And now the EPA is firing back, countering that a bill Gardner introduced to remove regulatory hurdles to offshore oil drilling in Alaska may significantly increase air pollution exposure for that state’s population.

EPA assistant administrator Gina McCarthy testified last week that Gardner’s Jobs and Energy Permitting Act, which would block the EPA from enforcing air standards for the company’s drilling off Alaska’s coast, could have adverse health impacts for Alaska residents.

Testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, McCarthy said, “One exploratory outer continental shelf source could emit approximately as much on a daily basis as a large state-of-the art refinery,” according to Bloomberg.

“This bill will create tens of thousands of jobs, increase energy security, and lessen our dependence on foreign oil,” Gardner said in a release. “It will add billions of dollars in salary to Alaska and other states over the next several decades, bringing good paying jobs to our country.”

Alaska: Legislators halt insurance program for low-income women and children.

State senators struck down a measure that would have expanded medical care to low-income women and children yesterday. The measure was struck down because of concerns that “expanding the [insurance] program might provide funds for as many as 22 more abortions.” The bill would have expanded coverage to about 1,300 more children and 250 pregnant women.

Delaware: State unanimously moves forward on ‘complaint-driven’ regulations of medical clinics providing abortions.

State senators voted unanimously yesterday for a measure that authorizes state regulators to “investigate allegations of unsafe or unsanitary conditions inside medical clinics that conduct invasive procedures requiring anesthesia.”

In Delaware, any medical clinic that administers abortions or any procedure that requires anesthesia would be subject to “complaint-driven inspections.” The legislation is in response the indictment of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortion provider who was charged with murdering seven infants.

Indiana: Legislators move forward restrictive abortion policy, but remove language that requires doctors to tell women abortions cause breast cancer.

The Indiana legislature approved legislation yesterday that would ban abortions in the state after 20 weeks. The law has an exception for when the mother’s life is in danger due to the pregnancy. Current law allows an abortion up to 24 weeks, which is considered to be around the time of fetal viability.

Removed from the original bill was language that would require a doctor to tell women seeking an abortion that the procedure is linked to breast cancer. The amendment striking the provision from the bill came after an oncologist testified before the legislature. He claimed keeping the provision would be a “cruel and egregious deception” to women.

Oklahoma: State legislators passed two bills that further restrict abortion access.

Yesterday both the state house and senate passed legislation that adds strict limits to abortion access in the state.

House Bill 1888, or the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, has language stating that a “20-week-old fetus is capable of feeling pain,” and therefore any abortion beyond that time would be outlawed. According to state authorities, most abortions take place well before 20 weeks. The procedure is usually sought after 20 weeks because the pregnancy is a threat to the mother’s health or because of fetal abnormalities.

Senate Bill 547 is a Stupak Amendment-like bill that would prohibit elective abortion coverage in health care exchanges created through the Patient Protection and Affordable Act in 2010. The bill makes no exceptions for rape or incest. It only makes an exception for when the mother’s health is threatened.

In a statement from her office, Murkowski outlined ways to reduce greenhouse gases without a cap-and-trade system or EPA regulation, including “investment in renewable and alternative energy technology, increased efficiency, and expanding our nuclear power options.”

Murkowski also touted an energy bill passed last year by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where she is the ranking Republican. “If the president wants to start with the work the Energy Committee has already done, I would be happy to work with him,” she said. “But I also believe we must first preempt the EPA from meddling in the work of Congress when it comes to setting climate policies.”

In June, the Senate rejected a resolution by Murkowski that would have essentially blocked the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.

The Miller campaign, which has 6.61 percent fewer votes than the number of write-ins cast, posted a statement Wednesday on its website saying it isn’t over.

“Previous write-in campaigns in Alaska have demonstrated that as much as 5 to 6 percent of returned ballots have not met the standard to be counted as a valid vote,” the statement said.

Amusingly, Division of Elections director Gail Fenumiai told the Anchorage Daily News that that the state doesn’t keep statistics on the issue, and she has no idea where Miller’s camp got the figure. The Miller camp gave no response when the paper asked where it had obtained the figure.

The state hasn’t been totally clear on which kinds of ballots will be accepted and which will be rejected, and that’s where the fighting will take place. Minor misspellings are probably going to judged acceptable, but anything beyond that could be the basis of serious dispute.

