Author: Mike Lillis

So says the office of Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who heads the Senate Finance Committee.

The bill would extend the filing deadline for the existing tiers of emergency unemployment benefits — not to be confused with the creation of additional tiers — through the end of 2010. Under current law, that deadline will arrive at the end of May, threatening to lock hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans into their current tier of benefits without the option of reaching the next level.

The Baucus bill — which will be released jointly by the House Ways and Means Committee — also includes emergency funding to extend COBRA benefits, to prevent Medicare doctors from being hit with a huge pay cut June 1, and to extend a tax credit encouraging mining companies to promote worker safety.

Additionally, the bill would “increase or eliminate” the cap on the Oil Spill Liability Trust fund, which is currently $1 billion.

Democrats will want to pass this package quickly (and the June 1 deadline on some of these provisions begs their urgency). But the bill has a long road ahead, as the appetite for deficit spending, particularly in the Senate, is at an historic low. And if Robert Bennett’s primary loss offered any warning to lawmakers up for re-election this year, it’s that voters — at least in some areas — have lost that spending appetite as well.

Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar announced today that he’ll be splitting the Mineral Management Service into three pieces in response to charges that officials there dropped the ball leading up to the current oil spill disaster in the Gulf.

The move is designed to eliminate conflicts of interest between the various functions of the agency amid heavy criticism that MMS officials have grown overly chummy with the companies they’re charged with monitoring.

“The Minerals Management Service has three distinct and conflicting missions that — for the benefit of effective enforcement, energy development, and revenue collection — must be divided,” Salazar said in a statement announcing the overhaul.

A more detailed breakdown of those divisions is here:

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management: A new bureau under the supervision of the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management will be responsible for the sustainable development of the Outer Continental Shelf’s conventional and renewable energy resources, including resource evaluation, planning, and other activities related to leasing.

Office of Natural Resources Revenue: An office under the supervision of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget that will be responsible for the royalty and revenue management function including the collection and distribution of revenue, auditing and compliance, and asset management.

Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement: A bureau under the supervision of the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management that will be responsible for ensuring comprehensive oversight, safety, and environmental protection in all offshore energy activities.

This looks great on paper — and doing nothing was never an option in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. But there’s a precedent for such a split that should serve as a cautionary tale for federal officials aiming to prevent the next big energy disaster.

In 1977, the Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration — then a branch of the Interior Department — was overhauled to become the Mine Safety and Health Administration under the Labor Department. The move was made to eliminate conflicts of interest between safety enforcement and energy development. Many would argue that it didn’t work so well.

It appears that way. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) summoned members of the doctors lobby to Capitol Hill Wednesday evening for an update on the Democrats’ plans to prevent Medicare doctors from receiving a 21 percent pay cut at the end of this month.

She doesn’t have an easy sell.

The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest doctors lobby, agreed to support health care reform under the condition that Democrats would return later in the year to scrap the sustainable growth rate (SGR), the flawed formula dictating doctors’ Medicare payments. Trouble is, the cost of doing so runs upwards of $200 billion, and Senate budget hawks from both parties aren’t about to let such an enormous expense fly through the chamber without offsets elsewhere in the budget.

Which introduces the second problem: Where do Democrats find $200+ billion at a time when budget deficits are already well above $1 trillion? (Answer: They don’t.)

Historically, Congress has allocated temporary funds to prevent similar SGR-dictated cuts from hitting Medicare doctors, and they’ll almost certainly have to go that route again this year. But that plan risks alienating the powerful AMA, which has been crystal clear about its unwillingness to accept anything less than a full repeal of the SGR.

“The AMA cannot support a proposal that would result in steeper future payment cuts and a substantially higher cost for a permanent solution, making it more difficult, if not impossible to repeal the Medicare physician payment formula,” J. James Rohack, the president of the AMA, said in a statement.

The political pickle for Pelosi and the Democrats is this: How to prevent the Medicare cut without (1) adding too much to the deficit, and (2) reneging on a promise to the AMA that could haunt you in November?

And you thought your job was stressful.

