David Hammer and Rebecca Mowbray of the New Orleans Times-Picayune have done a great job of reporting the big-government (i.e., Democrat) side of settlement negotiations in advance of the February 27 trial regarding the Gulf oil spill.  They have also tried to present the BP side of the story, but given that Louisiana legitimately bore the brunt to the damages from the spill, one can forgive their residual sense of hurt from BP's actions. So let us try to effect a countervailing (probably biased) view to further narrow the field. Why might I be considered biased?  Because I admit that I think the Obama administration is largely responsible for the dysfunctional nature of the well-containment efforts once the Obama administration took control of those efforts with the appointment of a national incident commander (NIC), Admiral Thad Allen. The original intent (sound anti-big government to any of you?) of the Oil Pollution Act was to let the leaseholder (BP) try to contain...(Read Full Post)