It was mostly bad news for House Democrats who voted for the chamber’s cap-and-trade bill. The two most stinging defeats were Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), who worked furiously behind the scenes to secure benefits for his coal-dependent state in the bill before finally giving his “yes” vote, and Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), who became somewhat of a celebrity on the left for standing by the more liberal wing of his party on a number of key votes, including cap-and-trade. Boucher, from Virginia’s 9th district, lost to his Republican opponent, Morgan Griffith, and Perriello, despite a big last-minute push by environmentalists and President Obama himself, lost to state Sen. Robert Hurt (R).

Politico ran the numbers this morning. At least 12 freshman Democrats who voted for the cap-and-trade bill lost their re-election bids, while at least seven (I noted Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) last night) won, with some races still too close to call. In total, Politico notes, more than 30 Democrats who voted for the House climate bill fell to their Republican opponents last night.

In the West Virginia Senate race, Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, managed to eke out a victory over Republican John Raese. While Democrats can technically put Manchin in their column, he campaigned against nearly every significant Obama administration policy, including cap-and-trade. In one now-infamous ad, he shot the House climate bill with a shotgun.

But there was some good news for environmentalists last night. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, won her reelection bid against Carly Fiorina. Boxer has always been a strong advocate for environmental protections, but her job is likely to get harder in the next Congress. She has already been accused of unwillingness to reach across the aisle, but with more Republicans in the Senate, she’ll have no choice if she wants to pass energy and climate bills.

At the same time, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) survived a tough race against Tea Party darling Sharron Angle. The big question going forward now is what will Reid do on energy and climate legislation next Congress. By now, it’s common knowledge that it will be next to impossible to pass comprehensive climate legislation in the next two years. So it seems Reid will focus on a series of low-hanging-fruit provisions that are popular on both sides of the aisle, including bills to incentivize electric vehicles, improve energy efficiency and weatherize homes.

The fate of two big-ticket items for environmentalists — a renewable energy standard and a much-delayed oil spill response bill — remains unclear. While there’s still time in the lame-duck session to try to pass both provisions, Republicans have more incentive to block the bills until next Congress, as they’ll have more sway later. There is Republican support for an RES, which would require that a certain percentage of the country’s electricity come from renewable sources like wind and solar, but GOP gains in the Senate could make it more likely that Republicans will push to add nuclear power and coal with carbon capture technology to the mix, a nightmare scenario for environmentalists.

It’s even less clear what will happen with the oil spill response bill. More than six months after the massive Gulf oil spill, Congress has yet to pass significant legislation to overhaul offshore drilling (on the regulatory side, the Interior Department has issued its own new drilling rules). A number of contentious issues, like how liable an oil company is for damages from a spill, are sure to take on new significance now that more Republicans are in the Senate.

In other key midterm results, Proposition 23, a California ballot initiative that would suspend the state’s landmark climate change law, failed. It’s a huge win for environmentalists, who funneled millions of dollars into the “No on Prop 23″ campaign, pitting themselves against two Texas oil refiners that campaigned heavily for passage of the initiative. California’s climate law is viewed by environmentalists as the gold standard. Passage of the ballot initiative would have been the icing on the cake of a disappointing year for climate activists.

At the same time, it looks like another California ballot initiative, Proposition 26, will pass. The measure would require a two-thirds majority vote in the state legislature and in local government bodies to impose new fees on industry. Environmentalists say the proposition will make it more difficult to implement key environmental rules, including parts of the state’s climate law. In the last days of midterm election campaigning, as it became clear that Prop 23 would fail, activists’ attention shifted to Prop 26. But it was apparently too late to make a significant difference at the polls.

It’s also worth noting that the powerful House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) was defeated last night. Obsertar worked for years to reform pipeline safety and was in the process of developing new legislation to do so in the aftermath of a massive oil pipeline spill in Michigan and a natural gas pipeline explosion in California.

Two other key Senate races remain too close to call this morning. In the Colorado Senate race, Sen. Michael Bennet (D) and Republican Ken Buck are still neck and neck. As I noted yesterday in my midterm preview, the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club have trashed Buck in ads, highlighting his comments questioning whether climate change is man-made. Environmentalists have made Buck the poster child of Republican climate skeptics running this cycle. For his part, Buck’s spokesman said his official position is this: “Ken believes climate change is occurring, but that it’s natural more than man-made.”

Bennet does not support the House version of cap-and-trade, but his campaign said recently that he would support a “well-thought-out, market-based bill.” Buck’s campaign jumped on the comments, saying Bennet’s position on the issue is unclear.

Don’t hold your breath for results of the Alaska Senate race between incumbent and write-in candidate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), Tea Party favorite Joe Miller (R) and Democrat Scott McAdams. Murkowski appears to be winning, according to early results. Murkowski is the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Though she has opposed cap-and-trade bills in the past, she has a history of working closely with Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), the panel’s chairman, on key energy bills, including the comprehensive energy bill they passed in 2009.