Scientists for years have warned about the irreversible damage to Appalachian ecosystems caused by mountaintop removal coal mining (which makes sense, considering that the nation’s oldest mountains can’t grow back once they’ve been topped). But don’t tell that to the coal industry.

At a West Virginia hearing yesterday on the EPA’s controversial proposal to veto the permit for the largest mountaintop removal mine in the state’s history, hundreds of industry supporters — including Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) — blasted the agency for threatening jobs in the region. They’re claiming that the proposal to veto Arch Coal’s Spruce Mine puts politics above science — an ironic argument considering that there are clear signs that evidence-based decision-making is returning to the EPA after eight years in the wilderness of the Bush administration.

The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reports:

Supporters of the permit complained that EPA was wrong to step in after a mining permit was already issued, and that such an unusual step means no permit ever issued is safe from being later rescinded.

“EPA wants to take the permit away for what seem like political reasons, not scientific reasons,” said John McDaniel, a top Arch Coal engineer who worked on the Spruce Mine permit for more than a decade.

Rahall weighed in at the gathering as well. “Pursuing this course will have a chilling effect on the coal industry in West Virginia and the Appalachian region,” Rahall said, according to Ward.

“It sends a message to investors that no permit is ever assured and that money they might be willing to put into similar coal mining operations and coal jobs is nothing more than a high-risk bet,” Rahall said.

Spike Maynard, a former state Supreme Court Justice (and close friend of the industry) who’s challenging Rahall in November, was also on hand to rip the EPA’s veto proposal.

“The EPA has changed the rules mid-stream on our miners, and I don’t see how anyone could think that is fair.”

Funny that there were no similar complaints from industry supporters when the Bush White House changed the rules mid-stream on coal miners (see here and here).

Of course, those changes made it easier to blow up the mountains.

There have been plenty of headlines generated by President Obama’s apparent criticism of Senate Republicans for blocking legislation to raise the oil spill liability cap. The implication has been that Obama supports the Democrats’ proposal, which would hike the cap from $75 million to $10 billion.

Not so.

Testifying before Congress yesterday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told lawmakers that the administration supports lifting the cap, but the $10 billion figure is “inadequate.”

And by “inadequate,” he didn’t mean that it’s too low (some have suggested that there should be no liability cap at all), he meant that it’s too high. Lawmakers, he said, have to be “thoughtful” not to impose a cap that pushes smaller oil companies out of business just because they can’t afford the drilling insurance.

“You don’t want only the BPs of the world to essentially be the ones that are involved in these efforts,” Salazar said.

And  if that sounds familiar, it’s because Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said the very same thing on the Senate floor yesterday when he blocked passage of the Democrats’ bill. In fact, Inhofe invoked the White House when he objected.

“We need to increase the caps,” Inhofe said. “I understand that. But I do agree with the President — he left that [amount] blank — because we don’t know just how high that should be. … Big oil would love to have these caps up there so they can shut out all the independents.”

It’s not an argument that sponsors of the $10 billion proposal find persuasive. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), for example, asked Salazar why the size of the company should influence spill liability when even the smallest operation could potentially devastate an offshore ecosystem.

“If you could create the potential risk that we have in this [Gulf] spill, and you could be the cause of this spill, does the size [of the company] matter?” he asked. “In essence, we’d be saying [that] if you’re smaller, you should have less liability. And I don’t think the American taxpayer would believe in that.”

Salazar responded vaguely, saying he’ll work with Congress “to find a number that is not an arbitrary number.”

Meanwhile, you can bet that the White House will continue blaming Republicans for blocking the same proposal that Obama himself opposes. In other words, they’ll be seeking the political gain while opposing the policy.

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa., left) and Rand Paul (R-Ky., right) both won Senate primaries on Tuesday night, while Bill Halter (D-Ark., center) forced Sen. Blanche Lincoln into a runoff. (Zuma, Bill Halter for Senate)

The results from Tuesday’s much-watched congressional primaries are in. Now the larger question remains: What’s their significance?

