JUDICIAL WATCH ANNOUNCES LIST OF WASHINGTON ‘S “TEN MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS” FOR 2009.

JUDICIAL WATCH ANNOUNCES LIST OF WASHINGTON ‘S “TEN MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS” FOR 2009.

GUESS WHO MADE THE LIST?

THE WHITE HOUSE IS NOT PLEASED.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2009/dec/judicial-watch-announces-list-washington-s-ten-most-wanted-corrupt-politicians-2009

Taking on Islamists’ hidden agenda

Taking on Islamists’ hidden agenda

Saturday, April 24, 2010 SALIM MANSUR — SUN MEDIA

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/salim_mansur/2010/04/23/13697976.html

In my previous column, I wrote about the lonely effort of the Montreal-based Point de bascule (tipping point) to expose the true hidden feature of the organized Islamist effort in Quebec — as in the rest of North America — to gain acceptance of its agenda.

This Islamist effort is highly organized and globally financed, it is multi-pronged and with an outreach directed to penetrate every level of society from the highest reaches of governments to local civic organizations.

It is also exceedingly successful in manipulating support for its agenda by reaching out to the “progressives” in the West ever ready to play the role of “useful idiots,” as Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, so aptly described them.

The Islamist agenda pushed by Muslim Brotherhood and its fraternal affiliates across the Muslim world — in the case of Iran by the followers of Khomeini, the exponent of the Shiite version of Islamism and founder of the Islamic Republic — is to coerce Muslim societies to reinforce Shariah (Islamic) laws.

In the West, the Islamist agenda is to gain acceptance of Shariah for Muslims to live according to its requirements, and to have western governments adopt some of its directives as with the scheme for Shariah-based finance.

Western liberal democracies are highly vulnerable to such organized penetration by external and alien interests for obvious reasons.

The strength of the modern West is derived from its liberalism, secularism, democracy, rule of law, respect for individual rights, gender equity, openness to others and willingness to subject itself to public criticism.

This strength paradoxically provides enemies of the West with tools by which to subvert and weaken it, causing great harm.

The western inability or reluctance to confront Islamists ironically arises from its tolerance of and respect for all religions on the basis of freedom of conscience.

This freedom is a hard won principle that distinguishes the modern West from pre-modern cultures and, especially, the cultures of the Muslim world.

Religious tolerance, which barely exists in the contemporary Muslim societies, lends Islamists the cover with which to mask their ideology and political agenda as religion.

This ploy disarms western liberal critics of Islamism when countered with accusations of religious intolerance and bigotry skillfully made by Islamists and their “useful idiots.”

It also disarms most Muslims opposed to Islamism by the ever-present reality of violence inside the Muslim world. Muslims in the West are similarly disarmed and silenced by Islamists with their control of mosques, enabling them to spread fear of blackmail, intimidation, violence, ostracism and the stigma of betrayal among an immigrant population acutely vulnerable to such threats.

Yet Muslims in increasing numbers oppose Islamism, and across the Muslim world — in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Algeria, Pakistan,Indonesia or Turkey — the fight against Islamism is one of the main causes of political unrest.

It is a fight that pits on the one side Muslims who wish to see their world reconciled with modernity, and those who insist upon “Islamizing” modernity.  [NOTE: At a Moslem rally in Washington D.C. last  year, one of their leaders said: “We do not want to democratize Islam. We want to Islamize democracy!]

For Muslims, this is a historic struggle with global consequences.

And the West with an affinity for this struggle, given its history, needs to oppose Islamism without any misgiving.  [NOTE: Since “Islamism” is an integral part of Islam, all of it coming from the Koran and the sayings of Muhammad, to oppose Islamism is the same as opposing Islam.]

Pelosi, Jost and Bloomberg Need to Apologize to Conservatives After Pakistani-American & Democrat Arrested in NYC Car Bomb Case

Pelosi, Jost and Bloomberg Need to Apologize to Conservatives After Pakistani-American & Democrat Arrested in NYC Car Bomb Case

Posted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 5:47 AM

It wasn’t a balding white guy in his 40’s after all…
Last night Faisal Shahzad, a 30 year-old Pakistani-American and Democrat, was arrested for the attempted bombing Saturday night in Times Square.

