Water-dropping aircraft slowed the progress of a wildfire that was bearing down on hundreds of homes in the high desert north of Los Angeles. (more)

BP PLC will sell its gas fields and gas pipeline in Vietnam as well as assets and exploration licenses in Pakistan as part of its effort to cover the cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a company spokesman said Tuesday. (more)

Walk onto a modern wind farm and you’ll feel like an ant in a field of sunflowers. Modern wind turbines stand 30-50 stories tall. Their blades swinging high above can be more than 130 feet long. Their steel towers are anchored in platforms of more than a thousand tons of cement and steel rebar, which are typically 30 to 50 feet across and anywhere from 6 to 30 feet deep. (more)

Barack Obama isn’t the one that hundreds of millions of poor Indians have been waiting for. Many unemployed in Milwaukee won’t be too happy either. (more)

The developers of a solar lamp that aims to replace kerosene-burning lights in developing countries have won a prestigious environmental award. (more)

One Arizona politician has made a vow to make illegal immigrants powerless — literally. (more)

When you think about it, it’s ridiculous to spend the effort lugging around spare batteries, hand-cranked chargers, piezoelectric gadgets, and all the other half-baked solutions we depend on to resuscitate a dead phone. There’s a potent supply of free power just waiting to be tapped, right above our heads. No, not the sun — overhead power lines. (more)

As we mark the 60^th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War, the Korean Peninsula provides the world a living, object lesson. On this peninsula, approximately the size of Minnesota, the Korean people are ethnically identical. But, upon gaining independence after World War II, the Korean people took separate paths to self-government. The North led by Soviet occupying forces, the South by U.S-Allied forces. The armistice in 1953 that ended the Korean War split the war-ravaged Korean people with a totalitarian regime in the North and a society based on freedom of expression, religion and private property rights in the South. Both new countries were considered relatively “poor” though North Korea had much more heavy industry and resources compared to the mountainous, rural southern part. (more)

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its review of the American Power Act proposed by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT). The analysis is conveniently rosy, and the sponsors are eagerly promoting the EPA’s finding that the average household will face an average estimated cost increase of only $79, to $146. (more)

On Tuesday, President Obama promised in his Oval Office address that the US could end our addiction to imported oil through technological innovation and sheer gumption: (more)

With a narrow 53-47 majority, the U.S. Senate appallingly voted for American economic unilateral disarmament. They voted against American jobs and coal-related jobs, manufacturers and business, our competitiveness, and affordable electricity and for ceding legislative responsibility to unelected judges and bureaucrats. (more)

Even before the BP disaster in the Gulf, there have been countless fallacies reported in the media about offshore drilling, but they have gotten even worse. One of the talking heads suggested that by moving to green sources, including nuclear, would lessen our dependency on oil so that we could stop drilling off the coastline. It was quite a solution, unfortunately it doesn’t quite add up. To start with, nuclear power is used to generate electricity, whereas drilling oil is used to refine gasoline for our cars. (more)

In the quest for proven, clean, sustainable forms of energy, we have looked to the sky to harness wind; we have looked to the seas and the rivers to harness water; we even looked to space to harness the sun. Billions upon billions of collective dollars, yen, and euros have flowed into finding the next great source of renewable energy. The latest and greatest energy ideas scream at us from every television, bus, and magazine article, proclaiming dominance in a crowded field. One proven energy technology, however, has remained conspicuously missing, yet is essential to enable the proliferation of the better-known renewable technologies. It also happens to be one of the most simple, proven, and cost-saving technologies available. (more)

We already harvest the power of the sun and the wind. Soon we may also harvest the power of potholes. A new type of shock absorber under development by the Levant Power Corporation converts the bumps and jolts of vehicles on rough roads into usable electricity. (more)

President Obama keeps trying to make our electric bills skyrocket. (more)

The wind energy industry would have us believe that the industry “is on the edge of explosive growth.” (more)

May 24 (Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co., working to make a quarter of its vehicles run at least partly on electricity, plans to invest $135 million and add 220 jobs at three Michigan facilities to help it introduce five such models by 2012. (more)