The fall of five-term Sen. Arlen Specter (D) in Pennsylvania marks the end of an era; the rise of ophthalmologist Rand Paul (R) in Kentucky lends both power and voice to the ever-emerging Tea Party movement; and the success of Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter — who hung close enough to Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a conservative Democrat, to force a run-off contest next month — has drawn cheers from the liberal groups that catalyzed his late ascendancy.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Yet the well-worn theme going into the day’s elections — that a nationwide storm of voter unrest spells mid-term doom for “big government” incumbents, particularly the majority Democrats — was hardly proven. Indeed, two of the three high-profile races featured establishment candidates taking on other establishment candidates — with the liberals coming out on top. If any common message emerged from Tuesday’s results it was this: Republicans, who have been hoping that the public’s discontent will translate into big congressional gains in November, might want to reconsider their strategy come Wednesday.

Specter, for example, was toppled by a more liberal Democrat in the figure of Rep. Joe Sestak, whose late campaign push revolved around ads linking Specter — a Republican from 1965 until he switched parties last year — to George W. Bush. Sestak will now square off against former GOP Rep. Pat Toomey, founder of the conservative Club for Growth, in November.

In Arkansas, Halter rode the wave of an enormous ad campaign bankrolled by some of the nation’s most predominant liberal groups, including MoveOn.org and a number of labor unions, who have been critical of Lincoln’s opposition to climate change legislation and an idling labor reform bill. And while Halter’s name isn’t well known on a national stage, the lieutenant governor is also no political outsider. As the Guardian’s Michael Tomasky wrote Tuesday, a Halter win “would not represent primary voters manifesting some bestial urge to tear the flesh of the establishment. He’s a member of the establishment.”

The run-off election between Halter and Lincoln is scheduled for June 8.

More evidence that the anti-establishment backlash remains unproven arrived Tuesday in western Pennsylvania, where Democrat Mark Critz, a former aide to the late Rep. Jack Murtha (D), defeated Republican Tim Burns in a special election. The result was a blow to Republicans, who’d viewed Murtha’s seat as low-hanging fruit in a conservatvie district amidst an unemployment crisis. “If you can’t win a seat that is trending Republican in a year like this, then where is the wave?” former GOP Rep. Tom Davis (Va.) told The New York Times before the outcome of the race was known. “It would be a huge upset not to win this seat.”

Not that there hasn’t been good evidence of a conservative backlash against incumbents in some districts. Sen. Robert Bennett (Utah), for example, a faithful conservative, was unseated in a primary earlier this month by an opponent who attacked him for supporting Bush’s bailout of Wall Street. And Paul’s win in Kentucky came at the expense of Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state who’d won the endorsement of no less an entrenched Republican than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

Yet Tuesday’s primary results indicate that there’s more at play than a simple backlash against establishment figures. Another wild card on display Tuesday was the extent of the Obama administration’s willingness to throw its weight behind longtime incumbents. Newsweek’s Howard Fineman noted that Specter, for example, was abandoned by the White House in the lead-up to his defeat Tuesday. Fineman pointed to a report by NBC’s Chuck Todd indicating that the administration, after endorsing Specter, actually preferred Sestak.

The fact that White House political spin doctors would say this to Chuck Todd in time for him to go on the air with it at 5 p.m. Eastern, on a popular political show hosted by Philly native [Chris] Matthews, with the polls open until 8 (!), enraged [Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Robert] Brady. “I guess that’s the White House’s idea of loyalty,” he snapped. “They’re gonna hear from me.”

Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) predicted Tuesday that the creation of jobs — if it continues – will, come November, overcome the current attitude of voter discontent against Democratic incumbents who pushed through the party’s economic stimulus bill and an overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

“Americans are pretty smart people,” Hoyer told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday. “If they see this continued success, I think they’re going to say, ‘Well, I was doubtful, but it seems to be working, and we will stay the path.’”

Whether he’s right or not remains to be seen. But Tuesday’s results are no indication one way or the other.

Care of the office of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who’s among the most vocal critics of the White House plan to expand offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast.

Last week it was Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) who blocked legislation to hike the oil industry’s liability for economic damages following spills. Today, it was Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) doing the same.

“We need to increase the caps,” Inhofe said on the Senate floor this morning. “[But] we don’t know just how high that should be.”