Earlier on Monday New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested the bomber was a tea party protester upset with Obamacare:
Bloomberg thinks Times Square bomber may have not liked health care.mov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdbUwlM4bK4&feature=player_embedded

Likewise, far left cranks Christine Pelosi, daughter of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, professor, Washington and Lee University, need to apologize to conservatives for their outrageous claims in The Politico following the attempted Times Square bombing.

Christine Pelosi, attorney, author and Democratic activist

This is what a terrorist can look like: a balding white man in his 40s. Thanks to an alert street vendor and an NYPD officer who ushered in local and federal law enforcement, the Times Square would-be bomber was a bust. So far. They saw the parked car, engine running, hazards blinking, driver departing — in other words, they profiled behavior, not people. Take note, Arizona.

Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, professor, Washington and Lee University

I think the politics of this incident will turn heavily on who is found to be responsible. If, as seems unlikely, the bomb is linked to South Asian or Middle Eastern terrorists, questions will again arise as to whether the Department of Homeland Security is doing all it can do to keep us safe. If, as I believe is much more likely, the bomb was placed by a right-wing lunatic, it seems to me that questions need to be raised as to whether the right-wing media bear some responsibility for stoking the delusions of such people through their relentless and often unfounded attacks on the Obama administration and the federal government.

We need to consider whether it isn’t time to return to responsible, ethical journalism.

Maybe these hacks should go to the Democratic leadership and insist they crack down on their violent rhetoric that is causing supporters to plant bombs in Times Square?

CBS Features NY Mayor Bloomberg Speculating Bomber Was Mad About ObamaCare–Cheap shot at tea party SHAME on Bloomberg

CBS Features NY Mayor Bloomberg Speculating Bomber Was Mad About ObamaCare

By Brent Baker

Created 05/03/2010 – 19:37

With Katie Couric drawing him out, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed the Times Square car bombing was likely “homegrown” as he proceeded, in an interview excerpt run on Monday’s CBS Evening News, to speculate it could have been placed by “somebody with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”

Could be “anything,” but the first thing Bloomberg thinks of are those who don’t like ObamaCare, presumably conservatives or Tea Party activists.  

Audio: MP3 clip [0]

From part of Couric’s interview with the mayor aired on the Monday, May 3 CBS Evening News:

KATIE COURIC: Law enforcement officials don’t know who left the Nissan Pathfinder behind, but, at this point, the mayor believes the suspect acted alone.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: If I had to guess — 25 cents — this would be exactly that, somebody-

COURIC TO BLOOMBERG: A home-grown?

BLOOMBERG: Home-grown, maybe a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.

CBSNews.com version [1] of Couric’s interview.

Praising Arizona

Praising Arizona

 

Posted By Heather MacDonald On May 4, 2010 @ 12:05 am In FrontPage | No Comments

This article is reprinted from City Journal ^[1]

Supporters of Arizona’s new law strengthening immigration enforcement in the state should take heart from today’s New York Times editorial ^[2] blasting it. “Stopping Arizona” contains so many blatant falsehoods that a reader can be fully confident that the law as actually written is a reasonable, lawful response to a pressing problem. Only by distorting the law’s provisions can the Times and the law’s many other critics make it out to be a racist assault on fundamental American rights.

The law, SB 1070, empowers local police officers to check the immigration status of individuals whom they have encountered during a “lawful contact,” if an officer reasonably suspects the person stopped of being in the country illegally, and if an inquiry into the person’s status is “practicable.” The officer may not base his suspicion of illegality “solely [on] race, color or national origin.” (Arizona lawmakers recently amended ^[3] the law to change the term “lawful contact” to “lawful stop, detention or arrest” and deleted the word “solely” from the phrase regarding race, color, and national origin. The governor is expected to sign the amendments.) The law also requires aliens to carry their immigration documents, mirroring an identical federal requirement. Failure to comply with the federal law on carrying immigration papers becomes a state misdemeanor under the Arizona law.

