U.S. Border Patrol Agents Seize 53 Bundles of Marijuana
el to Press Obama Team on Drilling BanSpill Panel to Press Obama Team on Drilling BanArticleComments (2)MORE IN BUSINESS »EmailPrintSave This↓ More
+ MoreText By STEPHEN POWER
NEW ORLEANS—The leaders of a presidential panel investigating the Gulf of Mexico oil spill expressed skepticism Tuesday about a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling and said they would press the Obama administration on why a prolonged ban is needed.
“We’re going to look over their shoulder and have some comments to make as to whether we think the judgments they made are appropriate,” said Bob Graham, one of the two co-chairmen of the National Commission on the BP-Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.
The comments by Mr. Graham and William K. Reilly represent a sharp shift. A day earlier, both men had said that assessing the merits of the moratorium wasn’t part of their panel’s mission.
But on Tuesday, during a break in the second of two days of hearings on the environmental and economic impact of the spill, Messrs. Reilly and Graham said they had been persuaded by Louisiana elected officials, business people and ordinary citizens to weigh in on the issue.
Mr. Reilly said he was “quite moved” by the testimony of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.), who said the government should be able to move faster than six months to determine the safety levels of the 33 rigs covered by the ban. Mr. Reilly said he was also surprised that representatives of Louisiana’s fishing industry, which has been rocked by the spill, had called for lifting the moratorium.
“Frankly, I have less understanding why it’s going to take so long to reassure people that the existing rigs are safe,” Mr. Reilly said during a news conference with Mr. Graham. Mr. Graham drew an analogy to a recent order by the Federal Aviation Administration directing airlines to inspect the cockpit window heaters on roughly 1,200 Boeing airliners, amid concerns that the heaters could have contributed to incidents involving in-flight fires, smoke and shattered windshields.
“I’m sure they [aviation companies] didn’t wait until all 1,200 airplanes had been evaluated to release the first ones” back into service, Mr. Graham said. “Why couldn’t we have something like that with these [drilling] rigs, once we’re satisfied they have met safety guidelines and the [Interior] Department is satisfied with its capacity to” carry out and enforce relevant safety rules.
Messrs. Graham and Reilly spoke after hearing testimony from the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, Michael Bromwich. Mr. Bromwich said the administration continues to believe a temporary ban on deepwater drilling is necessary, not only to give the government sufficient time to implement new safety measures but also to investigate the cause of the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.
Mr. Bromwich said the oil and gas industry needs to “show us and show the public they have developed more effective containment strategies” for dealing with oil spills “than they have developed to date.” The administration has said its moratorium on deepwater drilling will continue until Nov. 30 or “such earlier time that” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar determines that such operations can proceed safely.
The Interior Department on Monday issued an order banning most new deepwater-drilling activities until Nov. 30. The ban replaces an order issued by the department in May that was struck down by a federal court last month, and sets up the possibility of a fresh legal challenge. Hornbeck Offshore Services, which challenged the initial moratorium, declined to comment.
It’s not clear how the Interior Department’s new moratorium will affect litigation between the oil industry and the Obama administration over the earlier ban. A Justice Department spokeswoman said that Mr. Salazar’s new order “expressly supersedes” the earlier one. As a result, she said, the administration plans to ask the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the oil industry against the government over the earlier ban.
But Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said he thought it unlikely that the judge in the case, Martin Feldman, would grant the administration’s request. “It’s a new order, but he still has jurisdiction over the subject matter,” Mr. Tobias said. “I think he’d try to maintain that.”
Messrs. Graham and Reilly didn’t commit to issuing a formal conclusion on the moratorium by a specific date. Mr. Reilly said the speed with which the commission could move to examine the issue would be determined by how quickly it can hire additional staffers. The Obama administration is seeking $15 million to fund the panel, but Congress has yet to approve the request, forcing the panel to rely on temporary funding from the Energy Department.
Nevertheless, Mr. Reilly said, “we probably have a contribution to make to the thinking” on the moratorium.
Mr. Reilly said he also wants the panel to quickly address the use of chemical dispersants in combating the spill, and whether they have affected the environment even more than the spill.
“The major question for this commission, and one we haven’t fully resolved, is whether this [accident] was a one-off event or [evidence of] a systemic weakness in the technology of deep-sea drilling,” Mr. Reilly said.