Meanwhile, as BP executives are downplaying the threat posed by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, thousands of barrels of oil and gas continue to gush from the damaged well head — though no one seems to know the true number.

Tangled up in extramarital affairs, politicians tend to be contrite, remorseful, apologetic — any number of things designed to make them appear humble in the face of the intense public scrutiny they inevitably face. (“If there was ever anything I could take back in my life, this would be it,” Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said last year after finding himself in a similar pickle.)

So it was odd to see the statement this morning from Rep. Mark Souder, the “family-values” Republican from Indiana found today to be not as committed to his family as he’d have us believe.

It’s not that he doesn’t start well:

It has been a privilege to be a part of the battle for freedom and the values we share.

But then he immediately moves on to imply that the strains of the job — and the sacrifices he’s made for his constituents — led him astray.

It has been all consuming for me to do this job well, especially in a district with costly, competitive elections every two years.

I do not have any sort of “normal” life — for family, for friends, for church, for community.

That’s followed by a brief shift back to humble-servant mode:

To serve has been a blessing and a responsibility given from God.

I wish I could have been a better example.

I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff.

But then he’s back to blaming external factors for the position he’s put himself in:

In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain.

I am resigning rather than to put my family through that painful, drawn-out process.

Diane and my family were more than willing to stand here with me.

Finally, he accepts responsibility:

But the error is mine and I should bear the responsibility …

I am so ashamed to have hurt those I love.

But that’s followed by the claim that his resignation is a heroic gesture designed to salvage the policies he advocated in Congress.

By stepping aside, my mistake cannot be used as a political football in a partisan attempt to undermine the cause for which I have labored all my adult life.

If there’s a message in all of this contradiction, he doesn’t make it easy to glean.

To what extent do Massey shareholders want to hold company leaders accountable for the terrible safety record in Massey mines? Turns out, not at all.

Bloomberg New reports:

Baxter Phillips, Richard Gabrys and Dan Moore, who each served on Massey’s safety committee, will keep their seats on the Richmond, Virginia-based company’s board, six weeks after the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine where 29 people were killed. Each received a majority of the votes cast at Massey’s annual meeting in Richmond today, the company said.

The board members had come under fire recently from some shareholders — including state pension funds — who were urging their ouster at today’s annual gathering. Massey announced this morning that they’ll remain.

From the department of irony…

It turns out that Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), who announced today that he’ll be resigning over news of an affair with a part-time staffer, is also one of the loudest proponents of family values on Capitol Hill. Here, for example, is the page on his (soon to be extinct) website where he vows his “fight to uphold the traditional values that undergird the strength of our nation.”

The family plays a fundamental role in our society. Studies consistently demonstrate that it is best for a child to have a mother and father, and I am committed to preserving traditional marriage, the union of one man and one woman.

The importance of Judeo-Christian values in America cannot be underestimated. Yet, in the public square, religion has been maligned by the courts to a point where children cannot pray in school and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down the Pledge of Allegiance. I am committed to fighting the assault on American values.

Along those lines, Souder spearheaded a 2006 report — “Abstinence and Its Critics” — designed to counter arguments from liberal Democrats that abstinence education is an unrealistic approach to reducing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

TPM has the money clip of Souder discussing the importance of abstinence with his mistress last year.

Today marks Massey Energy’s annual shareholders meeting in Richmond, Va, and they’re getting quite a reception from environmentalists and members of the United Mine Workers of America, who are picketing the event by the hundreds. The Wall Street Journal provides some context:

The UMWA has been one of Massey’s fiercest critics since the explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine last month, the worst coal mining disaster in 40 years. The union, which has lost organizing elections at the company’s mines in recent years, has long had an antagonistic relationship with Massey. The union represents some Massey employees who work at coal preparation plants.

A number of Massey miners — both former and current — have come forward since last month’s tragedy with allegations that the company simply doesn’t prioritize safety in its mines, particularly if those measures hinder the production of coal.

Massey has rejected those claims, insisting that its safety record is at least as good as those of its competitors. Indeed, the Journal reports that the company — despite a damning record of safety at the UBB mine  – is still lashing out at its critics.

