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.

Landrieu says that BP’s liability will be “hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, and BP’s going to pay every penny. When I pressed her on the long-term damage done to fishermen and the community – one person told me that last time oil hit his oyster beds, it was there for 10 years – Landrieu immediately swatted back that number and said “we don’t know.” She says that if a fisherman “made $50,000 last year, BP’s going to write them a check for $50,000.”

But this disaster will last for well more than one year, and likely well beyond a decade.

Sign our petition to the Senate: make BP pay every penny for its destruction of the Gulf.

“I pwomise you, we’ll make that big ole BP pay a lot of money, OK? Billions of dollars, I pwomise you. We’re going to have a big cleanup job and it’s going to get cleaned up, all right?” said Landrieu.

As Obama may be proposing the first real and positive change at the Federal level to address the extraction industry in a very long time, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Oil) continues to demand more drilling.

Mary Landrieu and David Vitter, the two Senators from Louisiana, speak out in favor of continuing oil drilling as the Horizon oil slick threatens their state’s environment and livelihood. Lieberman backs them up from his perch in the Senate. Pelosi signals no resistance from the vaunted House Democratic majority.

Behold our logic-resistant, industry-captured Congress. Basically, Republicans – and Democrats like Mary Landrieu don’t want an energy bill without offshore drilling. After this disaster, you won’t be able to pass anything with expanded drilling without losing several votes from coastal Democratic Senators. Therefore, you can’t get to 60, and no deal.

A third Horizon leak has been discovered. Officials place the new spill rate at about five times the previously reported rate, or, conservatively, 200,000 gallons of crude oil per day.

As oil continues to spew into the Gulf from the leaking well left behind the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon, the pro-drilling Obama administration demands an “investigation” that drilling supporter Mary Landrieu attempts to use for political cover.

The public option was never just a “sliver” as Obama tried to claim. It was about a fundamental moral right and the role of government. But what it was also about was a huge amount of money.

The House is in election-year mode, the Senate has already cashed their health-sector donations, and Rahm thinks if you withdraw from a fight at the 11th hour, then it doesn’t count as a loss.