Good luck finding any of these provisions in the Times’s editorial. Leave aside for the moment the sweeping conclusions with which the Times begins its screed—such gems as the charge that the law “turns all of the state’s Latinos, even legal immigrants and citizens, into criminal suspects” and is an act of “racial separation.” Instead, let’s see how the Times characterizes the specific legislative language, which is presumably the basis for its indictment.

The paper alleges that the “statute requires police officers to stop and question anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant.” False. The law gives an officer the discretion, when practicable, to determine someone’s immigration status only after the officer has otherwise made a lawful stop, detention, or arrest. It does not allow, much less require, fishing expeditions for illegal aliens. But if, say, after having stopped someone for running a red light, an officer discovers that the driver does not have a driver’s license, does not speak English, and has no other government identification on him, the officer may, if practicable, send an inquiry to his dispatcher to check the driver’s status with a federal immigration clearinghouse.

The Times then alleges that the law “empower[s] police officers to stop anyone they choose and demand to see papers.” False again, for the reasons stated above. An officer must have a lawful, independent basis for a stop; he can only ask to see papers if he has “reasonable suspicion” to believe that the person is in the country illegally. “Reasonable suspicion” is a legal concept of long-standing validity, rooted in the Constitution’s prohibition of “unreasonable searches and seizures.” It meaningfully constrains police activity; officers are trained in its contours, which have evolved through common-law precedents, as a matter of course. If the New York Times now thinks that the concept is insufficient as a check on police power, it will have to persuade every court and every law enforcement agency in the country to throw out the phrase—and the Constitution with it—and come up with something that suits the Times’s contempt for police power.

On broader legal issues, the Times is just as misleading. The paper alleges that the “Supreme Court has consistently ruled that states cannot make their own immigration laws.” Actually, the law on preemption is almost impossibly murky. As the Times later notes in its editorial, the Justice Department ruled in 2002, after surveying the relevant Supreme Court and appellate precedents, that “state and local police had ‘inherent authority’ to make immigration arrests.” The paper does not like that conclusion, but it has not been revoked as official legal advice. If states have inherent authority to make immigration arrests, they can certainly do so under a state law that merely tracks the federal law requiring that immigrants carry documentation.

The Times tips its hand at the end of the editorial. It calls for the Obama administration to end a program that trains local law enforcement officials in relevant aspects of immigration law and that deputizes them to act as full-fledged immigration agents. The so-called 287(g) program acts as a “force multiplier,” as the Times points out, adding local resources to immigration law enforcement—just as Arizona’s SB 1070 does. At heart, this force-multiplier effect is what the hysteria over Arizona’s law is all about: SB 1070 ups the chances that an illegal alien will actually be detected and—horror of horrors—deported. The illegal-alien lobby, of which the New York Times is a charter member, does not believe that U.S. immigration laws should be enforced. Usually unwilling for political reasons to say so explicitly, the lobby comes up with smoke screens—such as the Times’s demagogic charges about SB 1070 as an act of “racial separation”—to divert attention from the underlying issue. Playing the race card is the tactic of those unwilling to make arguments on the merits. (The Times’s other contribution today to the prevailing de facto amnesty for illegal aliens was to fail to disclose, in an article ^[4] about a brutal 2007 schoolyard execution in Newark, that the suspected leader was an illegal alien ^[5] and member of the predominantly illegal-alien gang Mara Salvatrucha.)

The Arizona law is not about race; it’s not an attack on Latinos or legal immigrants. It’s about one thing and one thing only: making immigration enforcement a reality. It is time for a national debate: Do we or don’t we want to enforce the country’s immigration laws? If the answer is yes, the Arizona law is a necessary and lawful tool for doing so. If the answer is no, we should end the charade of inadequate, half-hearted enforcement, enact an amnesty now, and remove future penalties for immigration violations.

Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal, the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the coauthor of The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Today’s ^[6].

Ahmadinejad Swaggers at the UN

Ahmadinejad Swaggers at the UN

Posted By Robert Spencer On May 4, 2010 @ 12:10 am In FrontPage | 5 Comments

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was back in New York Monday, continuing his effort to intimidate and shame Barack Obama into dropping his policy of retaining first-strike capability against rogue states such as Iran. For 35 minutes at the UN, Ahmadinejad did his best impression of an anti-nuke crusader, working to eradicate these weapons for humanity’s sake. Behind his peacenik façade (which is sure to take in many on the Left), however, lurks a reality that couldn’t be more contrasting.

