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White House Tells Alaskan Senator to Chill Out on ANWR

The war of words between the Obama administration and Senator Murkowski shows no signs of cooling down.
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 30: U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) (C) speaks as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) (L) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) (R) listen during a news conference November 30, 2011 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The Republican senators held the news conference to discuss an energy legislation regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline.

WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 30: U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) (C) speaks as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) (L) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) (R) listen during a news conference November 30, 2011 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The Republican senators held the news conference to discuss an energy legislation regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images
David Knowles

The White House has a message for Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski: tone it down. 

On Sunday, Murkowski fired off a blistering critique of the president's proposal to designate large swaths of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve as wilderness, thereby preventing it from being available for oil drilling, which she characterized as a "stunning attack on our sovereignty," and vowed that Alaska would "fight back with every resource at our disposal.” A day later, Murkowski ratcheted up the rhetoric even further at a press conference in Washington, saying that the Obama administration "had effectively declared war on Alaska."