BP’s middle-of-the-night made-up claim about how much their wellhead is spilling, and the Coast Guard’s and NOAA’s repetition of that number without insisting on independent verification by outside experts and instruments, makes these federal agencies look incompetent. BP, through its duplicity and incompetence, has infected the exact agencies Americans, and especially American scientists want to work with and help: the Coast Guard & NOAA.

These agencies must free themselves from the corporate self-dealing and self-protection umbrella that BP has thrown over them.

Despite claims by BP CEO Tony Hayward that the environmental impact of the BP oil spill will be “very, very modest”, the true magnitude of the destruction is now being seen, as a marsh with a twenty-four mile shoreline in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

Even before the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, oil has been an issue in the race between Democrat Robin Carnahan and Republican Roy Blunt to replace the retiring Kit Bond in the US Senate. With the spill, things have gotten so bad for Blunt that he’s having to turn on his old pals in Big Oil. Awwwwww . . .

The government is broken, in Afghanistan and the United States, and if we don’t use government the way it’s supposed to function, if we continue to play media games with our politics, the death toll will only get worse.

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 from Congress to approve exploration plans. Senator, there has been significant environmental review, including Environmental Impact Statements that [...]

The wolves of Wall Street devour the unsophisticated states and municipalities that come to them for help and advice. The Senate doesn’t care.

Maria Cantwell noticed a huge loophole in Lincoln’s “tough” reform bill, and vowed to oppose cloture until it was fixed. Lincoln did not. Everyone and their brother knows that the provision spinning off the swaps trading desks from the big banks is going to get cut. Heck, Mark Warner told Andrea Mitchell today that the derivatives language “will be out” of the final bill. But to Blanche, “it’s gonna pass.”

Ustream is now hosting the video, and we’ve got it embedded on our BP Oil Disaster resource page.

I’ve written plenty about the potential derivatives loophole in the Senate Wall Street reform bill, which Maria Cantwell felt concerned enough about that she tried to block a cloture vote on the entire legislation (although she did give consent to waiving the Budget Act at the last minute, which also could have held up the bill). However, Cantwell’s name was not on the derivatives legislation that concerned her so. And her amendment had a co-sponsor who did not join Cantwell in protesting the vote until the concerns were met.

Wow, the Teabaggers’ favorite glibertarian is the gift that just keeps on giving.