I'll continue to read more about cleanup techniques, and if I find a reliable source about some technique that sounds worth a try, I'll support it in any way I can.

I continue to believe that the leak cannot be stopped. Nothing I have read about methods that have been tried on much shallower wells gives me any hope for this. I'll be happy to be proved wrong.

Oil giant BP said its internal investigation of the unchecked Gulf oil spill is largely focused on work done by other companies as a new government report Tuesday showed workers at the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling accepted sports tickets, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies.

And that's not coming from any belief in what the government is telling me.  Quite the opposite.

How about these job losses?

Though the Supreme Court struck down the Line Item Veto Act in 1998, President George W. Bush asked Congress to enact legislation that would return the line item veto power to the Executive. First announcing his intent to seek such legislation in his January 31, 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush sent a legislative proposal Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006 to Congress on March 6, 2006, urging its prompt passage.[17] Senator Bill Frist, Senator John McCain, and Republican Whip Senator Mitch McConnell jointly introduced this proposal.

On that same day, Joshua Bolten, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, gave a press conference on the president's line-item veto proposal. Bolten explained that the proposed Act would give the President the ability to single out "wasteful" spending and to put such spending on hold. While the spending line-item is on hold, the President can send legislation to Congress to rescind the particular line-item. The proposal would then be considered in both houses within ten days on an up or down basis, and could be passed by a simple majority. Additionally, such proposals could not be filibustered.

When asked how this proposed legislation was different from the 1996 Line Item Veto Act that was found unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, Bolten said that whereas the former act granted unilateral authority to the Executive to disallow specific spending line items, the new proposal would seek Congressional approval of such line-item vetoes. Thus, in order for the President to successfully rescind previously enacted spending, a simple majority of Congress is required to agree to specific legislation to that effect.

Though the current line-item veto proposal is much weaker than the 1996 version, it has nevertheless failed to find strong support in Congress. Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia called it "an offensive slap at Congress," asserting that the legislation would enable the president to intimidate individual members of Congress by targeting the projects of his political opponents. He also complained that the line-item veto as proposed would take away Congress' constitutional "power of the purse" and give it to the Executive branch.

On June 8, 2006, Viet D. Dinh, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and Nathan A. Sales, John M. Olin Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center testified by written statement before the House Committee on the Budget on the constitutional issues in connection with the proposed legislation.[18] Dinh and Sales argued that the Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006 satisfies the Constitution's Bicameralism and Presentment Clause, and therefore avoids the constitutional issues raised in the 1996 Act struck down by the Supreme Court. They also stated that the proposed Act is consistent with the basic principle that grants Congress broad discretion to establish procedures to govern its internal operations.

The proposed Act was approved by the House Budget Committee on June 14, 2006 by a vote of 24-9. [19] It was approved in the full House on June 22. A similar bill was submitted in the Senate, but failed to win approval. The Legislative Line Item Veto Act has therefore not become law.

Today, the President sent to Congress the Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act of 2010 to establish a new, expedited tool to reduce unnecessary or wasteful spending. Under this new expedited procedure, the President would submit a package of rescissions shortly after a spending bill is passed. Congress is then required to consider these recommendations as a package, without amendment, and with a guaranteed up-or-down vote within a specified timeframe.

The Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act will empower the President and the Congress to eliminate unnecessary spending while discouraging waste in the first place. This is critically important both because we should never tolerate taxpayer dollars going to programs that are duplicative or ineffective and because, especially in the current fiscal environment, we cannot afford this waste.

Far worse than I ever expected things to be, on so many levels, and on so many issues.

From Glenn's post:

Most of what our Government does of any real significance happens in the dark.  Whistleblowers are one of the very few avenues we have left for learning about any of that.  And politicians eager to preserve their own power and ability to operate in secret -- such as Barack Obama -- see whistleblowers as their Top Enemy.

Hence, we have a series of aggressive prosecutions from the Obama administration of Bush era exposures of abuse and illegality -- acts that flagrantly violate Obama's Look Forward, Not Backward decree used to protect high-level Bush administration criminals.  As John Cole has suggested, perhaps if these whistleblowers had tortured some people and illegally eavesdropped on others, they would receive the immunity that Obama has so magnanimously and selectively granted.  Instead, they merely exposed secret government corruption and illegality to the world, and thus must be punished.

While it's true that leaks can be both damaging and illegal, these prosecutions are occurring without any showing whatsoever of harm to national security, and with ample evidence that they were undertaken to expose high-level wrongdoing.  Some secrets are legitimate, but the balance has swung so far in the direction of excess secrecy that it's extraordinary to watch the Obama administration move the anti-whistleblower persecution far beyond what the Bush administration did.

I'm sure this will help win the battle for hearts and minds.

Why do I get the feeling like 20 years down the road this is going to cause some serious problems for us.

US military officers on the ground say there is tremendous pressure from high above to replicate the successes of the so-called "awakening" against Al Qaeda in the western Anbar Province. The drive reached its apex in the run-up to the September testimonies to Congress by the top US military commander and diplomat in Iraq, US officers say.

"In order to turn the intent of [Lt.] Gen. [Raymond] Odierno for reconciliation into action, the coalition forces on the ground basically started recruiting leaders to try to turn other civilians against the insurgents," says Colonel Hsu, a native of Hawaii. General Odierno is the No. 2 commander of US forces in Iraq.