The Senate Environment Committee goes American. ALSO: Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales lands a job!

THEN: Lovely Lake Louise, in . . . um, lovely Alberta

Ah, the majesty of the Rockies (Canadian Rockies, that is)

NOW: Are we sure this kayaker isn't . . . Canadian?

The view now on the committee's website

And you thought the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent all its time trying to screw American workers! Somebody found the time to provide this tip reported by Al Kamen today's Washington Post "In the Loop" column. -- Ken

Jeez, Louise: When Did We Annex Canada?

By Al Kamen

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce alerted us Monday to an interesting photo on the Web site of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Seems, with summer heat bearing down soon on the area, as "readers consider how to escape the heated climate change debate and spend their vacation dollars this summer," that senators wanted to be sure Americans don't forget the glories of . . . the Rockies, the Chamber told us by e-mail.

The committee's home page featured a beckoning photo of a spectacular vista in that mountain range. One problem, though: It was of Lake Louise, which happens to be in the Canadian Rockies.

We called the committee's majority Democrats to ask about this promotion of foreign travel. But a spokesman referred us to Republican members, saying "they were responsible" for the photo.

And indeed, a committee GOP spokesman said that back on Dec. 22, 2006, with Democrats poised to take over the Senate, "we put together this fantastic new Web site," and the Republicans were rushing to put it up "before they took over."

So the outgoing Republicans decided to use some placeholder pictures that a vendor provided. Had they regained control, they most likely would have added pictures of Oklahoma (ranking GOP member Jim Inhofe's state) or maybe some oil rigs to the ones being used.

The Democrats changed some of the pictures. It became more California (Chairman Barbara Boxer's state), and more polar bears and such were added. But "they haven't seen fit to take this one down," the Republican spokesman added.

Wait a minute, a Democratic staffer retorted. "We didn't vet their selections. We inherited the site." The Democrats changed a few pictures, that staffer said, but "if they'd wanted to change a picture, they could have said so." The foreign picture has been taken down, we were told.

But some of those bears looked distinctly Canadian. Did anyone check?

EX-AG IDIOT AL "THE TORTURE GUY" GONZALES FINDS WORK -- HE'S GONNA BE A PROFESSOR!

In other "Loop"-y news, former Attorney General Gonzales has news for the friends and fans who waved bye-bye, chanting "Write if you get work," as he left the nationan's capital a couple of years ago. His job hunt as at last borne fruit:

We've been long awaiting word on where former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales would land after leaving the Bush administration two years ago. And now we have an answer: deep in West Texas.

The Texas native has been hired by Texas Tech University as a political science professor. He will teach a "special topics" course on contemporary issues in the executive branch at the Lubbock campus, a university official told the Austin American-Statesman

A professor, eh? "Special topics," eh? They'll have to be pretty special for Idiot Al to remember 'em. It's quite a leap of faith to have a guy teaching a course who never saw or heard anything, and even if he did doesn't remember a blessed thing about it.

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