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U.S. Border Patrol Agents Seize 53 Bundles of Marijuana
Yuma, Ariz. – U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to the Yuma Sector seized a cache of marijuana valued at more than $800,000 after a vehicle illegally entered the U.S. east of San Luis, Ariz. Saturday.
Border Patrol agents assigned to the Yuma Station detected the illegal entry of a 1991 GMC Yukon sport utility vehicle shortly before 5 a.m. about 30 miles east of San Luis, Ariz. The SUV entered the U.S. through a Normandy style barrier that had been cut and moved.
Agents reported the occupants abandoned the vehicle at Avenue 2E and the U.S./Mexico border and fled back into Mexico on foot to avoid arrest.
The vehicle contained 53 bundles of marijuana weighing 1,117 pounds. The street value of the marijuana is estimated at $885,800.
The SUV was seized by the Border Patrol and the bundles of marijuana were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
To report suspicious activity, contact the Yuma Sector Border Patrol’s toll free telephone number at 1-866-999-8727.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the unified border agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with the management, control and protection of our nation’s borders at and between the official ports of entry. CBP is charged with keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons out of the country while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws.
Can Obama Persuade Voters to Stay the Course?
Latest poll shows declining confidence in the president, which could hurt Democrats in midterm elections.
Confidence in President Obama as the agent of change to restore the economy and chart a positive course has deteriorated to the point where nearly six in 10 voters say they “lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country,” according to the latest Washington Post/ABC poll. The president’s overall approval rating remains a relatively healthy 50 percent, with Democrats backing him (82 percent), independents faltering (47 percent), and Republicans unified in withholding their support (15 percent).
Obama inherited a big mess, and people are frustrated that he hasn’t fixed the economy. Counseling patience together with a show of resolve and determination helped President Reagan weather the storm in his first midterm election under conditions remarkably similar to today. Unemployment stood at 10.8 percent when voters went to the polls in November 1982, and Reagan’s numbers were 49-47, almost identical to Obama’s (50-47).
One key difference: Obama hasn’t done as good a job as Reagan of blaming his predecessor. Jimmy Carter for years served as the GOP’s version of Herbert Hoover while Obama let George W. Bush slip away into the ether, a former president so invisible that he might as well be in a witness-protection program. Bush’s upcoming book, Decision Points, won’t be released until a week after the November election, reinforcing the GOP’s decision to keep the unpopular president out of the mix in the midterms.
The gloomy numbers mean little for Obama looking forward to 2012 as they will change radically many times over before then. The disenchantment stems mainly from the things Obama had to do to stabilize the economy, and which have been tarred as government overreach even as they worked to pull the economy back from the abyss but fell short in making life better for average Americans. Campaigning on a slogan of things could have been worse is not a winning platform.
Obama has the right message in asking voters to make a choice: do they want to go back to the policies that got us into the mess, or stick with him—and the Democratic Congress—in getting us out of the mess, however slowly and painfully. Obama is on the campaign trail for his fellow Democrats, but when a president is not on the ballot, history tells us it’s hard for him to yank his party across the finish line. Reagan couldn’t do it in 1982, but his slogan, “Stay the Course,” kept Republicans together, and they lost a manageable 26 seats in the House and held their own in the Senate, a result that Obama would call a victory.
The disappointment in Obama could translate into a windfall for Republicans in the fall if the GOP can keep the focus on Obama’s failure to meet the expectations he raised as a candidate, as opposed to their own shortcomings. One notable finding in the poll is that voters like Republicans even less than Democrats, and that was not the case in 1994, the last time the GOP engineered the kind of upheaval they’re hoping for in November. The GOP then had a charismatic leader in Newt Gingrich along with a crop of insurgents that the broader electorate saw as plausible, as opposed to the Tea Party candidates getting headlines today for who can be the wackiest.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs over the weekend conceded the obvious, that enough seats are in play in the House that Republicans could take back control. But both parties are to a large extent hostage to events. “It could turn either way,” says Matt Bennett, cofounder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way. “We’re not by any means locked into a political reality at this point.” Looking for the bright side, Bennett says the party in power never wants the president polling below 50, and Obama against all odds has maintained that base line. If BP seems under control and nothing else blows up in the world, literally or figuratively, and the economy shows a bit more juice, the political landscape could look brighter for Democrats come November—or not.
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