\nHill. How do you stand by your men amid photos
\nof thick pools of oil lapping into the marshes of southern Louisiana<\/a> and more video of BP pipes
\ngushing oil<\/a>?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But love, as always, finds a way. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the Senate, fossil-fuel fans James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and
\nLisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have managed
\nto grab hold of an issue that shows oil execs that they’ve still got their
\nbacks: liability.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Senate Democrats Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg of New <\/p>\n And he trotted out the same contorted logic Murkowski’s been <\/p>\n Then things really got strange. While testifying before the Senate’s Energy <\/p>\n Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), another Big Oil booster, <\/p>\n All that, of course, didn’t play very well with a lot of For the life of me, I can’t understand someone objecting, as they are going to do, in raising an artificial limit of $75 million, up to at least $10 billion, and it’s probably going to exceed $10 billion. But the argument you’re going to hear is they are going to say, “Oh, it shouldn’t be this, it ought to be tied to profit.” Now, is it really responsible public policy to say that because of a company makes less money that it should be responsible for less damage? No.<\/p>\n By late in the day, the White House was trying to run damage control<\/a> and <\/p>\n The world, or at least the Capitol Hill slice of it, was back in balance.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n See more play-by-play from yesterday’s hearings in The <\/p>\n Why didn’t we think of that?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) has his own special take on the oil spill. It never would have happened, he says, if we <\/p>\n Timing is everything<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This week, the BP Sea Otter Habitat exhibit opens at the Aquarium of the Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n Obama admin overhauls MMS, the agency in charge of offshore drilling<\/a><\/p>\n Rand Paul’s Copenhagen rant and other election notes<\/a><\/p>\n Robert Redford and green groups tell Obama to step up on Gulf oil leak<\/a><\/p>\n
\nJersey and Bill Nelson of Florida are pushing a proposal to raise the liability
\ncap on oil spills from its current paltry level of $75 million to a more
\nrealistic $10 billion. Last week, Murkowski
\nblocked it<\/a>. Yesterday, Inhofe did.<\/p>\n
\nusing: If you set the cap too high, you
\nrisk putting smaller independent oil companies out of business. Then only BP, ExxonMobil, and other oil
\ngiants will be left, he argued. In
\nshort, he and Murkowski say they’re looking out for the little guys, all things
\nbeing relative.<\/p>\n
\nand Natural Resources Committee, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar started
\nchanneling Inhofe and Murkowski<\/a>, saying that Congress should avoid setting
\nan “arbitrary” cap, and that, yes, we don’t want to hurt smaller oil companies.<\/p>\n
\ncommended Salazar for “taking your time” on setting a cap.<\/p>\n
\nDemocrats, starting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who
\nearlier in the day had said
\nthe cap should be eliminated altogether<\/a> so companies responsible for spills
\nwould face unlimited liability. And then
\nthere was Nelson, who had already blasted away at a Republican idea that the
\ncap should somehow be tied to a company’s profits. Here’s what he said<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\nback away from Salazar’s ambiguous comments.
\nIt issued
\na statement from Obama<\/a> that condemned Republicans for playing “special
\ninterest politics” and blocking efforts to raise the liability cap.<\/p>\n
\nNew York Times’ Green blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nhad only gone ahead and drilled,
\nbaby, drilled in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge<\/a> in Alaska. <\/p>\n
\nPacific in Long Beach, Calif. Although
\nthe oil company donated $1 million for the facility, no BP officials are
\nexpected to attend. The
\nLos Angeles Times has the story.<\/a><\/p>\n
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