“The possession of nuclear bombs isn’t a source of pride,” Ahmadinejad intoned piously, sounding like a spokesman for Greenpeace. “It is disgusting and rather shameful. And even more shameful is the threat to use or to use such weapons, which isn’t even comparable to any crime committed throughout the history.”

And of course top on the Iranian President’s list of “disgusting” and “shameful” countries was Israel: “While the Zionist regime has stockpiled hundreds of nuclear warheads…it enjoys the unconditional support of the United States government and its allies and receives, as well, the necessary assistance to develop its nuclear weapons program.”

Referring to Obama’s reservation of first-strike capability, Ahmadinejad said that signers of the Non-Proliferation Treaty should consider “any threat to use nuclear weapons or attack against peaceful nuclear facilities as a breach of international peace and security,” and punish the offenders accordingly.

Delegates from the U.S., Britain and France walked out of the UN General Assembly during Ahmadinejad’s speech. Perhaps they didn’t relish having to sit through the absurd charade of a ruthless despot, the president of a country that gives aid to the jihad terror groups Hamas and Hizballah and yearns to wipe Israel off the map, being allowed to enter the United States and accuse it of being a terrorist state — all the while defending his nuclear program.

This was the same Ahmadinejad, after all, who just weeks ago warned Israel not to attack the jihadists in Gaza who still shoot rockets into Israel and plot the destruction of the Jewish State: “An attack on Gaza would not make you mightier,” he said, addressing the “Zionist entity,” “and would not restore your damaged prestige. And you should know that an attack on Gaza will end your inauspicious and filthy life.”

What could end Israel’s “inauspicious and filthy life” except…a nuclear attack?

These are favorite themes of Ahmadinejad’s public utterances. In mid-March, he declared: “Today, it is clear that Israel is the most hated regime in the world… It is not useful for its masters [the West] anymore. They are in doubt now. They wonder whether to continue spending money on this regime or not. But whether they want it or not, with Allah’s grace, this regime will be annihilated and Palestinians and other regional nations will be rid of its bad omen.”

How will Israel be “annihilated,” except by…a nuclear strike?

Iranian Major General Hassan Firouzabadi declared in early April: “If America presents Iran with a serious threat and undertakes any measure against Iran, none of the American soldiers who are currently in the region would go back to America alive.”

Not one? Not even one? How could the Iranians possibly accomplish that, except with…nuclear weapons?

Ahmadinejad mocked Obama’s impotence, telling him in an April 7 address that, faced with Iran’s nuclear program, American leaders who were “bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn’t do a damn thing, let alone you.”

And indeed, the thuggish Iranian president is probably right about that. Barack Obama’s wrongheaded and weak policy of “engagement” has put a swagger in Ahmadinejad’s step. Besides funding Hamas and Hizballah and egging on their genocidal intentions toward Israel, Iran is training the Taliban in Afghanistan in the most effective use of roadside bombs, and continuing to meddle in Iraq.

For all this we have one man to thank above all: Barack Obama. After a year of Obama’s dogged wooing of the Iranian mullahs, his scandalous refusal to support the anti-regime protestors in Iran, and his abject failure to do anything effective to counter the Iranian nuclear program, which even his own Secretary of State now acknowledges is working toward developing nuclear weapons, the only thing the president has to show for his policy is an increasingly confident, belligerent and assertive Iran.

It was good that the Americans left the General Assembly hall while Ahmadinejad was speaking Monday. Now they should back this up by changing course, and showing more spine in the face of Iran’s bullying. But there is no sign that that is going to happen.

Federal Government Outpaces Private Sector in Job Creation

May 4th, 2010

by Frank Newport, Gallup

Gallup’s Job Creation Index for April reveals significantly more hiring within the federal government than in the private sector. Both show a substantially more positive picture than state and local governments, where firing far eclipses hiring.

Gallup’s Job Creation Index is based on the percentage of American workers who say their employers are hiring minus the percentage who say their employers are letting workers go. The overall Index value for American workers in April tilts positive, with 27% of workers saying their places of employment are hiring, and 22% saying their employers are letting people go — resulting in an overall +5 Job Creation Index.

These overall numbers, however, mask significantly different patterns across employment sectors. Based on these reports from workers, the federal government is a growth industry, while employment at state and local governments is shrinking.

By almost a 2-to-1 margin, federal employees say their employer is hiring rather than firing, giving the federal government a relatively robust +18 Job Creation Index for April.

Read More:

The arrest of Faisal Shahzad

Michelle Malkin 

Lead Story

The arrest of Faisal Shahzad

By Michelle Malkin  •  May 4, 2010 08:55 AM

The Pakistani-born naturalized American who bought the would-be Nissan Pathfinder SUV bomb that fizzled in Times Square was arrested at JFK airport as he attempted to flee for Dubai.

Here’s the DOJ statement:

Earlier this evening, Faisal Shahzad was arrested in connection with the attempted car bombing in New York on Saturday. Mr. Shahzad, an American citizen, was taken into custody at JFK Airport in New York as he attempted to board a flight to Dubai. 

Since this plot was first uncovered on Saturday night, the FBI, prosecutors and intelligence lawyers in the National Security Division of the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys Offices in Manhattan and Connecticut, along with the NYPD have worked night and day to find out who was responsible for what would have been a deadly attack had it been successful. Over the course of the day today, we have gathered significant additional evidence that led to tonight’s arrest, which was made by agents from Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection.

This investigation is ongoing, as are our attempts to gather useful intelligence, and we continue to pursue a number of leads. But it’s clear that the intent behind this terrorist act was to kill Americans.

FBI agents are working with their state and local counterparts in New York, Connecticut and other jurisdictions to gather evidence and intelligence related to this case. We are also coordinating with other members of the President’s national security team to ensure we use every resource available to the United States to bring anyone responsible to justice.

We continue to gather leads in this investigation, and it’s important that the American people remain vigilant. The vehicle in Times Square was first noticed on Saturday by a citizen who reported it to authorities, and, as always, any American who notices suspicious activity should report it to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

This investigation is ongoing, it is multi-faceted, and it is aggressive. As we move forward, we will focus on not just holding those responsible for it accountable, but also on obtaining any intelligence about terrorist organizations overseas.

Because of the fast-moving nature of this investigation, I am not able to make any further information public at this time. But the American people should know that we are deploying every resource available, and we will not rest until we have brought everyone responsible to justice.

Mark Steyn rips the Lone Wolf knee-jerkers.

Confirmed: Michael Bloomberg is a moron.

ABC News on the clues that led to Shahzad:

Officials declined to provide the specifics that led them to believe there were overseas links to a larger plot.

Authorities said another clue in the investigation is a video posted online early Sunday morning by persons in Connecticut, who may have been involved in the bomb attempt and are being sought by law enforcement. The video, posted on a site registered one day before the attack, has the Taliban in Pakistan claiming responsibility for the attempted bombing.

Surveillance was key.

The number from a disposable cellphone led FBI agents to the suspect arrested Monday night for allegedly driving a car bomb into Times Square on Saturday evening, according to a senior official.

“They were able to basically get one phone number and by running it through a number of databases, figure out who they thought the guy was,” the official said.

A huge law-enforcement force tracked the suspect through the afternoon and evening. He was arrested at 11:30 p.m. at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. The vehicle identification number had been removed from the bomb-laden 1993 Nissan Pathfinder left in Times Square.

But investigators were able to lift it from a second location on the vehicle, and used that to track down a Connecticut man who said he had sold the Pathfinder for cash about three weeks ago. The man had offered the vehicle on Craigslist, and FBI agents were able to recover the number from a disposable cellphone that had been used by the buyer.

The suspect didn’t still have the phone. But using a lot of technology and access to database, agents located the suspect.

CAIR and the ACLU were unavailable for comment…

How do you say ‘under the bus’ in Hebrew?

