How Much Does BP Pay Us for Privilege of Soiling Our Shores?
The Mineral Management Service claims that revenues from oil production once became the country's second largest source of revenue after income tax.
As the industry continued to evolve through the 1950s, oil production became the second-largest…
Dr. Sludgelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Junk Shotting And Love Teh Bomb
The solution ideas to date by BP to shut off their Gulf killing oil gusher have been straight out of the Wile E. Coyote Acme School School of idiocy. There is only one real solution: Bomb the sucker!
The EPA's History of William Reilly
I was going to go clean the house and forget about the BP disaster for a few hours. But then I saw the EPA files on William Reilly, the Republican Obama appointed to co-chair his BP Disaster "Looking Forward" Commission.
From the EPA's institutional…
Obama's BP Disaster Commission: Looking Forward with No Subpoenas
As promised Obama signed an executive order forming a presidential commission to study the BP disaster today. I thought it'd be instructive to compare what he just formed with what Edward Markey and Lois Capps proposed. Starting with this…
Greenhouse Eats Offal for Breakfast
I was at a loss for words about Arlen "Never Know Whether He's Haggis or Scrapple" Specter's loss on Tuesday. In the Village, our tragic figures never have the glory of Shakespeare or the Greeks, but rather only the tawdriness of Hollywood,…
DC Circuit Helps Obama Turn Bagram into Black Hole
The DC Circuit just overturned a District Court opinion that granted three Bagram detainees who were captured outside of Afghanistan (though the government contests this claim for one of the detainees) the right to a habeas proceeding.
It based…
Congress' 30-Day Deadline for Rubber-Stamping Exploration Plans
The other day, when Sheldon Whitehouse asked Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar why BP had gotten an exemption from the full-blown NEPA process from which it presumably should have been categorically excluded, Salazar referenced a 30-day deadline…
The Inexplicable Timing of Dennis Blair's Ouster
I'm thoroughly unsurprised by the news of Dennis Blair's ouster. After all, it's an impossible job that appears to serve one purpose: to provide a deck chair you can rearrange every two years as a scapegoat for our continuing inability to detect…
How the Government Explains Uninterrupted Access to Faisal Shahzad
Close to midnight on May 3, authorities arrested Faisal Shahzad for attempting to bomb Times Square.
Over the following two weeks, the authorities questioned Shahzad, even as Pakistani intelligence detained Shahzad's family members. The government…
BP Goes There: "No One Could Have Predicted..."
Yeah, I know. Of course BP is saying, "no one could have predicted."
Of course, BP had a big incentive not to predict these things: one of the reasons it was able to get an exemption from an individualized Environmental Impact Study is that…
John Hall Questions BP's Greenwashing Campaign
In yesterday's Transportation Committee hearing, John Hall hammered BP American President Lamar McKay about something a number of others have, as well: the amount of money BP has spent on greenwashing of late.
The answer? $10-12 million last…
Congress Gets Results on Corexit
At yesterday's hearing on the BP Disaster, Peter DeFazio and Jerrold Nadler hammered BP America President Lamar McKay on the relative toxicity and efficacy of the dispersant Corexit as compared to some other dispersants. They pointed out that…
Who ELSE Can You Target with Predator Drones? Drug Cartels and Pirates?
Noah Shachtman focuses on one troubling part of this long article on the Obama Administration's fondness for Predator drones: the suggestion that the Administration prefers killing alleged terrorists to capturing them, since we don't have a…
Dennis Kucinich Says Targeting US Citizens Should Be Illegal
Of course, why anyone would need to introduce legislation to prohibit the killing of US citizens with no due process, I don't know. Isn't there already a piece of paper that prohibits such things?
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) announced…
Faisal Shahzad Gets a Lawyer
Faisal Shahzad rather suddenly got arraigned and got a lawyer yesterday. Josh Gerstein noted that the arraignment happened on the 15th day since Shahzad's arrest--the lower range of time the Obama Administration has floated for its changes to…
Sheldon Whitehouse Lists the NEPA Exclusions
At yesterday's Environment and Public Works hearing on the BP disaster, Sheldon Whitehouse asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Council on Environmental Quality Chair Helen Sutley why BP had been exempted from doing an Environmental Impact…
The OTHER 2002 Jay Bybee Opinion
The WaPo reports that the Obama Administration might be impeded from filing a suit against the AZ anti-immigrant law because of a 2002 Jay Bybee Memo holding that local police have the authority to detain people for both civil and criminal…
Nine Years after 9/11, Intelligence Community Still Missing Threats to US
The Senate Intelligence Committee has just released the Executive Summary of its report on the intelligence failures leading up to the Underwear Bomber's attempted bombing on a plane landing in Detroit. I'll have a bit more to say in a bit.…
Obama's Commission
As we go through another round of hearings on the BP disaster today (at the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this morning, Bernie Sanders asked Ken Salazar whether the risk of a disaster like this was worth the $.03/gallon decrease on…
Pakistani "Cooperation" on Faisal Shahzad
Mark Hosenball has a post elaborating on something reported elsewhere--that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) is only marginally involved in Faisal Shahzad's interrogation. Given a point I tried to make here--namely, that one…