Welcome to Seattle President Obama! (photo)

Bill McKibben on Tarsands: "The Next Environmental Disaster" (video)

MSNBC-The Last Word, video (05:17).

Howie P.S.: AMERICAblog and the GuardianUK have stories up. From the GuardianUK:

Bill McKibben, who helped organise the protests at the White House, said the approval from the State Department had been expected. The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, indicated last year that she favoured the pipeline.

"Everyone has known exactly what they would say all along. And everyone knows that they've valiantly ignored the elephant in the room - the fact that this would go a long ways towards opening up the world's second-largest pool of carbon," he wrote in an email.

However, McKibben held out hope that Obama - who still has final authority over the project - might step in to stop the pipeline.