We've been saying all along that if the Republicans take back the House in 2010, then crazy Michele Bachmann will lead the subpoena parade against the Obama White House to uncover ACORN's secret meetings with Obama where they plotted to steal the 2008 election. And she'll look to find every paperclip and rubber band that went unaccounted for and then call for impeachment proceedings. Well, now it seems that the Toyota corporate hack, Darrell Issa from the great state of California wants to take a similar position, only he'll shield Big Business and try to uncover other super secrets Obama is hiding. You may have forgotten that Issa receives plenty of "car bucks" from the auto industry and about his starring role when Toyota had a few brake issues:

The National Auto Dealers Association was one of Issa's biggest contributors when he first ran for his seat, and the auto industry as a whole is listed as one of his biggest donors.

You can expect Issa to try and uncover why Obama went to a baseball game when he pledged to plug that BP oil leak. You know, stupid stuff that bloggers like Gateway Pundit are concerned with.

Greg Sargent is on the job and acts like a real journalist:

The quote is buried in a Politico article about a recent speech Issa gave, in which he revealed he's planning to hire reams of subpoena-wielding investigators as chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee if Republicans take back the House:

At a recent speech to Pennsylvania Republicans here, he boasted about what would happen if the GOP wins 39 seats, and he gets the power to subpoena.

"That will make all the difference in the world," he told 400 applauding party members during a dinner at the chocolate-themed Hershey Lodge. "I won't use it to have corporate America live in fear that we're going to subpoena everything. I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing."

While that quote stops short of a full-fledged promise to never probe anything corporate America does, it's nonetheless an extraordinary statement: It sounds like a pledge to go easier on big corporations.

He's sending out his coded messages to Big Business that's slightly different than the Southern Strategy, which capitalizes on the racism in people. It appeals to the "free marketeers," the true religion of the conservative movement. He's telling them to fund all Republican races so he can be another Gingrich and protect their interests. Oh and remember, Barton's use of the word "shakedown" was no accident.

Digby always spots the unspottable:

Issa's making a big move to become a national GOP leader. And he's doing it by promising to let loose the hounds of hell on the White House if he gets his grubby hands on subpoena power. OK fine, GOP SOP, to be expected. But this is a new twist. He's openly promising to go easy on corporations at the same time.

Issa is an interesting character. He reminds me a lot of Newtie, without all the cheap imitation professorial posing. At heart he's an opportunistic backstabber with a boatload of ambition and a malfunctioning filter. He's basically a McCarthyite, just like Gingrich

Remember his protection of Blackwater? The free marketeers wanted to privatize everything including a militia force capable of securing their vision of "freedom" so real armies need not get involved. And they succeeded. Do you think he'd lead a hearing to hold Erik Prince accountable for anything? Issa's lackey responded to Sargent's post by trying to deny what Issa said in his speech.

Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella emails that Issa "never said he wouldn't subpoena corporations." "For anyone to try and push a narrative that Issa, as a Chairman, wouldn't pursue legitimate investigations that involve any company defies an already established record," Bardella says.
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All that Issa was talking about was not using his authority to go on fishing expeditions targeting corporate America as was the case under Waxman. Just look at Issa's record so far. He has been very aggressive investigating cases where there is evidence of something to investigate."

Right. Nice try, you hack. Issa and his pals will bow down to the alter of Big Business and we know it. If there's a hint of corruption, he would ignore it. He'll act like Don Quixote looking for windmills.

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Today on "This Week" with Jake Tapper, John Boehner and Steny Hoyer both agreed that BP's liability cap should be raised.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Here's what I think it means: Two corporatist lackeys want the ceremonial Kabuki dance of raising the liability cap because it will play well with voters -- but will actually make BP happy because it sets the stage for their eventual bankruptcy (or that of whichever subsidiary they'll designate as the liable party), and they'll get to walk away and stick us with the entire bill. BP will be happy, the politicians who take oil company money will be happy, and Wall Street will be happy.

Everyone will be happy -- except the people and creatures whose lives were destroyed by their criminal negligence. Whee!

