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" It&amp;#039;s been a while since we checked in on our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel and Republican fetish object. TransCanada, the foreign company seeking to bring the world&amp;#039;s dirtiest fossil fuel from the moonscapes of northern Alberta, through the country&amp;#039;s most valuable farmland, and down to the refineries of Texas, won a couple of points in front of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. Local native tribes attempted to call witnesses regarding climate change in defense of their opinion that the tar sands are not worth the candle. The commission declined.  The Intertribal COUP organization planned to offer three scientists to testify about tar-sands development and climate change. But the group lost that opportunity when it failed to meet a requirement in the hearing process. I-COUP&amp;#039;s plan next became to present the three as rebuttal witnesses. TransCanada&amp;#039;s lawyers won their argument Tuesday before the commission that the witnesses shouldn&amp;#039;t be allowed at all. The purpose of the July 27-31 and Aug. 3-4 evidentiary hearing is for the commission to consider whether TransCanada can continue to meet all of the conditions originally set in the 2010 permit. Because four years have elapsed without the start of construction, state law requires the company to seek the certification for the permit to remain valid. James Moore, a Sioux Falls lawyer who represents TransCanada in South Dakota, said Tuesday the 2010 permit conditions didn&amp;#039;t include climate change.  OK, so what is the scientific argument here? South Dakota is not part of the world, or the world does not quite extend to South Dakota. When the rest of the planet burns, South Dakota is fireproof? No matter, provincial is as provincial does. Meanwhile, the good folks at DeSmog Blog have unearthed some interesting information about the way that TransCanada does its business.  At TransCanada&amp;#039;s latest shareholder meeting in Calgary, Evan Vokes, a former employee turned whistleblower, asked CEO Russ Girling why the company had not disclosed the ongoing investigations in its current annual report. Girling acknowledged that the company is under review, but assured shareholders that pipeline safety remains the company&amp;#039;s top priority. After informing stockholders that another whistleblower recently disclosed documents showing that TransCanada had broken the same rules that Vokes exposed in 2010, he asked Girling what TransCanada had done to change things since Vokes worked for the company. &amp;quot;To the extent that they [the regulators] find any issues with our corporation, we will change to evolve but at the current time there has been nothing put forward that we need to respond to,&amp;quot; Girling said. &amp;quot;Across 70,000 kilometers of pipeline and 64 billion dollars of rotating equipment, there are things we have to address everyday,&amp;quot; Girling said, without citing anything specific. Vokes alleges TransCanada&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;culture of noncompliance&amp;quot; has not changed. Mounting pipeline failures, including the Suffield Lateral line in Alberta, Canada that failed on May 11, help validate his claim.  (That Suffield Lateral failure was one that got under the radar. It was a natural-gas pipeline and it was owned by TransCanada, so it leaked, because it is a pipeline owned by TransCanada and they leak.) That weaselspeak from CEO Girling does not fill me with confidence. Maybe he can get some tips from his newest lobbyist, inexcusable former Senator Mary Landrieu. Once again, we&amp;#039;re haggling about the price. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a35312/keystone-xl-pipeline-under-investigation/>