If the Obama Administration and Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar truly believe in the propriety of their six month moratorium, and are dedicated to fighting through appeal for it, why are their lawyers not acting like it? Are they really not trying because they really don’t care, or are they just sloppy and incompetent? It is one or the other.

Oiled up BP Judge Martin Feldman was required by both statutory and ethical considerations to recuse himself; at a absolute base minimum to disclose his appearances of conflict on the record; but he did neither. Any competent standard of lawyering would mandate the government to raise the issue if they are going to fight Feldman’s ruling; but they have not. The public ought to be asking what the hell is going on here.

The breaking news this hour is the decision of Judge Martin L. C. Feldman of the Eastern District of Louisiana to grant a preliminary injunction to the moving plaintiff oil and gas interests and against the Obama Administration’s six month moratorium on deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. It is a bad decision.