Prior to the protests, a Massey spokeswoman said, “We respect the right of those with a narrow political agenda to express their views.”

Massey CEO Don Blankenship, whose own political agenda inspired a recent $30,400 donation to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, will testify before the Senate Thursday.

FOX News just broke the story (with few details) that eight-term Indiana Rep. Mark Souder (R) will announce his resignation today “after it came to light that he was conducting an affair with a female staffer who worked in his district office.”

Multiple senior House sources indicated that the extent of the affair would have landed Souder before the House Ethics Committee.

The news comes just two weeks after Souder won his party’s nomination for re-election.

Stay tuned…

NPR’s Howard Berkes and Frank Langfitt have spent weeks on the ground in southern West Virginia, the site of last month’s deadly blast at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine. And today they’re reporting that “most” of the 10 UBB miners they’ve interviewed over that span noted “continuing problems” with the ventilation system inside the mine — problems that Massey higher-ups allegedly knew about, but didn’t fix.

“They wouldn’t fix the ventilation problems,” a former supervisor and a member of mine management said. “I told them I needed more air. They threatened to fire me if I didn’t run enough coal.”

Another miner said “there was constant confusion” in the management of the air flow system.

A third miner described mine managers this way: “They don’t have a clue how to ventilate this place.”

This isn’t exactly news. The inspector notes, released last month by the Mine Safety and Health Administration, told a similar tale. And a number of former Massey miners have also come forward — even appearing on Capitol Hill — to testify about similar experiences in other Massey mines.

Still, to hear those comments from guys who were working at the UBB mine when the disaster occurred provides another layer altogether — one that both federal investigators and Massey shareholders will surely want to learn more about.

Following last month’s deadly underground mine explosion in West Virginia, the recent controversy surrounding surface mining has been largely (if temporarily) forgotten — at least in Washington. But today, two House Republicans from Appalachia’s coal fields revisited the issue, ripping the Environmental Protection Agency for installing strict new guidelines designed to protect mountain streams from the destructive practice known as mountaintop removal.

In other words, the lawmakers are blasting the Environmental Protection Agency for trying to protect the environment.

“While the EPA conducts an unnecessary re-examination of the mining permitting process under the guise of environmental stewardship, the troubling reality is that the EPA’s unsolicited policy changes are aimed solely at the coal industry and more specifically, Appalachian coal,” Reps. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) wrote Monday in an op-ed in Roll Call.

Unilaterally implementing some of the most sweeping regulatory changes in recent history, the EPA is supplanting well-established, Congressionally justified water quality programs in six Appalachian states and running roughshod over commonly agreed upon principles and practices.

It’s tough to know how the lawmakers would define “recent history” here, but evidently they don’t wish to go back too far. Not to 2002, for example, when the Bush administration unilaterally reclassified mining “waste” as mining “fill,” thereby allowing companies to fill streams more easily. And not to 2008, when the Bush White House gutted a 25-year-old rule prohibiting the disposal of mining debris within 100 feet of streams.

Here’s how The Washington Post described the 2002 change:

The “fill rule,” as the May 2002 rule change is now known, is a case study of how the Bush administration has attempted to reshape environmental policy in the face of fierce opposition from environmentalists, citizens groups and political opponents. Rather than proposing broad changes or drafting new legislation, administration officials often have taken existing regulations and made subtle tweaks that carry large consequences.

And last year, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pointed out the reasoning behind the 2008 “stream-buffer-zone” change when he noted that it “allows coal mine operators to dump mountaintop fill into streambeds if it’s found to be the cheapest and most convenient disposal option.”

But company expense and convenience, Salazar said in proposing to abandon Bush’s rule, shouldn’t be the only considerations when issuing permits.

We must responsibly develop our coal supplies to help us achieve energy independence, but we cannot do so without appropriately assessing the impact such development might have on local communities and natural habitat and the species it supports.

Whether they can succeed in the face of industry opposition — opposition evidenced by today’s Rogers-Capitol op-ed — is another question.

