O'Reilly: The case against fracking is cracking

'I believe hydraulic fracking is, in fact, safe. We know that, from everything we've seen, there's not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone."

What right-wing, knuckle-dragger uttered that inanity? Why none other than former Obama Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Colorado.

How about this one?

"America is closer to energy independence than we've been in decades. One of the reasons why is natural gas, if extracted safely, it's the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change."

Why, that was President Obama during his recent State of the Union speech.

Last one: "Thirty states and the federal Environmental Protection Agency have all deemed , on balance, to be safe, and in particular to pose no significant threat to the drinking water supply."

That was former state Democratic Party co-chairman John Sullivan in a Jan. 14 opinion piece.

These remarks suggest, at a minimum, three possibilities: 1. Obama, Salazar and Sullivan inexplicably want to foul U.S. drinking water. 2. Obama, Salazar and Sullivan are in the pocket of the natural gas industry and don't care about the environment, or 3. There are leading Democrats who have determined that hydrofracking is, indeed, environmentally safe when done properly. Option three seems most plausible.

But if liberal politicians are okay with hydrofracking, why do New Yorkers split in poll after poll on whether to allow natural gas extraction in a state sitting atop a large swath of the Marcellus Shale Formation? Wouldn't New Yorkers, who face an unemployment rate higher than the national average and the second-highest electric bills in America, want to release clean energy and wealth from the ground? Wouldn't post 9-11 New Yorkers want to end America's reliance on Middle Eastern oil?

My eldest daughter returned from school recently boasting how progressive the French are for deriving 75 percent of their energy needs from nuclear power. The liberal French, evidently, were one of the few nations to resist the anti-nuclear hysteria of the 1970s.

Will New Yorkers be able to do the same today?