“Oil spill” on The Daily Caller

President Obama’s former green energy adviser, Van Jones, said that he — along with many environmental activists — stayed quiet about the 2010 BP oil spill because he did not want to embarrass President Obama. (more)

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazilian federal prosecutors said Wednesday they are seeking $10.6 billion in damages from U.S.-based Chevron Corp. because of environmental harm caused by an offshore oil leak. (more)

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In early February, Shell Alaska announced it was dropping any plans to drill in the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea in 2011. According to Vice President Pete Slaiby, the decision was based on the recent remand of air permits by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Shell has been waiting five years to be given the go-ahead to drill. (more)

When the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) issued last week the first deep-water drilling permit since last April’s BP oil spill, lawmakers and those in the oil industry hoped it was a sign of better days to come for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Late Friday, however, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar put those hopes to rest. (more)

Ken Salazar can no longer avoid issuing deep-water drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico. Though the secretary of the interior recently said he would not bow to political pressure on lifting the de facto drilling moratorium in the gulf, rumors that he would crack under that pressure were confirmed Monday evening when the first deep-water permit since the BP oil spill was issued. (more)

The Offshore Marine Service Association (OMSA) on Thursday launched a national campaign calling on President Obama to lift regulations that prevent deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The association represents more than 250 companies that own and operate U.S. flag service vessels. (more)

A new Congress is in town, the result of widespread opposition to the Obama Democrats’ aggressive expansion of federal power and their concomitant orgy of pork-barrel spending and job-killing regulatory measures. Recently, our president penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal asserting that, all along, he’s really been for eliminating regulations that hamper business. Now, he tells us, his administration will attack unnecessary regulation so that the private sector can create jobs and rejuvenate the economy.  (more)

The Gulf of Mexico could be largely recovered from the effects of the massive BP oil spill by 2014, the Obama administration’s point man in charge of the firm’s $20 billion victims’ compensation fund said Wednesday. (more)

1.) Everybody wants something from Obama’s SOTU — For two weeks now, yammer-faces and pols have rattled off what they’d like from tonight’s State of the Union address. The only thing they haven’t asked for is the moon. In an interview with The Daily Caller, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner added his own demands to the growing list of things Obama must pay lip service to during his address. “What I hope he says – and I think this will make some folks on my side upset – even if he has an innovation and growth agenda … just growth alone isn’t going to get us out of this problem,” Warner said. “We’re going to have to take on the size and role of government” and “the stuff that’s popular” like entitlement and defense spending. “You’ve got to earn good faith by showing willingness to do spending cuts,” Warner said. “There is some value in short term cuts that will at least show that we’re serious about doing something.” Obama’s more likely to promise the moon. (more)

1.) Remember: The five worst reactions to the Loughner shooting — Washington never fails to disappoint. While normal people cry in response to tragedy, the buttinskys on Capitol Hill are attempting to legislate away the pain. The Daily Caller’s Chris Moody rounds up the dumbest of the dumb, from a plan to “encase the entire House and Senate floor with Plexiglass so the tourists can’t throw things at members of Congress,” to a Republican-proposed law that would make it illegal to carry a firearm within 1/5 of a mile “of any ‘high-profile’ public official.” In a lapse of judgment that will go unpublished by his base, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn argued that the FCC–on which his daughter is a commissioner–should bring back the Fairness Doctrine. “You cannot yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.” And people say Congress doesn’t listen… (more)

The 2010 campaign provided enough memorable moments to fill out a list all by itself. Christine O’Donnell, Joe Manchin shooting the cap and trade bill, Aqua Buddha: It was that kind of year. (more)

NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal uses a new book to portray President Barack Obama as disconnected from the Gulf oil spill, charging that he was more focused on the political aftermath than the actual impact of the crisis. (more)

The presidential panel investigating the BP Plc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has found no evidence so far that employees made decisions to put profit ahead of safety, Chief Counsel Fred Bartlit said today. (more)

WASHINGTON—Halliburton Co. testing conducted before the BP PLC Gulf of Mexico oil spill showed that cement similar to that pumped into the blown-out well would be unstable, but there is no evidence that the contractor sounded alarms to BP, according to a presidential commission investigating the disaster. (more)

Even as the administration backs off of its devastating offshore drilling moratorium, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu is standing firm in maintaining her hold on confirming Jacob Lew as the head of the Office of Management and Budget.  A Democrat herself, she could hardly be accused of spoiling for a political battle with the White House. Rather, it was the Obama administration itself that instigated the fight by sacrificing Louisiana jobs to political expediency with the issuance of the deepwater offshore energy moratorium. (more)

Ever since the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, when Clarence Darrow cross-examined William Jennings Bryan, and H.L. Mencken ridiculed the good people of Rhea County as “babbits,” “morons,” “peasants,” “hillbillies,” “yaps,” and “yokels,” describing conservatives as “anti-science” has been a staple of the leftist narrative. (more)

Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton says he “was Tea Party when Tea Party wasn’t cool.” (more)

On Tuesday, the Obama administration finally announced the end of a politically motivated offshore drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico. The drilling ban, originally scheduled to be lifted in November, has been the subject of a torrent of criticism from Gulf area residents and leadership. (more)

The Obama administration lagged in its initial response to the BP oil spill, played down spill projections, ultimately overreacted, and injected politics into the spill response, according to a report by President Obama’s own oil spill commission. (more)