It's amazing to me that a federal judge found the Obama administration's 6 month moratorium on new deep water wells in the Gulf of Mexico to be "arbitrary and capricious." This is the federal standard which, according to the Administrative Procedures Act, when crossed, allows a federal court to enjoin an action of an executive branch agency. In order to find that an action is arbitrary and capricious, there has to be no rational connection between the facts and the decision, or be not in accordance with some law. I just don't see how a judge can find that, in light of what is happening in the Gulf, shutting down new deep water wells until it can be determined what happened and how it can be avoided in the future is arbitrary and capricious.

I'm especially sensitive to this, because I've been involved in a good number of lawsuits against federal agencies where I thought we had totally proven that the agency action was arbitrary and capricious, but the courts rubber stamped the agency action, claiming that they had to give "discretion" to the agency. Something isn't right with this finding, and I doubt if higher courts will uphold it, at least completely.

It's especially mysterious considering that it has come out that the Mines and Mineral Service, a federal agency that was supposed to be regulating the deep water oil drilling, had long time agency bureaucrats that were in bed with the oil companies and didn't regulate them at all - instead gave them everything they wanted.

This is one of the biggest problems with our federal (and state) government(s). While heads of agencies come and go with the administrations that are elected, middle level bureaucrats are protected by civil service type laws. In many cases they have been in the same positions for long times, and they are used to doing things by the "good ole boys" system. It means that public opinion and overall public interest don't mean much to them - what means anything to them is money.

And it isn't just the MMS - it's the Dept. of Energy, the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the TVA, and on and on. All of these agencies are compromised in the same way. So one can only wonder what other major disasters are on the verge of happening because of lack of oversight by an agency in combination with corner cutting by a corporation to make more profits.

Will it be a meltdown at a nuclear plant, or perhaps a disease that wipes out all of our corn crop. What about a genetically modified organism that goes crazy in the environment. Believe me, there are other disasters out there waiting to happen, and if it does, some government agency being paid our money to protect us from these things will have been derelict and in bed with the industry responsible for the events.