Oil Spill, the effort to plug the leak, Congress investigates, Obama blamed (surprised?), BP, Transoceanic, Halliburton and the Mineral Management Service form circular firing squad.

Oil continues spewing into the Gulf. Drilled in over 5,000 feet of water the well head is hard to reach. Initially the estimate was 5,000 barrels per day, later this was updated to 17,000 barrels per day. Cofferdam fails, Top Hat fails, pipe insertion has minimal impact, Top Kill fails, junkshot adds nothing. Planning now to cut the debris off the top of the BOP and install a new cap. Relief well drilling underway. Dispersant injected by the tons into the water. Oil booms deployed but heavy weather including southeasterly winds prevail. Parishes take last ditch actions to protect their shores but the Corps of Engineers fails to approve the plans and effective action is stymied.

This is high pressure engineering the likes of which the country has not seen since the Apollo 13 mission. However there was something eerily like it in the Gulf off Mexico 31 years ago.  Read about the 1979 Ixtoc oil spill below.

On the flip side of the same problem the politicians are revisiting an old theme. Louisianian's perceive the opportunity to cash in on disaster by routing more oil severance taxes to the state.

James Carville is in the news as he blasts the feds for failing to act on the Southeast Louisiana continuing environmental disaster. Carville gets it right by noting that the death of the wetlands is an ongoing federal fiasco punctuated by by intermittant catastrophe.

The new Mayor took office on May 3rd with fanfare and parties. Hey, Nagin had three years before Katrina. Bush had 8 months before 911. Landrieu walks in the door with the greatest ecological disaster in American history on his doorstep and hurricane season only eight weeks away.