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State Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat, was grilled by U.S. Rep. David McKinley, a Republican from West Virginia, while testifying at a congressional hearing on fracking and coal ash in Washington on Friday. The two clashed over whether there were any legitimate environmental concerns about hydraulic fracturing, and who should regulate it, states or the feds.

McKinely was so aggressive – “He was actually pretty rude about it,” Harrison told Dome – that the committee chairman apologized to her.

According to a blog on The Hill, the House Energy and Commerce Committee was the venue for Republicans to go on the offensive against federal regulation of fracking. Harrison was invited to present the contrary view.

“Our state agencies may be ill-equipped to do the work needed to properly regulate and enforce natural gas drilling,” Harrison told the committee. “Strong federal oversight is needed to ensure that the state regulatory programs have standards that will protect our citizens from harm.”

Raleigh Congressman Brad Miller, a Democrat, on his way out the door as a casaulty of the GOP redistricting, offered his thoughts about how bad the gridlock has become in a recent Slate piece.

Miller wrote: "When did I know that this current Congress would be rough? Election Night 2010. I thought in late November and December, in the lame duck after the 2010 election, I thought the Obama administration was wildly unrealistic about how it could get along with the new Congress. They’d been inside the Beltway bubble and had no idea how extreme the Tea Party folks were, and that part of the Tea Party ethic was: Never compromise. They felt betrayed by people like Bob Bennett, Dick Lugar, Lisa Murkowski, and even Orrin Hatch—though he’s changed that tendency—who compromise."

Read more about his disappointments with the Obama administration and his self-proclaimed Blue Dog status (despite his progressive reputation) here.

The Triangle's representation in the U.S. House just doubled. McClatchy's D.C. bureau explains the new landscape.

Is the election season really over? You can't tell by the rhetoric on both sides as Gov. Perdue leaves office.

Hector MacLean, a former state senator and son of a N.C. governor, dies in Lumberton.

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx of Banner Elk has been elected to one of the lower rungs of the House leadership.

Foxx was elected secretary of the of the House Republican Conference, one of eight positions within the conference. Foxx, who is 69, was first elected to the House in 2004. Before that she served a decade in the state Senate.

The conference helps the GOP caucus develop policy. Foxx said she was encouraged to run run by outgoing Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

She is one of four women lawmakers out of 14 spots chosen for senior leadership positions by the House and Senate GOP, according to Politico.

Charles Malone, the Democratic candidate for the 13th congressional district, will host a fundraiser from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Sunday in the Green Room of the Hibernian Pub in the Glenwood South neighborhood of Raleigh.

Congressman David Price will attend and make remarks.

Malone, who lives in Raleigh, will also be campaigning on Thursday in Nashville. No details of that event were provided.

Malone is running against former U.S. Attorney George Holding.

U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers has launched an interactive feature on her website encouraging business owners to tell her how government rules are hurting their companies.

The feature works alongside a project among House Republicans called “American Job Creators,” led by Majority Whip Eric Canter. Many GOP members are sending the message that they want everyday Americans to tell them how to cut government regulation and business taxes.

Ellmers’ effort focuses on government regulation as a barrier to job growth. In a video on her website, she tells viewers, “I’m a small business owner of a local medical practice and have experienced firsthand the burdens that government regulations place on creating jobs and allowing businesses to grow and hire more workers.”

Ellmers, of Dunn, owns a practice with her husband, a surgeon.

She encourages business owners to fill out a form on her website on which government rules are impeding their work.

“Your frontline facts will come right to me, and I’ll use them to strengthen the rules we need, and cut the red tape we don’t,” she says in her video.

U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers has introduced legislation that would allow small doctor’s offices to avoid a new requirement in the health care overhaul that passed in 2010.

The health care law requires hospitals and doctors to offer electronic prescriptions as a requirement to show that they are following new rules for electronic health records.

The federal government has been pushing for the increased use of electronic medical records, including a switch to what is known as e-prescribing, or offering prescriptions without using paper.

But Ellmers, a Dunn Republican, argues that many small hospitals and doctor offices don’t yet have the capacity to prescribe electronically. Ellmers is a registered nurse who helps run a medical practice for her husband, a surgeon.

Hal Weatherman, longtime chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick of Charlotte, is managing her son’s campaign for lieutenant governor, Charlotte Observer staff writer Jim Morrill reports.

Weatherman joined Raleigh Republican Dan Forest today making the rounds of the General Assembly.

Forest, 43, is expected to speak at Saturday’s state GOP convention in Wilmington. He’s one of at least two Republicans who have announced for the post.

Weatherman had been with Myrick since her first year in Congress in 1995 and served the last 12 years as her chief of staff.

He left in February to become national communications and marketing director for Act! for America, a nonprofit group focused on national security and what it calls “the assault of radical Islam.” He has since left that job.

U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers joined 40 other freshmen Republican today in urging President Barack Obama to take the politics out of discussions about Medicare reform and other entitlement programs.

“We ask you to stand above partisanship,” the letter read.

Ellmers, of Dunn, focused on entitlement reform during many of her town hall meetings during the recent congressional recess, holding PowerPoint presentations about the proposed Medicare changes in the Republican 2012 budget proposal for people now under 55 years old.

Today’s letter was organized by U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.

The letter says that Obama recognized the Republican Medicare reform as a “serious proposal,” but that Democrats are demonizing the idea. The letter asks Obama to condemn the Democrats’ attacks and work with the GOP on cutting entitlement spending.

N.C. Gov. Beverly Perdue says the federal budget proposal unveiled by the GOP in Congress this week could decimate the way states pay for health care for their poorest residents.

The 2012 budget proposal from U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would undo the current funding formula for Medicaid. Instead, he would shift it into state-based block grants.

The Ryan budget says the current cost-sharing system between the federal and state governments “gives states a perverse incentive to grow the program and little incentive to save.”

But Perdue disagrees.

She was one of 17 Democratic governors who signed a letter Monday urging congressional leaders to oppose the Medicaid change.

Calling the proposal “simply unacceptable,” the letter said that block grants with an annual spending cap would be quickly outpaced by the growth in states’ needs.