The Presidential Oil Spill Commission has released their final report on the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Basically, they see the problems that manifested on the Deepwater Horizon well to be systemic, and ensuring the safety of rig workers and the US coastline depends on overhauling the industry completely.

The Interior Department moved forward today with new offshore drilling rules without moving up the end of the moratorium.

The stimulus package passed earlier this year provided $750 million for the National Park Service to address infrastructure and deferred maintenance. That’s a pittance, compared with the need — and the state parks are in even worse shape because of state budgets.

Closing parks, even sporadically, hits the local economies of the neighboring areas hard. On the other hand, spending money to revitalize the parks brings back jobs in large numbers. Hopefully some of the dusty heads in DC will get a clue.

Meanwhile, enjoy the parks this weekend. If you can.

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.

An independent scientific effort, funded by NOAA, has discovered “shocking” amounts of oil underwater, huge plumes that range up to three miles by ten miles wide, and about 300 feet deep, within many columns of the water in the Gulf of Mexico.

A note to the White House political team – you probably shouldn’t leak that the President will “get really angry” about something 12 hours before he does, as it tends to blunt the impact and ruin the element of surprise. Nevertheless, the President used the bully pulpit today to express urgency and frustration about the crisis in the Gulf. And you do have to give him a little credit for turning that blame inward on his own Administration.

The President is reportedly frustrated by the continuing underwater gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Hopefully he is just as frustrated by the almost non-existent regulatory regime in the run-up to this disaster. We’ve known about the failures of the Minerals Management Service for many years before the Obama Administration even came into power. Yet [...]

Bush/Cheney is the gift that keeps giving, like herpes or untreated tertiary syphilis. You know something’s wrong, you scratch and scratch — but somehow, you cannot cast out the evil.

The Fish & Wildlife Service has just announced that the sage grouse is a candidate for listing as an endangered species, but its listing will be precluded because its habitat overlaps with oil, gas, and wind development across the West.