It is one thing to think that a company like Massey Energy is cheating safety regulations. It is quite another to find out that they kept two different sets of safety books. That is a crime in and of itself. Here is hoping it leads to a RICO case and charges of Felony Murder for Don Blankenship and everyone who helped kill 29 miners just for a little extra profit.

Massey CEO Don Blankenship is back in the news again, and so are the Senators from West Virginia. One still trying to make money and keep unions out of mines, the other fighting for better mine safety regulations. I’ll let you guess who’s who.

Don Blankenship: proof positive that some sort of rigorous psychological profiling and the presence of a conscience should be mandatory before hiring a candidate to run the joint.

On February 13, 2010, the management at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine ordered an electrician to disable a methane alarm that kept going off, according to NPR. This is the equivalent of being annoyed that your fire alarm is going off, so you turn it off; then your house burns down and kills you and almost everyone inside.

It appears as though Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, in whose coal mine 29 people died earlier this year in an entirely preventable disaster, has been booted from the Board of Directors of the US Chamber of Commerce.

As recently as June 29, Massey was listed as a member of the Chamber’s Board. But now, his name doesn’t appear on the list of current board members, and his specific profile page has been deleted from the website.

This takes some stones. Massey Energy, whose mine explosion in West Virginia in April killed 29 people, has decided to sue the Mine Safety and Health Administration, along with three of its regulators, over MSHA’s denial of Massey’s preferred mine ventilation plans.

Massey’s lawsuit says that federal law didn’t allow the company to challenge MSHA’s requirements, saying such a restriction “violated its constitutional rights,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

It’s criminal investigation week! Not only is the DOJ investigating Goldman Sachs, but the FBI has launched a bribery investigation into Massey Energy, the owner of the Upper Big Branch Mine and a company that regularly condones what amounts to serial murder by negligence.

The Mine Safety & Health Act is not to blame for the 29 deaths at Massey Coal. The real problems are much deeper.

Retired Admiral Inman, Member of Massey Coal Board of Directors, sees no reason to fire Don Blankenship. Open your eyes, Admiral; it’s called “dereliction of duty.”

In the late afternoon of April 5th of this year, an explosion ripped through the Upper Big Branch Coal mine. It killed 29 of the 200 or so miners that were working underground that day. Mining is a dangerous business, especially coal mining where the material you are mining is the same material that holds up the roof. There is also the added problem that coal is carbon, and where there are large amounts of carbon there will be volatile hydrocarbons, specifically methane. A methane and or coal dust ignition is the likely cause of the explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine.