Inspector General: Obama Administration Edited BP Oil Spill Report to Falsely Suggest Consensus for Gulf Drilling Ban

The administration’s six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t “peer reviewed” at all. No, it was an executive decision by President Obama, and the report was then edited — apparently by a staffer for Carol Browner — to make it look like experts had “peer reviewed” that recommendation.

The experts had complained in June about the report’s false implication that they supported the drilling moratorium. The administration’s editing of the report moved a passage containing the peer-review language from page two — where it followed the expert panel’s list of 22 specific safety recommendations — to page one, immediately after the drilling moratorium.

This editing had the effect of lending the prestige of “science” to the administration’s policy. Ed Morrissey:

 The White House version of the report gave Obama political cover to order the six-month moratorium — at least until those involved in its peer review cried foul after the White House publicly used them to defend the action.

Ed asks some relevant questions:

Why was the staff of energy “adviser” Carol Browner allowed to edit a report issued by the Department of Interior’s blue-ribbon panel in the first place?  Why did no one review those changes at Interior to determine whether the edits were justified, especially since the IG report indicates that the edits took place because the staffer or Browner didn’t think it summarized the findings properly?  Why not just ask the report’s authors to rewrite it themselves?

More relevant questions: Why should we give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt here? Why not just demagogue this the way the Left demagogued Bush over the failure to find WMD stockpiles in Iraq?

OBAMA LIED! JOBS DIED!

Vicki McClure Davidson did an excellent roundup on the Gulf drilling moratorium in June.

‘Herewith, a Brief Primer’

Michael Gerson — he of that silly phrase — comes off like an arrogant chump in an interview with Laura Ingraham:

In this morning’s “Live at Five,” Wombat linked Ken Larrey’s “Big Journalism” piece on Gerson, which you should certainly read.

Gerson is one of many (including David Brooks and, let’s admit it, both President Bushes) whose hybrid “conservatism” is based on an internalization of liberal critiques of conservatism. And their beliefs are more a matter of politics than policy: They simply don’t believe that the Goldwater/Reagan limited-government message can produce GOP majorities.

So while the likes of Gerson are often accused of saying the stupid things they say out of self-interested motives — e.g., a desire to get invited to the “right” cocktail parties in Georgetown — it’s really much more useful to credit them with being sincerely stupid.

They are simply wrong, and too stupid (or vain) to admit how wrong they are, not even in the wake of a historic gain of at least 60 House seats in a year when GOP candidates were hammering home the limited-government message with gusto.

Of course, campaigning on a limited-government message is easier than governing according to that philosophy. But if the new House GOP majority will be smart about picking its fights with the Senate and the White House, voters will appreciate these efforts to check the limitless ambitions of big-government Democrats.

‘A Deliberate . . . Systemic Campaign to Kill Obama’s Presidency in Its Crib’

Hey, did anybody else ever notice that Andrew Sullivan has a tendency to engage in hyperbole?

What Sully portrays as a malign plot, I think most people call . . . politics.

Or in Jennifer Rubin’s elegantly simple formula, “There is no getting around it. The opposition party must oppose.”

For an Obamaphile like Sullivan, the explanation for the Democratic wipeout of Nov. 2 cannot be that Obama’s policies are unpopular or that Obama’s policies failed. Such an explanation would be both obvious and simple and, if you want an explanation like that, you don’t need a British emigré intellectual with a Harvard Ph.D. to give it to you.

Furthermore, to say that Obama was responsible for his own failures would offer no opportunity to denounce conservatives, which is all that Andrew Sullivan ever does anymore.

Ergo, the Sullivanesque explanation must (a) require the skills of an intellectual, and (b) involve accusations of right-wing perfidy. So he gins up the startling claim that Obama’s failure was caused by various conservative intellectuals (Jonah Goldberg, Dinesh D’Souza and Charles Krauthammer among them) who portrayed Obama as “an anti-American hyper-leftist, spending the US into oblivion.”

Any such portrayal, Sullivan says, is The Big Lie.

Because . . . Obama is a thrifty patriotic centrist?

Is it just me, or is Sullivan’s frothing madness more enjoyable to watch now that Democrats have been kicked to the curb?

LIVE AT FIVE – 11.10.10

TOP NEWS

Mystery Missile Launch Just A Contrail?

Left: Still pic of "missile launch"; right: aircraft contrail
Contrailscience.com says it’s not a missile.

Cholera Spreads To Haiti’s Capital
73 dead in Port-au-Prince, more to follow

Obama Hails Indonesia As Example For World
Praises diversity, Muslim tolerance



POLITICS

Joe Miller Files Suit To Force Ballot Count In Accordance With Law

Joe Miller, Republican candidate for the Senate

Spelling counts.

