Always a good read, the League of Conservation Voters released its 2007 National Environmental Scorecard today, grading each member of the House and Senate based on their votes on energy and environment-related legislation last year.

The general lesson here seems to be that you can't escape a bad grade from the LCVers by not showing up for a vote. That's a negative in their book, a point best illustrated by the score of O (Zero) for John McCain. The presumptive GOP nominee somehow failed to show up for every one of the 15 votes last year related to conservation issues, ranging from a bill on CAFE and energy efficiency standards to the Farm Bill.

The "I'm-running-for-president" excuse that we expect McCain to use in his defense only goes so far, given that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each managed to be in attendance for all but four votes.

As for Obama, despite the fact that he was named the Most Liberal Senator of 2007 by the right-leaning National Review, Obama scored a mediocre 67 percent, a dramatic drop from his 96 percent score in 2006. Obama's offenses included voting against "Water Resources- Project Prioritization", and skipping votes on Virginia Off-Shore Drilling, a couple of Farm Bill subsidy reform votes, and an amendment to a bill that would give women in developing countries access to contraceptives (which the LCV deems a population issue).

Hillary fared best among the three remaining contenders with a score of 73 for skipping the same votes as Obama. That's down from a score of 89 last year for Clinton.

For their respective careers in the Senate, McCain, Obama and Clinton have overall LCV scores of 24, 86 and 87 percent

(And oh yeah, he is still a candidate -- Ron Paul scored 15 percent).

As for the other 531 members of Congress:

Citizens of Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Maine, keep up the good work, as your Senators scored the highest. Maine, Delaware, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts had the highest average scoring Representatives. Awards of distinction go out to Senators "Global Warming is the Greatest Hoax Ever" Inhofe (R-OK), Lott (R-MS), and Coryn (R-TX) for voting against every environmentally beneficial bill analyzed. Other Senators and Representatives also received a score of 0, but that was due to missing the votes; these dedicated Congressmen work hard for our ire.

The LCV rankings should not be ignored. Their efforts in 2006 helped to kick 9 out of 13 "Dirty Dozen" (maybe they mean a baker's dozen) legislators whose voting records on the environment were abysmal. They have not yet endorsed a candidate for president, but their endorsements seem to have a greater effect then a Kennedy's.