The gap between the wealth possessed by white and black families grew more than four times larger between 1984 and 2007 — and federal policy is only exacerbating the trend, according to a study released today by researchers at Brandeis University’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy.

Not to be confused with income, wealth is a measure of what you possess minus any debts you owe. In the 23-year span under review, researchers found, the median value of assets among whites jumped from $22,000 to $100,000, while the median value of holdings among blacks rose from $2,000 to just $5,000. And the researchers say that’s no accident.

Instead, they argue, the quickly growing racial wealth gap “reflects public policies, such as tax cuts on investment income and inheritances which benefit the wealthiest, and redistribute wealth and opportunities.

“Tax deductions for home mortgages, retirement accounts, and college savings all disproportionately benefit higher income families,” they write.

And income levels can be deceiving. Indeed, researchers discovered that middle-income white households are much wealthier than upper-income black families.

[B]y 2007, the average middle-income white household had accumulated $74,000 in wealth, an increase of $55,000 over the 23-year period, while the average high-income African-American family owned $18,000, a drop of $7,000 That resulted in a wealth gap of $56,000 for an African-American family that earned more than $50,000 in 1984 compared to a white family earning about $30,000 that same year.

The findings “make it clear that higher income alone will not lead to increased wealth.”

Consumers of color face a gauntlet of barriers — in credit, housing and taxes — that dramatically reduce the chances of economic mobility.

The findings, researchers warn, have real-world repercussions.

“Even when African Americans do everything right — get an education and work hard at well-paying jobs — they cannot achieve the wealth of their white peers in the workforce, and that translates into very different life chances,” IASP Director Thomas Shapiro, author of “The Hidden Costs of Being African American” and the co-author of “Black Wealth/White Wealth,” said in a statement announcing the study.

“A U-turn is needed,” he added. “Public policies have and continue to play a major role in creating and sustaining the racial wealth gap, and they must play a role in closing it.”

Food for thought as Congress considers how strong to make its Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and whether all the Bush tax cuts merit extension.

Two young activists arrested this morning for protesting mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia will have to come up with $100,000 in bail if they want to leave jail any time soon, a West Virginia court ruled today. The Associated Press reports:

Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Chad Barker says 18-year-old EmmaKate Martin and 23-year-old Ben Bryant were charged with trespassing, conspiracy, obstruction and littering.

He says they left garbage near their platform over the road in Julian.

The irony of the last charge certainly won’t be lost on Appalachian environmentalists and community groups, who’ve been screaming for decades about the polluting effects of mountaintop removal, mostly to deaf ears.

The Washington Post’s Juliet Elperin has the scoop that the federal official in charge of offshore drilling will soon be resigning:

Chris Oynes, the top Interior Department official who oversees offshore oil and gas drilling for the Minerals Management Service, announced Monday that he will retire on May 31.

Oynes has been in charge of Gulf drilling since 1998, the Post reports.

No surprises here. The MMS has long had a reputation for being too chubby with the industry it’s supposed to be supervising. But the scrutiny has reached new heights in the wake of last month’s Gulf oil spill, and someone’s head had to roll.

The question now is: Will Oynes be the only one?

h/t: POGO.

Seems that Louisiana lawmakers aren’t the only ones downplaying the size of the Gulf oil spill this month. BP CEO Tony Hayward told the Guardian on Friday that crude oil still gushing from the ocean floor is insignificant relative to the size of the sea it’s contaminating.

“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean,” Hayward said. “The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

The shrimpers, crabbers, hoteliers and ferrymen of the region would likely disagree.

BP reportedly made some progress over the weekend, inserting into the gusher what’s effectively a big straw that’s pulling about 1,000 barrels a day to barges floating on the Gulf’s surface. That’s a start, but it does nothing to plug to leak.

Last Friday, the National Rifle Association held its annual gathering in Charlotte, N.C., where ThinkProgress asked a number of participants whether the Second Amendment should extend to folks currently on the country’s terrorist watch list. (Under current law, it does.) The responses are a clear indication that, at least on this thorny issue, gun owners are more than ready to take on NRA leadership.

Video after the jump: