Recommended reading on the oil leak (some I agree with more than others)

From Nothing learned from Hurricane Katrina: Inept leaders crushing New Orleans again after BP oil spill :

Watching President Obama coolly insist that he was taking responsibility was oddly comforting.

He got elected on charisma. He'll need a ton more than that to fix the horrors here that have only just begun.

From Joe Klein: BP Oil Spill Is Actually Bush’s Second Katrina

Aha! Someone was listening during Obama’s press conference the other day, when he was sure to note that Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar had inherited a rotten Minerals and Management Service, “plagued by corruption for years.” Today on The Chris Matthews Show, Joe Klein of Time magazine acknowledged that unlucky inheritance, calling the BP oil spill catastrophe “more Bush’s second Katrina than Obama’s first.”

From Carol Browner: Administration 'Prepared For The Worst,' Oil May Leak Until August

President Barack Obama's top energy adviser says the Gulf oil spill is probably the biggest environmental disaster the country has ever faced.

And Carol Browner says the government is responding with what she calls its largest environmental response ever.

Already it's been called the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Browner says more oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico than from any previous U.S. oil spill – including the Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989.

And finally, from Americans want a superman to turn back the black tide of oil

Suddenly Americans did not want an icy-cool leader but a superman. A nation whose distrust of central government has reached a post-Civil War high wanted a huge and powerful government to jump in. Perhaps no one summed up that desire more succinctly than Mr Obama’s daughter Malia, who peeked her head around the bathroom door last week to ask: “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?”

No, he has not, and of course he cannot. That job can be done only by BP.

FWIW, I think this is the story with which I agree the most...except for that last part.

“Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?”

No, he has not, and of course he cannot. That job can be done only by BP.

I don't think that's right. I think what Obama, BP, and every other person or corporation responsible is fumbling and fighting madly not to have to tell us is that this leak cannot be stopped. The hole cannot be plugged.

The only way this could've been stopped is if it had been avoided. And the only way it could've been avoided if a couple, or even one, of the presidents we've had just in my lifetime (Nixon to Obama) had been able to see beyond the millions of dollars oil companies wave in their face. They weren't.

I'm real sorry that Obama is going to have to take responsibilty for this, because I also agree with Joe Klein above.

But on the other hand, I'm not too sorry. Because every time this President or Congress has to take responsibilty for something Bush, Cheney and/or the rest of their White House did, I remember something else.

I remember that they--Obama, Pelosi, etc--let Bush and Cheney finish their terms and walk out free men. Because they did that, I can never fully escape the feeling that they deserve a great deal of the misplaced anger they're getting placed upon them.

The country knew how badly Bush and Cheney had fucked up, and wanted to see them held to account for it. When they weren't...