A bunch of hippie members of Congress noticed the same thing about Obama’s BP Commission that I noticed: it lacks subpoena power. So Lois Capps and Ed Markey in the House and Jeanne Shaheen and several of her colleagues are pushing legislation to give the Commission subpoena power. U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), along with [...]

As promised Obama signed an executive order forming a presidential commission to study the BP disaster today. I thought it’d be instructive to compare what he just formed with what Edward Markey and Lois Capps proposed. Starting with this detail: Sec. 4. Administration. (a) The Commission shall hold public hearings and shall request information including [...]

The eye-popping part of this exchange is the news that all the efforts to protect the Gulf Coast are only going to collect a fraction of it from reaching the shore. But the whole comment is worthwhile, because Capps expresses so well the outrage we should all be expressing about the inefficacy of oil spill [...]