A year after the BP disaster erupted in the Gulf, Cherri Foytlin walked from her home in New Orleans to the White House, to let President Obama hear firsthand the suffering that continues to affect the residents of the Gulf Coast. Sadly, she couldn’t get an invitation to get past the gate. (Rubbing salt in her wounds — she got to watch Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles stroll past her on the sidewalk on their way inside.)

Meanwhile, BP and certain parts of the government continue to try to spin the news, limiting media access to heroic rescuers, limiting scientific access to spill sites, and otherwise trying to hide the record and avoid accountability.

Access. It’s the name of the game.

Less than 72 hours after the BP oil spill began, Firedoglake had discerned, and blogged about, the likely cause of the catastrophe, that heat from the curing concrete had thawed methane trapped in the ocean floor beneath deep waters, and that methane had exploded.

Today, mainstream media thinks this is a front page story; so did we, a week ago.