The records also indicate that since the April 20 explosion on the rig, federal regulators have granted at least 19 environmental waivers for gulf drilling projects and at least 17 drilling permits, most of which were for types of work like that on the Deepwater Horizon shortly before it exploded, pouring a ceaseless current of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
And yet millions of gallons are continuing to spew after more than a month. Meanwhile some are calling for the government to kick British Petroleum off the response team.
"The bad news is that a historectomy is a dangerous operation from which the patient may not recover. The good news is that the procedure can be reversed:
- We can teach the actual Constitution, not liberal commentary about it, in high-school civics classes, university political-science classes, and law-school classes.
- We can make the "Federalist Papers" and the "Anti-Federalist Papers" required reading in political-science and law-school classes. How many university graduates have even heard of them?
- We can insist that schools use history texts that are written from a pro-freedom perspective."
I just loved his unintentional warning about the mischief that Texas School Boards are inflicting on our nation, but his point is that liberals are distorting history. The U.S. Constitution is not a difficult document to find and read, just follow this link. On this site, one can also find the Declaration of Independence in addition to introductions to the "Founding Fathers". My personal belief is that the establishment clause, which prohibits the melding of church and state, must be balanced with the prohibition against impediments to the free practice of religion.
My position may be overly nuanced, and I may be tiptoeing through bullshit, extremist positions like those advocated by Dr. Stolinsky represent the greatest immediate threat to liberty our nation has known. This notion of the evangelical right, in particular, that freedom means the right to conform and liberty is an unalienable right of Christians, is terrifying. The reality that those very same people are successfully encoding this bullshit in history and civics texts is nothing less than an academic overflow of the United States. The Constitution was, in fact, written by largely Christian men. This nation is, without substantive argument, a nation of Christians. But it is not a Christian nation.
This Constitution, written by religious Christians does not mention God, Christ, or Saint. Outside of one reference to rights endowed by "the Creator"…nothing else. Thomas Jefferson mentions "The Laws of Nature" and "Nature's God at the outset of the Declaration of Independence, but never comes close to a religious reference afterwords. Stolinsky's faith in teaching "The Federalist" (interesting that he argues for the collection's teaching but does not know the collection's correct title), is intriguing. "The Federalist" argued passionately for ratification of the Constitution, but largely against the adoption of the Bill Of Rights. His great equalizer would, in fact, rob his conservative movement of no less an item than the 2nd Amendment.
Progressives need to aggressively re-brand freedom and liberty, before the conservatives rewrite Merriam Webster as well…
###
It suddenly dawned on the little Afghan boy ###
The spill has so far cost BP $760m dollars. The company's stock has fallen by a quarter. That was inevitable. What was not inevitable is the damage the company has done to its own reputation by continuing to lowball its estimates of the magnitude of the spill.
One of the beauties of being part of an oligopoly is that you don't have to give a damn about your bad reputation. Sure, BP is going to have a few down quarters, and they'll spend millions on ads and re-branding. But they're not in any kind of mortal danger, in part because oil is a commodity where brand doesn't really matter, but mostly because the sound and fury being emitted by Congress and the Obama Administration will amount to nothing.
###
Suppose that terrorists had been responsible for###
British Petroleum to Feds: "F**k You."
In a tense standoff, BP continued to spray a product called Corexit in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday to break up a vast oil spill despite a demand by federal regulators that it switch to something less toxic.Why should BP care? First off, they're a big corporation and, as we all know that, according to the principles of the party of Hoover and the Teabaggers, corporations can do no wrong. There are enough politicians that have BP's back on this, even though BP has dumped something over 100 million gallons of oil into the Gulf o Mexico.
Second, the Gulf of Mexico is a very long way from the United Kingdom, so British Petroleum really doesn't give a shit.
WFTV.com
Ho ho ho! The difference between a Cheetoh-stained blogger and a professional journalist just got a little more narrow as famous Professional Journalist Ann Curry gave a commencement address praising the famous alumni of different college with the same name.
When Ann Curry, news anchor of the Today Show, gave the commencement speech at Wheaton College in Massachusetts last Saturday, she listed several famous graduates — Wes Craven and Billy Graham among them — of the wrong Wheaton College.
Curry mistakenly listed the graduates of an evangelical school in Illinois rather than the secular, once all-women college in Massachusetts.
Now, you might think that Curry, looking out at all those bright young women might have noticed the complete absence of, you know, well, men and asked herself "Where are the Wes Cravens and Billy Grahams of the class of 2010?" Or any other person with an X-Y chromosome package, so to speak. Using her razor sharp, professionally-trained journalism mind, she might have also noticed that she was in Massachusetts and not Illinois, too. Also.
On the bright side, if the evangelical college ever invites Curry to speak, she will already have her notes prepared.
###
Fox, meet henhouse - Heckuva job, Ken!
###
The road to nowhere ends in Florida?
David Byrne sues Charlie Crist for musical crimes.
###
"If you're not for this bill, you're not for jobs, period."
##
We continue on to Grand Isle beach, where toddlers splash in the surf. Only after I've stepped in a blob of crude do I realize that the sheen on the waves and the blackness covering a little blue heron from the neck down is oil.
They notoriously go whichever way the wind blows and direct their donations accordingly. They must think the republicans are on the ascent, because more than half of it went to Republicans.
This year, though, as loud as all that money talks, it couldn't shout down millions of angry and unemployed Americans who were shouting louder. As Norman Ornstein, the token sane person at the American Enterprise Institute , put it "It's likely another bad investment. When there's a broad national mood, money's often unable to negate it."
Of course, fear of a bad investment ever detered those clowns. So they are still out there, throwing money around and trying to weaken the landmark legislation that was passed by the Senate last week before the final bill comes out of conference.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which expects to spend $3 million lobbying against financial reform, vowed to fight the unacceptable measures all the way to the regulatory level and possibly in court.But lawmakers hope to vote on reconciled legislation that Obama can sign into law before July 4.
"This may be a case where politics trumps the money," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which compiled the lobbying and campaign finance data contained in this story.
"Money doesn't win the day every day. But that doesn't mean anybody's going to stand down any time soon. There's too much evidence of return on investment for playing the Washington game. But members of Congress are red-alert nervous this year and had to do something to put the reins on Wall Street."
So we'll see.
