3 Republicans Say Report on Spill Was Manipulated

Three Republican senators demanded Friday that the White House explain last-minute editing changes to an Interior Department report on the BP oil spill that falsely implied that a group of independent experts had endorsed a political decision to temporarily halt all deepwater oil drilling.

The senators, members of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called for hearings into the matter, contending that the White House had manipulated science for political ends, a claim Democrats frequently made about the George W. Bush administration.

The Interior Department’s inspector general issued a report this week asserting that officials in the office of Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change policy, had changed some wording and moved some sentences in an agency report that ended up misrepresenting the views of the technical experts.

The Interior Department report, issued at the end of May, made two dozen recommendations for improving the safety of offshore drilling and said that until those changes were adopted, all drilling in water deeper than 500 feet should be suspended. It said that the recommendations had been “peer-reviewed” and approved by a panel of outside engineers and oil drilling experts.

Shortly after the report appeared, the technical advisers angrily complained that while they had endorsed a number of the safety recommendations, they had not concurred that a blanket deepwater drilling ban was needed. They said such a ban would punish companies with good safety records and lead to thousands of lost jobs.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar publicly and privately apologized to the scientists for distorting their views.

The moratorium proved highly controversial in the Gulf of Mexico, with oil companies and many local politicians complaining that it was wreaking economic devastation. Mr. Salazar lifted the moratorium in mid-October, six weeks ahead of schedule

a claim Democrats frequently made about the George W. Bush administration.

In 2nd paragraph, planted before anybody's attention span comes to an end. But what exactly does GWB have to do with anything? Nada. They just want to insinuate that this is petty, spiteful revenge on the part of Republicans.

Not ONLY 3 Republicans:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar publicly and privately apologized to the scientists for distorting their views.

That would be Imam Obamah's cabinet memeber.

NYSlime headline distorts reality.

Ms. Browner explained that she had only redacted one word, for clarity:

The scientists' unanimous conclusion was that drilling should ~~not~~ be halted.

That’s exactly what they want to do. I don’t recall the Dems ever claiming that Bush doctored a supposed scientific report. They didn’t like the conclusions that Bush drew from scientific research, on everything ranging from stem cell research to nuclear development, but nobody accused him of falsifying the information.

As for the only thing I think this could be referring to, the “yellow cake” claim, Bush didn’t make it up and it was in the report, which is one of the reasons the Dems finally tried to shift the focus entirely to something else in their attack.

This stunt by Obama, on the other hand, is something that somebody could go to jail for.

Not surprised that Carol Browner has her fingerprints on this. Where else but in Washington, can you be rewarded for your work in helping to destroy California’s economy?

It’s way past time we began throwing off the shackles of this overreaching and increasingly oppressive government, we can no longer get by with business as usual.

As old Tom Jefferson said, “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”

Let us never forget that Gov Jindal, in his book, claimed that Obama was more focused on politics than on reality during the Gulf Oil Spill.

From Jindal's book:

And after Obama instituted a moratorium on offshore drilling, Jindal recounts that the president dismissed his concerns about the economic impact of the ban.

“I understand you need to say all of this, I know you need to say this, that you are facing political pressure,” Jindal quotes Obama telling him. When the governor said he was concerned about people losing their jobs, he said the president cited national polls showing that people supported the ban.

“The human element seemed invisible to the White House,” he writes.

The motivation for the moratorium was polls, not scientists.

POP QUIZ

FReeper Quiz [time limit 60 seconds total]

ONE QUESTION:
Which of the following statements is LEAST likely
(pick one; Test time = 1 minute!!)

=======================

1. Pres_ _ent Obama was the biggest recipient of BP cash
2. British Petroleum (BP) pumped $71,000 into Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign
3. Pres_ _ent Obama's White House chief is tied to a BP adviser
4. Pres_ _ent Obama's White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is connected to BP
5. Pres_ _ent Obama shrewdly made money in the dispersements.
6. The dispersants contain PCB made by NALCO is based in Chicago with subsidiaries in Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia.
7. BP's Fallen Deepwater Horizon was tapping second largest oil deposit in the world
8. Pres_ _ent Obama exempted BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study
9. Pres_ _ent Obama did this despite BP's long record of legal, ethical violations
10. Pres_ _ent Obama's Federal Regulator Repeatedly Failed to Inspect Deepwater Horizon
11. Pres_ _ent Obama exempted BP's Gulf drilling from environmental impact study
12. Pres_ _ent Obama sheltered BP's Deepwater Horizon rig from regulatory requirement
13. Pres_ _ent Obama continued this despite that "Red Flags Were Ignored Aboard Doomed Rig
14. Pres_ _ent Obama allowed drilling 'without required permits' (also Drilling Without Needed Permits)
15. In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, despite multiple offers of
assistance from foreign governments, corporations, and international bodies pouring into
the State Department, for weeks, despite the clear need for additional help and resources,
the State Department failed to act on them
16. Pres_ _ent Obama failed to do everything necessary to deploy available skimming vessels. For example,
he refused to issue waivers under the Jones Act, which prevented foreign vessels from
working with American counterparts to skim oil from the Gulf.
17. Under Pres_ _ent Obama, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) enforced rules and
requirements that severely restricted needed legal and operational flexibility in response
efforts. OSHA, for example, mandated 20-minute shifts for clean-up workers and
required 40-hour training courses for potential supervisors.
18. Obama knew Gulf drilling ban would cost at least 23,000 jobs
19. Degraded oil From the BP Spill coats the Gulf Seafloor
20. The Obama White House was exposed for suppressing the worst view of Gulf Oil Spill
21. The Oil Spill Commission Found that prior Tests
warned of BP's Well about to blow -- Before the Blowout
22. Up To $3.3 Billion And 49,000 Jobs Were Destroyed
23. The Obama Administration was found to be 'Lackadaisical'
in response to the Gulf Oil spill
24. The Obama White House actually altered the drilling safety report
for hidden (unAmerican) motives
25. Pres_ _ent Obama will willingly release his birth certificate, like every other American citizen.

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