Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent federal agency, loaned more than $1 billion to the Mexican state oil company PEMEX in 2009 to support the company’s oil drilling in the southern Gulf of Mexico. The bank has another $1 billion in loans in the pipeline for 2010, unless Congress objects. On May 27, after the British Petroleum oil spill, President Obama imposed a moratorium on U.S. deepwater drilling in the Gulf, effecting 33 deepwater drilling rigs in the region.

In addition to borrowing several employees from the Legislature and using state and federal funds to pay their salaries, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley also was lent a San Francisco city employee for half of last year. The arrangement, which allowed Shelley to bypass the state's civil service system in order to fill a routine scheduling position, was detailed in a contract between the secretary of state and the office of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. The contract was noted in an audit released Tuesday by the State Personnel Board that accused Shelley, a San Francisco Democrat, of using inappropriate...