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A trio of senators have won their request for an investigation into Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s inspector general regarding a potential cover-up of documents that led to the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil spill. Sens. David Vitter (R-La.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) asked the Integrity Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency in a May 24 letter to investigate the Interior Department’s Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall, whom they say “failed to ensure an independent, impartial and complete investigation into the Administration’s offshore drilling moratorium and...

An investigator for the Interior Department’s Inspector General claims the White House hindered an investigation into a report on the BP oil spill by blocking access to a key official and email records, the New Orleans Times-Picayune is reporting. The investigator was trying to determine whether the White House intentionally edited the report to create the false impression that outside experts supported the administration's call for a moratorium on offshore drilling. The White House had said the editing was a mistake, and the Inspector General’s final report concluded it was. But the investigator, in a series of emails obtained by...

Most lawyers trying a case abide by the maxim: Don’t piss off the judge. President Obama disregarded that when he lectured the Supreme Court not to overturn the health care law. Indirectly the President was challenging the entire judiciary and it struck a raw nerve with Judge Jerry Smith, of the 5th Circuit Appeals Court. Judge Smith had, less than two years earlier rejected, in a 2 to 1 decision, the Interior Department request to stay a lower court order lifting the offshore drilling moratorium (Hornbeck Offshore Services LLC v. Salazar) – thus requiring the moratorium lifted. In one of...

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appears today before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He will hopefully answer questions about his refusal to allow deepwater drilling to resume in the Gulf of Mexico, despite a federal judge twice ruling that the moratorium is illegal. The BP oil spill was a disaster, but not as big of a disaster as the moratorium that followed. The granting of exactly one drilling permit to Noble Energy this week underscores just how cynical and politicized Salazar's response has been. Last week, Salazar said that he would not bow to "political pressure" to restart...

Energy Policy: An administration that has no respect for Congress, the courts or the Constitution has been found in contempt for reissuing a drilling moratorium that a U.S. district judge found overly broad. The Obama administration's trouble with the courts has continued with a judge's ruling last week that the Interior Department's reinstating of a drilling moratorium followed by a de facto moratorium via an overly restrictive permitting process constituted contempt. The administration had issued a drilling moratorium in May in waters deeper than 500 feet after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off Louisiana that...

The Obama administration doesn’t hide its contempt for Congress, independent agencies, watchdog groups, the media and whistle-blowers. Now a federal judge has found the administration in contempt of court. It’s about time. The case, Hornbeck Offshore Services v. Salazar, centers on a company challenging the moratorium on deep-water drilling imposed after the BP oil spill. On June 22, U.S. District Judge Martin L.C.Feldman ordered Interior Secretary Kenneth L. Salazar not to enforce the moratorium because it appeared “arbitrary and capricious and, therefore, unlawful.” The 5thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the order. Mr. Salazar got around the injunction by rewording...

A mile below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, there is little sign of life. "It looks like everything's dead," University of Georgia professor Samantha Joye said.

While the original story of the new drilling moratorium was covered here at Hot Air, the new unemployment numbers which came out this week highlight an even more disturbing aspect of this proposal by the administration. Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute (API) sent out a rather graphic warning to President Obama on Wednesday which laid out the danger of such a decision. Jack Gerard warned that the administration’s decision today not to allow offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic and the Pacific in the government’s next five-year drilling plan could result in the loss...

Obama administration policies have caused “irreperable harm” to the Gulf Coast economy, stifling the energy sector and culling employment within it to a degree previously underestimated by the administration itself. That is the conclusion drawn by Louisiana State University economics professor, Dr. Joseph Mason, author of a new critique of the Obama administration’s Inter-Agency Economic Report released last week estimating losses due to the deepwater drilling moratorium currently in effect. According to Dr. Mason, that report understated the ban’s impact on job losses by as much as 60 percent.

Having been enjoined by Judge Feldman (no relation) from trying to halt oil drilling based on inadequate scientific basis, the Administration's Secretary Salazar, tried to pull a fast one by simply issuing another moratorium. Judge Feldman has refused to play along: The federal judge who struck down the Obama administration's initial six-month moratorium on deepwater oil-drilling dealt the government another blow on Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman denied the government's request to throw out a suit challenging the drilling halt that had been filed by offshore-oil-service companies. Justice Department lawyers had argued the lawsuit was moot because the...

ABC actually beat them to the punch on this story, reporting yesterday that clean-up crews are having trouble even finding the spill (“experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment”), but only now that the Times is on it will it really break big.It’s not that the oil’s all gone, of course. But a lot of it is. And the rest is … hiding. Scientists said the rapid dissipation of the surface oil was probably due to a combination of factors. The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at...

Too Much Debt, Not Enough Oil By Byron King 07/26/10 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – I just returned from the 2010 Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver, B.C. This year’s theme, “Assault on Enterprise,” provided a fascinating context for a wide range of investment insights and recommendations. According to many of this year’s presenters, the assault on American enterprise is intensifying. Because the government has been overpromising, overcommitting and overspending for decades, it is hurtling toward a fiscal train wreck. The numbers have stopped adding up. Looking out, there’s NO WAY that most Western governments can ever pay their ongoing obligations or...

The negative impact of a moratorium on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is apparent to almost everyone but President Obama and his team of radicals at the Interior Department. A recent Bloomberg poll showed that 73 percent of Americans opposed the moratorium and the opposition in Louisiana is even stronger. Last week, over 20,000 fired-up Louisiana residents staged a massive rally in Lafayette protesting the idiotic moratorium. The outpouring of opposition to the moratorium received scant national media coverage, but it was a significant display of political unity in Louisiana. In our state, Democrats and Republicans alike...

Last week, numerous speakers appeared before the President's oil spill commission to plead for the resumption of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Even the commission, which did not contain one representative from the oil and gas industry, was inclined to support the lifting of the moratorium. This commission was formed by President Obama to study the oil spill disaster and to make sure that another one does not happen in the future. Yet, there have already been hearings in both Washington D.C. and New Orleans. Much is known about why the disaster occurred and the mistakes that were made...

Energy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is its lies. Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did. According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar's May 27...