Blowhard News for Tuesday.

Rep. Shimkus: ‘If drilling is good, drilling and mining is better.’
During a House GOP press conference today, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) used the power of logic to push for increased coal mining as well as increased oil drilling. To help make his case, Shimkus held up a lump of Illinois coal and even displayed the jersey of the Southern Illinois Miners:

You know, if drilling is good, drilling and mining is better. … It’s drilling and mining and using great resources like Illinois coal. You all follow the congressional baseball game. I wore this uniform proudly. It says, ‘The Miners.’ The mining industry and coal is part of the solution.

Gingrich Claims Tire Inflation Lines Big Oil’s Pockets Last night on Fox News, host Sean Hannity and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) returned (as they often do) to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) recent suggestion that Americans inflate their tires properly in order to save energy costs. Seeming to outdo his previous false attacks on this issue, Gingrich claimed that Obama’s idea is actually encouraging Americans to “enrich Big Oil” because selling air has “a higher profit margin than selling gasoline”: GINGRICH: Well, I got a very funny e-mail from a retired military officer in Tampa who pointed out that most tire inflation is done at service stations and you pay for it. And it’s actually a higher profit margin than selling gasoline. So Sen. Obama was urging you to go out and enrich Big Oil by inflating your tires instead of buying gas.

Bartlett joins CBS News as a ‘political analyst.’ Dan Bartlett, former Counselor to President Bush, “has joined CBS News as a political analyst,” TVNewser reports. Bartlett is expected to “provide on-air analysis on a variety of political issues, ‘including at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions and beyond.’” Bartlett — dubbed “Danny Boy” or “Dan the Man” by Bush — has spent “virtually his entire career working for Bush.” Last fall, he joined the influential PR firm, Public Strategies Inc. Explaining his departure from the Bush administration, he said, “I’ve had competing families. And, unfortunately, the Bush family has prevailed too many times, and it’s high time for the Bartlett family to prevail.”