With the release of the Presidential Oil Spill Commission report this week, we’re seeing some renewed interest in the fallout from the BP oil spill. In particular, the $20 billion escrow fund managed by Kenneth Feinberg has been a main point of contention between the Gulf and BP since last fall, when BP began threatening to withhold compensation to residents if Congress placed greater restrictions on their drilling.

Just when you thought the people of Louisiana couldn’t possibly take another shot to the face, there’s another one coming. It turns out that people who received claim money from BP could see that money taxed at the highest possible rate because the BP oil disaster wasn’t officially declared a disaster.

I got a phone call last night from a seminary classmate. An old college friend of hers had just committed suicide. Sadly, calls like this are far too common — whether related to military service, the economy, disasters like the Exxon Valdez or Katrina or the BP spill, or a hundred other causes.

More than ever, tough times call for us to care for one another.

I am in town for a week to visit with my family here in Louisiana and am curious to see if there was evidence of the BP tragedy in my hometown. What I do find is very interesting and consistent with a place that lives with the tangible possibility of danger and excitement on a seasonal basis. The two seasons that come to mind are hurricane and Mardi Gras.

The Louisiana legislature just passed, and Bobby Jindal just signed, a law permitting people to carry concealed firearms into churches, synogogues, mosques etc. That must mean there’s an epidemic of god-fearing folks being murdered in their pews, or rugs, or something.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has voted to have its own commission investigate the BP disaster. The Committee finds that necessary, according to Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, because Obama hasn’t appointed a representative from the oil industry to his own commission. The conflict of interest is apparently not obvious to Landrieu.

Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s incumbent-retention program, has pinpointed the nine most vulnerable GOP House members up for re-election and wants supporters to focus only on them. All represent districts that carried President Obama in 2008. Here’s a look at the endangered nine.

At yesterday’s House Energy and Commerce committee hearings with the executives of BP, Exxon, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) suggested Lamar McKay should commit ritual suicide instead of resigning.

In a press conference on the beach of Grand Isle, Louisiana last week, a BP spokesman claimed that the company’s solution to removing oil from marshes will be to set up boom that will capture oil as the tides come in an out. BP clearly doesn’t begin to know, understand, or care about the realities of the problems created by its oil disaster.

Alabama fishermen used a half-dozen boats to prevent access to the Mississippi Sound in an early morning blockade to protest BP’s unfair hiring practices yesterday. The fishermen, who’ve been idled by the massive ban on fishing in the oiled waters of the Gulf of Mexico, say BP is hiring far more recreational boaters than commercial fishermen in its cleanup efforts.