Dem. Mayor Wants Apology From Obama

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Take It Back

The mayor of Las Vegas wants an apology from President Obama. Monday the president said companies receiving federal bailout money shouldn't visit Sin City.

“You can't get corporate jets, you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime."

Fellow Democrat Oscar Goodman responds, "That's outrageous... He owes us a retraction. What's a better place, as I say, than for them to come here? And to change their mind and to go someplace else and to cancel and at the suggestion of the president of the United States — that's outrageous."

Business Is Booming

Fears that President Obama might raise taxes on ammunition are being blamed for a run on bullets in Florida. The Orlando Sentinel reports ammo is flying off the shelves so fast distributors are having to restrict deliveries. One regional manufacturer says it has seen bullet sales jump 100% since the November election.

Meanwhile, having a fake gun that doesn't even use bullets could get one Colorado high school student expelled. A Denver TV station reports Marie Morrow is a member of her county's Young Marine Drill Team. She left her practice rifles in her car at school. Some people saw them and now the "A" student is suspended and could be kicked out. She says it was her mistake.

But the commanding officer of the Young Marines says “For her to have to go through this is completely insane."

Wasted Energy?

Germany is a recognized global leader in renewable energy. But Spiegel Online reports that despite this, carbon dioxide emissions have not been reduced at all because of the European Union’s Emission Trading System.

Basically, it allows companies that do not use all their CO2 allotment to sell the credits to other companies which can then belch out more pollution.

Even the Green Party has recognized that there's a problem. And one employee with the German Renewable Energy Federation acknowledges what he calls "a certain degree of inconsistency" between the promotion of renewable energy — and emissions trading.

Sign of the Apocalypse

And experts at Britain’s top climate research center are attacking scientists and journalists for what they are calling misleading "apocalyptic predictions" about arctic ice melt and warming temperatures. The Guardian newspaper reports officials at the Met Office Hadley Center say such gloom and doom pronouncements are confusing and inaccurate.

The center's head of climate change advice says “Having to rein in extraordinary claims that the latest extreme [event] is all due to climate change is at best hugely frustrating and at worse enormously distracting."

— FOX News Channel's Zachary Kenworthy contributed to this report.