Eight House Seats Still Undecided

Fimian Concedes Defeat In VA-11

Manchin Squelches Switch Rumors

Jindal Book Rips Obama On Oil Spill, Stays Mum On Ambitions

Texas Latinos Turn Out For GOP

GOP Leaders Willing To Go Mano A Mano With White House Over Health Care & Taxes


Pataki Eyeing 2012 Run For GOP Nomination



THE ECONOMY, STUPID

PRC Trade Surplus Jumps Ahead of G20 Summit

Asian Stocks Fall On PRC Tightening Concerns

Crude Falls Again As Dollar Rises

Google Debuts Instant Previews

Google Hands Out 10% Raises, $1000 Cash Bonuses

Amazon Increases Kindle Royalties



SPORTS

Ichiro Wins Tenth Gold Glove

Ichiro Suzuki makes it look easy. Again.

Other AL Gold Glove awards more contentious

Newton, Father Sought Money In Addition To Scholarship

Millsap’s Career-High 46 Lifts Jazz To OT Win Over Heat

Caps Show Fight, Plenty Of Offense In 5-3 Defeat Of Rangers

Sharks Fall To Ducks In OT

Rush Leads Pacers To Rout Of Nuggets

Timbermutts Hang Tough But Can’t Beat Lakers

Nyets Fall To Cavs 93-91



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS

Kendra Wilkinson On Cover Of Playboy Again

Kendra Wilkinson

But it’s okay with hubby since nude pix are two years old, she says

Darren Aronofsky, Rachel Weisz Split

Dakota Fanning Crowned Homecoming Queen

Conan Debut On TBS Outdraws Leno, Letterman

Bret Michaels Denies Affair With Tish Cyrus

Teri Hatcher’s Divorce Drags On Like Hundred Years’ War

Gene Shalit Leaves “Today Show” After 40 Years

Madonna Compares Bullying Gays To Lynching, Holocaust



FOREIGNERS

Netanyahu: Issue Of Building Plans In East Jerusalem “Completely Overblown”

Iran Offers To Restart Nuke Talks, But There’s A Catch

India Pokes Back After Obama Snub On Myanmar

Russia Echoes PRC Concerns About Fed Actions



BLOGS & STUFF

Big Journalism: You Know, There’s a Lot Of Stuff About W I Don’t Miss – Like Michael Gerson

Don Surber: Race War Heats Up – In The Democratic Party

Legal Insurrection: Ladies In The House – And Alvin Greene In 2012?

Allahpundit: DOJ Criticizes Christie’s Expense Reports As Federal Prosecutor

Pirate’s Cove: Suddenly The Politico Is Worried About Republican Women?

Michelle Malkin: Let’s Not Get Carried Away By Bush Nostalgia


— compiled by Wombat-socho

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/pataki_eyes_prez_run_UnU2csmp3wMShH4LwqJweM

You Know How the Left Has This Bad Habit of Oversimplifying Stories?

Yeah, they claim to be all nuanced and everything, but progressives love nothing so much as to boil down complex situations into tidy “just so” morality plays. And, as pointed out here earlier this week, that’s what the Left did with a 5th Circuit of Appeals ruling in a First Amendment case, which got twisted into a “Republicans are pro-rape” narrative.

Common sense suggested there had to be a lot more to the story of the Texas high school cheerleader rape case than what the San Francisco Chronicle and liberal bloggers were telling us, but I didn’t spend much time wondering what was being omitted. However, Tom Maguire at Just One Minute got curious:

Excerpting from the victims appeal we see how “To Kill A Mockingbird” has been updated in Texas:

In fact, Plaintiffs alleged, “[District Attorney] Sheffield said that although the evidence against Rountree and Bolton was strong and exceeded the requisite requirement for probable cause, the Grand Jury was racially divided and that the black grand jurors would not vote to return an indictment against Rountree and Bolton because of the race factor.”

Ouch. We must note that this is merely an allegation by the plaintiff, that this incident  occurred at a party where alcohol was being consumed, and “witness credibility and meaningful consent seem to have been at issue,” as Maguire says. (Please read the whole thing.)

It’s “Send the Body to Glenn Beck” all over again, you see? Based on a superficial reading of a complex tale, the Left has decided that a story validates some particular political point they wish to make and . . . uh, it doesn’t.

Prediction: Melissa McEwan and her progressive friends will forget all about this story, now that Maguire’s research has shown the case of Rakheem Bolton and “H.S.” to be something far more nuanced than the simplistic “Republicans are pro-rape” morality play they tried to present to their gullible readers.