“Hi, this is Governor Sarah Palin. I’m calling to ask that you and your neighbors vote for Tom Tancredo to be the next governor of Colorado on Tuesday,” Palin says in a robocall she recorded for the Tancredo campaign. “Tom is the right man for the job and he’ll fight for lower taxes, and he’ll stop growing government and start growing the economy, and we know he’ll continue working to end illegal immigration.”

Palin’s endorsements have been tracked more closely than those of any other politician — The Washington Post’s Palin Endorsement Tracker indicates it’s her 61st of the cycle — but beyond her personal win-loss record, many pundits argue that today’s results will have important implications for both the Tea Party and Sarah Palin’s standing within the Republican Party. The New York Times has a chart indicating that 138 candidates running for the House and Senate have Tea Party ties; the relative success or failure of those candidates tonight will speak to the kind of mandate the movement can claim and the size of any potential Tea Party caucus in Congress.

Beyond that, the outcomes of Senate races in Alaska, Delaware, Nevada and Colorado — each of which features an arch-conservative Tea Party candidate representing the Republican ticket — will play an outsize role in people’s and pundits’ minds when they ask whether the movement has helped or hurt Republicans win key seats this election cycle. Delaware is widely predicted to go to the Democrat Chris Coons, and if another of these races tips to the Democrat, one could make a legitimate case that the Tea Party kept Republicans from taking the Senate.

While self-identified Republicans may enjoy an enthusiasm gap over Democrats, another defining moment of the 2010 election cycle is the large uptick in third party candidacies.

A Smart Politics analysis of more than 17,000 general election U.S. House contests since 1932 finds there are more third party and independent candidacies in the 2010 election cycle than in any midterm election since 1934.

In total, there are 443 such candidates on ballots across the nation, up 42.4 percent from 2008 and 56.5 percent from the last midterm election in 2006.

The Libertarian Party leads the way in the third-party surge with 153 candidates across the country, followed by the Green Party with 58 and the Constitution Party with 39. Among such third-party candidacies, only independent Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Lincoln Chafee looks poised to win on Tuesday, though Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s write-in re-election bid in Alaska and former Rep. Tom Tancredo’s Constitution Party challenge for governor in Colorado are not out of the question either.

On the whole, though, these third-party challenges — predominantly coming from conservatives — could help tip the election to the Democrat in a few tight races tomorrow.

Much of the documentary focuses on BP’s corporate culture, which appears to have privileged profit and massive growth over safety. “This is a story about ambition and its consequences,” the documentary says.

One of the things that stuck out to me most about the documentary is a comment by White House climate and energy policy adviser Carol Browner. Browner, in an interview with Frontline, said that BP’s shoddy safety record was not taken into consideration in the Obama administration’s decision to expand offshore drilling. Frontline points out that the decision affected BP more than any other oil company, as it holds the most leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

But the plan also has a number of potential national implications. In order to convince voters that it’s worth their while to allow her to keep her Senate seat, Murkowski pledged to leverage her power as ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to ensure that the state expands its drilling activities and is able to bring its natural gas supplies to market in the contiguous United States.

In a statement, Murkowski’s re-election campaign gently reminded voters of the senator’s power to authorize and appropriate money for the Interior Department, the agency with control over the country’s offshore and onshore drilling operations. In fact, the campaign notes that Murkowski can block Interior Department appropriations that will restrict drilling in Alaska.

According to the campaigns statement on the announcement today:

It is critical for Alaskans to remember Sen. Murkowski’s dual positions of authorizing and appropriating power over the Interior Department, slated for next year in the Senate. Not only will Lisa have enough votes in the Energy Committee to pass ANWR votes for any committee bill, but she will have the power to deny any appropriations that go towards further restricting Alaska’s federal oil and gas fields, including offshore fields. This position is unprecedented for any Alaskan member of Congress.

In addition, Murkowski pledged to use her seniority to push for the construction of a natural gas pipeline to transport Alaska’s natural gas resources to the rest of the United States. “In recent weeks I’ve spoken to a number of energy leaders in Alaska, leaders with an aggressive vision for getting Alaska’s natural gas to market and making sure that our in-state needs are met, especially here in Fairbanks where fuel and electricity prices are so high that they are straining budgets and affecting the local economy,” she said.

For more on Murkowski’s energy priorities in the next Congress, see this statement from her campaign.