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The White House is seemingly making an increased show of pressuring BP, but President Obama is facing political heat from within his own party for what some say has been a lackluster response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The "political stupidity is unbelievable," Democratic strategist James Carville said on "Good Morning America" today. "The president doesn't get down here in the middle of this. ... I have no idea of why they didn't seize this thing. I have no idea of why their attitude was so hands off here." On Thursday, Obama will announce new measures...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A senior administration official tells The Associated Press that President Barack Obama will travel Friday to the Louisiana Gulf Coast to review firsthand the efforts to counter a disastrous oil spill. The White House is expected to release more details about the trip later Tuesday.

The White House is facing increasing questions about why the government can't assert more control over the handling a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. ... Others have blamed the administration for not doing enough, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who said Sunday on Fox News that Obama was being lax in his response to the spill. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called the criticism ill-informed and suggested Palin needed a blowout preventer, the technical term for the device intended to prevent an oil spill from becoming a full-scale catastrophe. The phrase has entered the political vernacular...

FLASH: NETWORKS BEGIN TO TURN ON OBAMA... ABC 'WORLD NEWS' TAKES NEW 'CRITICAL' TONE... CBS 'EVENING NEWS', HALF OF SHOW ON SPILL, AND WHAT ADMIN HASN'T DONE... NBC: 'NO END IN SIGHT'... DEVELOPING...

BP, Transocean and Halliburton pointed fingers over who bears responsibility for the oil-rig explosion. At hearings Tuesday, Halliburton is expected to describe a failure to place a cement plug within the well before withdrawal of drilling "mud" that kept gas from escaping. Two rig workers corroborated this account.

20 April 2010: An oil rig rented and operated by BP in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, killing 11 workers. 21 April 2010: All 115 workers are evacuated from the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig. 22 April 2010: The Deepwater Horizon collapses into the sea and sinks. 22 April 2010: President Obama delivers a speech on Wall Street to advocate more government intervention in the country's financial sector, but offers no reforms for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which helped precipitate the 2008 meltdown. He also delivers a speech regarding the contributions of Earth Day to environmental awareness. Meanwhile, 200,000...