Richard N. Weltz

For those diehard leftists who still adhere to the cult of Obama to the extent that they cannot/will not recognize his campaign against Israel and for the Palestinians in particular and Muslim Arab causes in general, his latest efforts to “throw Israel under the bus” should come as a wake-up call.

For the first time in memory, the US has announced that it is ready, willing, and able to allow the UN Security Council to pass one of its long string of anti-Israel resolutions — all of which have previously been vetoed by us — if the Netanyahu government doesn’t yield to Obama’s pressure to give in to Abbas’s demands (which, incidentally, violate agreements between Israel and the Bush administration and have the effect of trying to predetermine the future of Jerusalem as something other than the undivided capital of Israel).

As reported in Monday’s Wall Street Journal:

JERUSALEM-The White House brought Palestinians back on board for derailed Mideast peace talks with a pledge that the U.S. would consider allowing a United Nations Security Council resolution-if one should arise-condemning Israel for building in disputed territory, according to officials briefed on the diplomacy. …

Withholding a veto from a U.N. resolution critical of Israel…would be a significant reversal of decades of U.S. policy of largely unwavering support for Israel in the body.

The U.S. has vetoed more than 40 U.N. resolutions critical of Israel since 1972-at least three of them explicit condemnations of Israeli construction activity in East Jerusalem.

The New York Times, although minimizing the major policy shift in a brief en passant paragraph, confirmed the cave-in:

Separately, these officials said, Mr. Mitchell’s deputy, David Hale, indicated to the Palestinians that if Israel proceeded with the construction of 1,600 housing units in Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, the United States would abstain from, rather than veto, a resolution in the United Nations Security Council condemning the move.

If that isn’t clear enough for the Obama apologists who claim to support Israel, I can’t imagine what would be.

Taking Advantage of an Oil Crisis

By Brian Sussman

Days after being elected in November 2008, President-Elect Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, spoke to a Wall Street Journal gathering of business leaders and stated that the economic crisis facing the United States is “an opportunity to do things you could not do before.”

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel said.

And why should we think this administration isn’t letting the Gulf of Mexico oil crisis go to waste?

Don’t be fooled for a moment. History proves that the Gulf leak is a messy dream come true for hardcore environmentalists — -many of whom surround Mr. Obama.

Travel back in time to the 1969 oil spill of the coast of Santa Barbara. A Union Oil drilling platform six miles off the coast sprang a leak, allowing hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil to seep into the Pacific and wash ashore. The cameras of the world’s media rushed to the scene to focus on oil-coated birds stuck in muck. The newly hatched ecology propagandists soaked it up.

The nation’s first outspoken congressional environmentalist, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, immediately flew to California to see the crisis for himself. An anti-capitalism Democrat, Nelson returned to Washington angered at the oil industry, vowing, we’re told, “to do something to wake America up.”

Nelson’s friend, Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, worked vigorously with the senator to make the Santa Barbara spill a major national issue. Of course, Ehrlich’s longtime friend and associate John Holdren is now Barack Obama’s handpicked Science and Technology advisor.

Emotions still run high in ultra-liberal Santa Barbara over the 1969 leak. Even today, as black, marble-sized balls of coagulated crude are often found interspersed on the beaches of Santa Barbara, deceptive local activists will direct naïve eyes toward the oil platforms offshore, fervently declaring that capitalism and big oil are to blame for the tar balls on their sand. But this observation is total fraud. There is so much oil just beneath the ocean floor off Santa Barbara that the black gold is constantly seeping into the open waters at a rate of up to 170 barrels per day.

However, thanks to persistent environmentalists, that 1969 event has kept further oil and gas exploration and development off-limits on the west coast to this day.

Twenty years later, in 1989, the Exxon-Valdez oil tanker ran aground in Alaska, creating the largest oil spill in U.S. history. (By the way, at the current rate of flow, the Gulf leak will not surpass the amount of oil discharged in the Valdez accident for about a month and a half.) Keep in mind that the Valdez accident had nothing to do with an oil rig or platform — it was caused by the extremely poor judgment of the ship’s captain.

