ABC’s Jake Tapper is reporting (h/t Spencer) that President Obama has accepted the resignation of Adm. Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence.

Maneuvers late in the day resulted in the Senate passing a financial regulation bill.

A disturbing account from another survivor of the Deepwater Horizon suggests that Transocean, the owner of the rig, deliberately isolated the survivors from contact with the outside world for more than a day and a half in what the survivor suggested was an attempt to sign away liability.

As if we’ve never heard this excuse before, BP tries it anyway.

Scott Brown changed his cloture vote from “No” on Wednesday to “Yes” on Thursday. What was he offered in return?

I have to say, with Kevin Costner as our potential hero, this whole thing is shaping up to look a bit like a South Park episode.

In yesterday’s Transportation Committee hearing, Rep. John Hall (D-NY) 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. Sounds like Hall would like to prevent businesses from deducting such expenses in the future.

The market has dropped over 400 points in the past two days, and it’s been down 9 out of the past 12 days. While there are certainly a lot of factors influencing the situation, the market’s volatility sends a clear message is that the reform bill is inadequate to restoring confidence in their wake.

Kudos to Markey for getting BP to consent to a live feed, but let’s leave the technology to the pros. The White House needs to take control and own this live feed of a pipe leaking millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf every day.

Viewing the live feed from Sen. Bill Nelson’s site, you can clearly see that there’s a much greater volume of oil coming out of that underwater gusher than what BP has claimed, and that the pipe siphoning off oil, which BP claims is up to 3,000 barrels a day, is basically capturing a tiny fraction of the total. In fact, BP is finally admitting as much.