(Screen grab of a comment from E-2 Wire, the energy and environmental politics blog at The Hill.)

Is passage of a lame duck renewable energy standard really tyrannical? Well, that depends on who you ask.

I really do like The Hill's energy and environmental politics blog, E-2 Wire. They do some excellent and timely inside-the-beltway reporting on the critical issues in energy and environmental politics today. And I can speak from authority when I say reporting on environmental politics isn't easy. Yet while the content may be great for an ecopolitics nerd like me, it is the stuff that comes after the post body that--nine times out of ten--makes me feel like I'm reading something straight out of the comments section of Fox News or conservative think tank, The Heritage Institute's, The Foundry blog (although in the case of the latter, there is at least some actual policy debate).

I have found the vitriolic reaction to the possibility of any kind of action on energy or environmental issues at E-2 Wire to be consistently off topic and hard to stomach. And to be honest, I'm surprised the blog hasn't gone the way of the Wall Street Journal's short-lived attempt at covering energy and the environment. Perhaps the editors like the one-sided, malicious Tea Party-esque commenting that dominates the site, but if I were them, I would have turned off commenting on that site a long, long time ago.

The above comment comes from a piece on Tuesday at E-2 Wire that reported on a conference call with Senator Harry Reid where Reid suggested that there was still a chance of passing a national renewable energy standard.

“Maybe, after the elections, we can get some more Republicans to work with us," said Reid on the call, adding, “We are going to continue working on this. You won’t hear the last of us until we adjourn sine die."

Commenters quickly pounced on the Reid comment calling any move to enact "lame duck" energy legislation would be akin to tyranny.

Call me old fashioned but just because there might be some changes in the balance of power in Congress after November 2 does not mean every member of Congress needs to sit on their hands for two months and not go to work. If Congress somehow musters the will to pass an RES, it would hardly be a case of "Tyranny at it's best," as one commenter at E-2 Wire puts it.  It would merely be a democratically-elected representatives in a (lowercase 'r') republican system acting out the will of the people.