Free Republic

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Monday directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM) to issue new suspensions of deepwater drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), including the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific regions through Nov. 30 of this year.The new drilling suspensions marks Salazar and BOEM's second effort to suspend deepwater drilling operations in the U.S. Gulf in response to the BP oil spill. The first moratorium, issued in late May, was lifted by a district judge on June 22; a panel of federal district judges refused BOEM's appeal to reverse the lower...

Tonight the President will talk to the nation about the oil disaster that has been going on in the Gulf of Mexico for over a month. That will likely be the news story of the night, followed by the answers to the five questions that lawmakers have of BP. By that time I will also be starting a daily visit to the National Hurricane Center to see if there are any signs of coming problems. All of which being said, now might be a good time to talk about erosion, how it is changing the Deepwater Horizon well conditions, and...