Stopping progress, not stopping the spill

Subject: txt grn engry -
Sixty-one days have passed since the blowout at Deepwater Horizon, and as the spill worsens, so does the political gamesmanship and government-led bungling of the recovery effort. Take President Obama's proposed six-month moratorium -- not only for new deep-water drilling permits, but for all existing drilling. The White House justified the proposal on the basis of a report produced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, which touted the peer review of seven experts identified by the National Association of Engineering.

The only problem? The report they reviewed did not include such a moratorium on existing drilling and, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the experts fear the decision would set the stage for greater environmental and economic calamity.

Instead, the White House claims the experts were only brought in to look at the document on a technical basis, and that the moratorium was a more "comprehensive" approach. Obama's environmental czar, Carol Browner, declared that "No one's been deceived or misrepresented." Salazar has since testified that the idea to impose the moratorium was his.

That would make this an explicitly political decision rather than a technical one, and given the subject matter, a dangerous one...

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