Amanda Carpenter is live blogging. Here’s her most recent update:

Lots of fun stuff going on the floor right now. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.) just wrapped a rabble-rousing speech complete with an empty gas can prop.

The House floor seats, usually reserved for members and staff only, are filled with out of town visitors. It’s really neat to see people settling into the historic digs for a speech on drilling!

Blackburn knows how to work a crowd. At one point she held up the gas can and said “Do you know what this is? It’s an empty gas can. And it’s as empty as the Democratic party!” she said to an outburst of cheers and applause. There was some booing from the upper gallery. GOP staff suspects some of the liberally-leaning think tanks and groups and towns are deploying interns to the Hill to offset the GOP fun.

The GOP-ers are holding another presser at 1pm. I’m going to stay for that and then get back to the Townhall headquarters to prepare for a 3pm appearance on MSNBC.

Spaker Pelosi had to get out of town - book tour ya know. But she still found time to get an interview in with George Stephanapoulos. She was incoherant. Says Frank James:

It was hard to not get twisted up in pretzel knots listening to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose explanation on “This Week with George Stepanopoulos” about why she hasn’t allowed a vote on Republican energy legislation that would ease restrictions on offshore drilling was, to be polite, confusing.

It may have left some in the audience feeling bewildered as a seabird fouled by an oil spill.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, accused Republicans of being monomaniacal on the drilling issue and of suggesting to voters that drilling would immediately lower gas prices. She wasn’t going to play along with something that would mislead voters, she asserted.

Here’s the problem with that. Anyone who has listened to the debate has heard House Republicans say they are willing to consider a range of options from the use of renewable energy sources to new alternative fuels to conservation so long as they can get a vote on off-shore drilling.

Evidence for this is found in energy legislation introduced by House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, the American Energy Act which includes the language to encourage conservation and alternative-fuels research though it obviously places the stress on getting drilling opened up on the Outer Continental Shelf of the U.S. coasts.

So Pelosi is mischaracterizing House Republican intentions. So goes on further to indicate that the Republicans can get their vote if they use their imagination. Says James:

So she will allow the American people to be misled, in her view, by Republican legislation that she says only offers the illusion of addressing high gas prices, so long as Republicans are smart enough to figure out how to get their legislation to the floor? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s what she appeared to say.

Pelosi seems to be subtly trying to adjust her position given the pressure she’s coming under from not just Republicans but Democratic House members too as the public has shifted with a majority now favoring more domestic drilling.

On one hand, what kind of leader would she be if she didn’t acknowledge that movement in public opinion? After all, the leader of her party, Sen. Barack Obama, the assumed Democratic presidential nominee, has now opened his mind to off-shore drilling so long as it’s part of comprehensive energy legislation.

But on the other hand, she hails from California where there’s long been a “No way, Jose”, or better yet “No way, San Jose” attitude about off-shore drilling. So she can’t just give up on opposing such drilling without inviting a severe backlash from her constituency.