.
For all his
John Wayne rhetoric on the BP oil spill, President
Obama has failed to administer a swift kick to the
ample, deserving rump of
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. No matter. Federal
judge
Martin Feldman has now done the job the White House
won`t do.
In a scathing ruling issued Tuesday
afternoon, New Orleans-based Feldman
overturned the administration`s radical six-month
moratorium on deepwater drilling—and he singled out
Salazar`s central role in jury-rigging a federal panel`s
scientific report to bolster flagrantly politicized
conclusions. In a sane world, Salazar`s head would roll.
In Obama`s world, he gets immunity.
The suit challenging Obama`s
desperately political ban was filed by Covington, La.,
rig company
Hornbeck Offshore Services, which spoke on behalf of
all the "small people" in the industry whose economic survival is at stake.
As the plaintiffs` lawyer argued in court, the overbroad
ban promised to be more devastating to Gulf workers than
the spill itself.
"This is an unprecedented industry-wide shutdown. Never before has the
government done this," attorney Carl Rosenblum
said.
Scientists who served on the
committee expressed outrage upon discovering earlier
this month that Salazar had—unilaterally and without
warning—inserted a blanket drilling ban recommendation
into their report. As
Feldman recounted in his ruling:
In the Executive
Summary to the Report, (Salazar) recommends
"a six-month
moratorium on permits for new wells being drilled using
floating rigs."
He also recommends
"an immediate
halt to drilling operations on the 33 permitted wells,
not including relief wells currently being drilled by
BP, that are currently being drilled using floating rigs
in the Gulf of Mexico."
Much to the
government`s discomfort and this Court`s uneasiness, the
Summary also states that
"the
recommendations contained in this report have been
peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the
National Academy of Engineering." As the plaintiffs,
and the experts themselves, pointedly observe, this
statement was misleading. The experts charge it was a
"misrepresentation." It was factually incorrect.
[Ruling,
PDF]
Allow me to be more injudicious:
Salazar lied. Salazar committed fraud. Salazar sullied
the reputations of the experts involved and abused his
authority.
And for what purpose? To exploit
the Gulf crisis, appease the eco-extremists and stymie
the economic recovery to which the Obama White House
pays oily lip service.
The scientists whose views were
misrepresented reportedly received an apology from the
evidence-doctoring Salazar, but where are the
consequences? Where is the accountability? Terrific
news: Salazar, the report-rigger, is in charge of
overseeing it. That`s right. The Teflon Interior
Secretary spent Monday afternoon swearing in another
bureaucrat,
litigator Michael Bromwich, who will head the newly
named "Bureau of
Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement"
(formerly the beleaguered Minerals Management Service).
According to Salazar, Bromwich
"will be a key part of our team as we continue to change the way the
Department of the Interior does business."
Present company exempted, of course.
Feldman soberly illuminated the way
the Department of Interior does business in concluding
that Salazar`s "invalid agency decision to suspend drilling of wells in depths of over
500 feet simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect
on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region
and the critical present-day aspect of the availability
of domestic energy in this country." Salazar, with
his boss`s blessing, imposed the blanket moratorium on
Hornbeck and 33 permitted rigs without a shred of
threat/safety analysis. Of course, Hope and Change have
always been exercised with Arbitrary and Capricious
power.
The White House immediately
announced plans to appeal the ruling. But for once,
Chicago-on-the-Potomac has run smack into the rule of
law and lost. For all the other small people over whom
the Obama administration has run roughshod, let`s hope
it sets a lasting precedent.
COPYRIGHT
CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Michelle Malkin
[email
her]
is the author of
Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists,
Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our
Shores.
Click
here
for Peter Brimelow`s review. Click
here
for Michelle Malkin`s website. Michelle Malkin
is also author of
Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild
and the just-released Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies.
