Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) missed required deadlines to inspect key equipment that failed after the massive earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to Reuters. A separate Reuters report also points out that the TEPCO CEO has virtually disappeared from public appearances or statements. These reports fit perfectly with TEPCO’s history of previous scandals that have led to the resignations of high-level managers in the past.

A brief look at what’s happening in the news on the morning of July 6th, 2010.

The rules that are supposed to protect the health and safety of oil rig workers were designed 15 years ago by the American Petroleum Institute – the industry and lobbying group for major oil and gas companies. The worst part? Even those regulations are considered “voluntary.”

Who is allowing BP to just burn oil at the surface of the water? You guessed it, the Minerals Management Service, which authorized burning up to 12,000 barrels.

In the absence of any evidence of overwhelmingly bad lawyering by the Government’s attorneys, you have to wonder how any competent court could conclude that there isn’t a compelling case for stopping all offshore drilling. This is as close to a no-brainer as you get.

A legitimate Minerals Management Service could have known about the leaking blowout preventer before the blast. It could have acted on the inherent problems with the blind shear ram and the oil industry’s failsafe measures in general (blowout preventers have a 45% failure rate, according to a confidential Transocean report). But we didn’t have a legitimate MMS to deal with this disaster. We have 62 regulators dealing with over 4,000 offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

As evidence continues to accumulate that the US-led NATO counterinsurgency plan (COIN) in Afghanistan is an abject failure, we now see panic setting in on several fronts.

The Obama Administration and its DOJ owes the citizens a better effort than they have mustered to date. It is funny they are out trying to prosecute Guantanamo defense attorneys for doing their jobs and are still hell bent to persecute inconsequential marijuana crimes, but have no burning desire to go hard after BP, the biggest environmental criminal in history. How can that be?

The White House has told various news agencies that President Obama will today extend for another six months the partial moratorium on new offshore oil drilling permits in the Gulf. In addition, he will cancel proposed leases off Alaska and Virginia.

The New York Times has been tracking the Mineral Management Service’s compliance with the moratorium on new OCS/Gulf drilling permits announced by President Obama and Interior Secretary Salazar. Their finding: MMS continues to issue new drilling and related permits on activities just like those conducted by the Deepwater Horizon rig.