Los Angeles, CA-

Three presidential candidates: Dennis, Kucinich, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton spoke Saturday at this presidential forum on global warming, and other environmental concerns, and all 3 touted their records on being the greenest candidate. The diminutive Kucinich spoke about his tiny house, and vegan diet as evidence of his higher environmental consciousness , Clinton broadly highlighted her plan to fight global warming, and Edwards offered up details to combat the issue,but pointedly charged that the oil companies had permeated, and poisoned the atmosphere in Washington. Edwards asserted that the oil lobby had made it hard for change on an issue that needs urgent attention. His comments an indirect slap at Clinton who he has said is “part of a system ” of corporate Democrats that essentially cannot take on the massive oil and gas industry because she takes money from them.

“I see the oil and gas companies blocking progress by spending millions of dollars and deploying hundreds of lobbyists in Washington to make sure that America stays addicted to foreign oil and fossil fuels,”JRE said to this enthused, and very green audience at the League of Conservation forum.

Edwards also spoke out against, what he considers, big company media consolidation, specifically targeting Newscorp’s (Fox News’ parent company)Rupert Murdoch.

‘I personally don’t want Rupert Murdoch to own every paper in America, can we do something about media consolidation?”, Edwards said.

A smattering of applause broke out in the media tent I was in. Not surprisingly, the majority of writers, at this global warming forum, seemed to be environmental bloggers.

Here is what Edwards said about his differences on Environmental policy with Senator Clinton during the post-speech media availability:

Codepinker Disrupts Hillary

During Clinton’s speech, an anti-war activist disrupted her speech yelling about her “voting for war”.

“Were you invited to speak here this afternoon?”replied the Democratic front-runner to the anti-Iraq war protester, as he was physically escorted out by local and federal police.

Now I have covered Congress in some way over the past 7 years or so, and code pink members are constantly doing this,so for this reporter, not that big of a deal frankly, but the reaction by the authorities , to the press, I thought was over the top. Check this out: As soon as we saw that the protester was being lead out of the theatre, members of the press rushed out to shoot the man being lead away. When we asked him what his name was, one of his police escorts told us to loudly “shut up”, and that press were “not allowed to shoot on federal grounds”. Um really? Since when?

Incidentally the Wadsworth Theatre is on the grounds of the West L.A. Department of Veterans Affairs. The “historic “Wadsworth, according to its description on the LA Times website, “ has played host to Broadway shows, concerts, movie premieres, screenings, dance productions and more, is operated by Richmark Entertainment”. Regular Fort Knox.