The Obama administration has approved covert military operations in a wide number of Middle Eastern countries, The New York Times reports, including in Somalia, Yemen and Iran (not to mention the long-running, kinda sorta covert war in Pakistan). As former National Security Council staffers Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett note, Obama’s move marks a particularly dramatic “intensification of America’s covert war against Iran” — a war that, because it is being run out of the office of General David Petraeus and CENTCOM, is “not subject to the same congressional oversight and reporting requirements as the Central Intelligence Agency.”

In today’s Natural Resources Hearing on the BP Disaster, Ed Markey brought out proof that BP knew it was lying about the flow of oil from its disaster. He brought two BP documents showing that even when their Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles was giving low-ball estimates of 1,000 BBL/day, BP’s own internal documents showed that their best guess was 5,758 BBL/day.

Most problematical is the third piece of the DADT “repeal” sham compromise — the first two are that the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs must certify the military is ready for open service and the second is allowing the military to complete its study. But the third concession may cause the most problems.

Fifty-eight congressional candidates and 20 activist organizations are opposing any more funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and inviting more candidates, incumbents, and organizations to join them.  The 58 candidates, from 25 different states, include 19 Democrats, 18 Greens, 17 Libertarians, 2 Independents, 1 Republican, and 1 Socialist.

A $23 billion emergency proposal to save teacher jobs in the wake of the state budget crisis looks to be hitting the chopping block. The destruction of the public education system has been a long-term ambition of the Heritage Foundation. They are, predictably, opposing the money for teachers’ salaries.

Fifty-some years ago, the UK recruited America’s help to overthrow the government of Iran to protect BP’s stake in that country because that was seen as the appropriate role for government by those mid-century Anglo-American Masters of the Universe. Now, we’re at that point where our government and BP appear to agree that it is the appropriate role of the corporation that caused a massive disaster to take charge of cleaning up that disaster.

I’ll be tweeting live updates from the Louisiana coast all this week. You can follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/michaelwhitney (hashtag: #bpdisaster)

The Bowles-Simpson deficit commission is hoping a computer game will educate Video Nation on the need for fiscal austerity. It’s been tried before.

Today, as millions of gallons of toxic crude oil continue to spew uncontrolled from the mile-deep Deepwater Horizon blowout into the Gulf of Mexico, we are hopeful that this catastrophe will the be the very catalyst we need to begin to break our century-long addiction to oil. This may be looked at some day as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are to the nuclear industry. Indeed, the Deepwater Horizon disaster may provide our last best chance to hasten the switch to sustainable energy in time to avert global ecological and economic disaster.

Alaska professor Rick Steiner explained that there are two kinds of booms: one absorbent, one non-absorbent. The absorbent type are thrown away after use, but the non-absorbent ones should be cleaned and reused. “The booms being placed in the dumpster in this photo are containment booms, which should be cleaned and reused, not thrown away,” said Steiner.