Nonetheless, the freak accident was successfully used by environmentalists to place massive swaths of Alaska off-limits to the oil and gas industry. It wasn’t until 2007, when the Bush administration lifted a long-standing moratorium on drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, that oil companies were granted access to begin plans to harvest the 230 million barrels of oil and natural gas liquids — plus the 6.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — in that remote corner of the Arctic. 

However, despite the fact that there have been no leaks, spills, or errors by the oil companies working Alaska since 1989, President Obama reversed the 2007 Bush decision, shutting the lid on the Bristol Bay oil fields. 

Now we have the 2010 Gulf spill. Judging by the past, I predict that this crisis will be effectively used by the Obama administration and environmentalists to prevent harvesting fossil resources from the Gulf for decades to come.

Additionally, one has to wonder why team Obama moved so slowly in responding to this situation. Certainly their gross inaction allowed the leak to grow into a full-blown disaster. Just look at the timeline of events (hat tip to deepseanews):

• Tuesday, April 20. While finishing a well project for British Petroleum (BP), a Transocean rig called the Deepwater Horizon explodes and catches fire approximately 42 miles Southeast of Venice, Louisiana. U.S. Coast Guard District Eight command center receives report at approximately 10 p.m. Of the 126 people on board at the time of the explosion, 115 crewmembers were accounted for. Search begins for missing 11.
• Thursday, April 22. The fire rages. A second explosion occurs, causing the rig to sink.
• Friday, April 23. Search for missing crew members is suspended. The oil slick grows.
• Saturday, April 24. Remotely operated vehicles discover that oil is escaping from two leaks in a drilling pipe about 5,000 feet below the surface. The leaks appear to be releasing 1,000 barrels a day.
• Sunday, April 25. The oil slick now covers 600 square miles and is about 70 miles south of the Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana coastlines.
• Tuesday, April 27. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal takes action and requests Coast Guard set up protected booms near several wildlife refuges. Meantime, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar say they are expanding the government’s investigation of the explosion that caused the disaster.
• Wednesday, April 28. The slick nears to 20 miles east of the mouth of the Mississippi River. BP states a controlled test to burn the leaking oil was successful late Wednesday afternoon.
• Thursday, April 29. Governor Jindal declares a state of emergency, and the federal government sends in skimmers and booms to prevent environmental damage.
  President Obama says that BP is “ultimately responsible for funding … cleanup operations.” Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) immediately drafts legislation to suspend any plan for further offshore exploration and drilling until a full investigation of the disaster and the development of new protocols are developed.
• Friday, April 30. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) follows Senator Nelson’s lead and calls for immediate hearings with BP executives.
• Sunday, May 2. Twelve days after the initial disaster began, President Obama flies to the Gulf coast and delivers a speech. Janet Napolitano blames delays on government response on fairy-tales: “Mother Nature has not exactly been friendly,” she told ABC News.

Now we discover that if U.S. officials had followed up on a federal Gulf oil cleanup plan crafted in 1994, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land. However, the feds did not have a single cleanup boom on hand. (The booms are made of flame-retardant fabric and have two pumps that push water through its 500-foot length; two boats tow the U-shaped boom through an oil slick, gathering up about 75,000 gallons of oil at a time, and that oil is dragged away from the larger spill and ignited.)

Instead, we’ve learned that eight days after the initial explosion, officials had to purchase a boom from a company in Illinois.

According the Mobile Press Register,

In the days after the rig sank, U.S Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said the government had all the assets it needed. She did not discuss why officials waited more than a week to conduct a test burn.

At the time, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oil spill response coordinator Ron Gouguet — who helped craft the 1994 plan — told the Press-Register that officials had pre-approval for burning. “The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away.”

Gouguet speculated that burning could have captured 95 percent of the oil as it spilled from the well.

The foot-dragging Obama administration and inept federal agents have allowed an environmental disaster to fester. The only leader who seems to be taking a proactive stance is Governor Jindal.

Meantime, environmental activists of all stripes will seize this crisis as a greasy, golden opportunity and use it to shut off access to America’s natural resources, I predict, for decades to come.

Brian Sussman is author of the new bestseller Climategate: a veteran meteorologist exposes the global warming scam.