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, called for completely lifting the liability cap on BP so that the company bears the full cost of the economic damage of the oil spill.

In an EXCLUSIVE “This Week” debate, Boehner and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, discussed the oil spill and did something they rarely do: agree. They both criticized BP's response to the oil spill.

“BP has not been accurate in its representations. It has been misleading…[and] what has happened is outrageous and the American public are, correctly, very, very angry,” Hoyer said.

“Well, Steny, guess what: I agree wholeheartedly with you,” Boehner said. “The American people want this oil leak stopped now. They want to know what happened. They want the Gulf cleaned up. And they want it all done now,” the minority leader said. “I just think that BP ought to be held responsible for all of the costs that are involved in this.”

Boehner explained he wanted to change to current law so that BP would be responsible not just for the cost of cleanup but also for more economic damages than current law allows. “I think lifting the liability cap on BP and for this spill is appropriate.”

Host Jake Tapper asked, “so lift it entirely for BP?”

“Absolutely,” Boehner replied. “They should be held responsible for every dime of this cost.”

Attytood: Why Rand Paul shunned "Meet the Press"

Cause For Concern: Oil leak bizarro world you must visit

The Reaction: Ending DADT will "undermine religious liberty!"

Faithful Progressive: Israeli soldiers shoot an American in the face with tear gas cannister at a demonstration. She loses an eye.

Danger Room: Israel turns to Youtube, Twitter after flotilla fiasco

Ramblings: The Raging Grannies have a song for BP

This is good. This kind of information should be helpful in trying to figure out what to do next:

NEW ORLEANS — With mystery swirling over how much oil may be lurking beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a research vessel leaves Wednesday on a nine-day mission: To find and study a potentially toxic stew that oceanographers fear could be catastrophic for marine life.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Thomas Jefferson, one of the most technologically advanced vessels for finding hazards on the seafloor, has been diverted from a recent trip to map the ocean floor off Galveston, Texas, to the belching Deepwater Horizon oil leak.

Like most everything involved with the spill, there are more questions than answers. "The business of trying to detect submerged oil is not a settled science," Cmdr. Shepard Smith, the ship's commanding officer, said Tuesday during a tour of the ship for McClatchy. "There isn't a great body of experience with how to do this because it's a really very unusual circumstance."

The 208-foot, 36-person ship has been equipped with a variety of methods to detect oil. Smith said researchers have some idea how the sensors may react, he but added, "We don't know for sure, because we don't know the form it might take, and we've never done it before."

The ship and its researchers traditionally focus on changes to the seafloor that could present a threat to navigation — "usually we ignore what's in the water, we're more interested in the seafloor," Smith said. To help interpret the data, scientists from NOAA and other research facilities who specialize in studying ocean water and marine life have been brought aboard.

"It's totally new, we're really testing the feasibility of the approach, we don't know whether it will work or not, but it's certainly worth trying," said one of those researchers, Larry Mayer, the director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire. "What is the nature of submerged oil, if there is oil? We just don't understand its properties yet."

Some researchers have found what they say are vast plumes of oil suspended beneath the Gulf's surface, though BP has disputed those reports. Members of Congress and other researchers have been pressing the White House for weeks to do more to determine how much oil is suspended under the surface.

I hope it isn't too late to save natural treasures like this.

(h/t Raw Story)

Matt Simmons thinks so.

Simmons said the US government should immediately take the effort to plug the leak out of the hands of BP and put the military in charge.

"Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapons system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil," he said.

His idea echoes that of a Russian newspaper that earlier this month suggested the US detonate a small nuclear bomb to seal the oil beneath the sea. Komsomoloskaya Pravda argued in an editorial that Russia had successfully used nuclear weapons to seal oil spills on five occasions in the past.

No, see..."probably" isn't going to cut it for me.

That video is a pretty decent overview of how the Russians have tackled blown wells with nuclear devices, but it doesn't really look at the ecological price attached to detonating a nuclear device in an ecologically sensitive area, or how to contain the toxic waste generated by such an explosion.

David Neiwert wrote about this awhile ago, and some of the comments really sent chills down my spine.

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