In the early days following the Deep Water Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers and unleashed a gusher of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, one early reaction was to assess blame, and the logical targets for that blame were BP and the companies associated with it on that project, Transocean and Halliburton.

There is no question that BP bears much of the responsibility, however, in the weeks since the disaster a great deal of information has come to light that makes it evident that some of the blame belongs to parties other than BP. The initial reactions were highly emotional, which is understandable, given that this disaster cost the loss of eleven workers. But emotion often clouds issues, and so it is with the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe.

A lot of damage has been done along the Gulf Coast, but the breathless forecasts of environmental calamity appear at this point to have been highly exaggerated. It is estimated, for example, that 75 percent of the approximately 200 million gallons of oil are “missing,” substantially lessening the potential damage to the environment. Where did the oil go?

In my May 18 column was this: “Casting some needed light on the nature of oil spills, Merv Fingas, of McGill University and Environment Canada, wrote a piece published on the Minerals Management Service Web site, explaining that a lot of the spilled oil isn’t going to be a problem. ‘Evaporation is the most important change that most oil spills undergo. In a few days, light crudes can evaporate as much as 75 percent of the starting oil mass and medium crudes up to 40 percent.’ Some of the rest of the oil is absorbed by seabed sediment and never reaches the surface or shorelines. ” And some of it was collected; some was burned off; some was devoured by oil-eating bacteria.

Even so, a lot of oil did not evaporate, and wasn’t burned off, or collected, or eaten, and a lot of it made it to shore and caused a lot of damage. But we have learned that the damage from the oil spill could have been reduced, perhaps completely prevented, except that a party other than BP messed up. The Washington Times addressed this issue recently, noting that, “Letting skimmers in early would have cleaned up much of the oil in Gulf waters at a relatively low cost before it fouled sensitive coastal marshes,” and that “BP isn't accountable for additional cleanup costs and damages that resulted from government's failure to give a green light to this process.”

“Delays and obstructions caused by the federal government are numerous,” The Times continued. “Countries such as Sweden and the United Arab Emirates offered skimmers in April, well before oil slicks hit coastal areas. Months later, they [were] still waiting for Washington's approval. When Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal set up 16 barges to vacuum oil from his state's waterways … the Coast Guard ordered them to stop while bureaucrats checked to make sure the machinery was made in the USA. Mr. Jindal also had to wait for weeks while the federal bureaucracy took its time deciding whether barrier islands could be built off the coast to stop oil from drifting into marshes. Meanwhile, tar balls floated ashore.”

And this is possibly the most significant issue of all, except for what caused the explosion: The Center for Public Integrity asserts that the federal government may well bear responsibility for much more than the incompetent response to requests for help: “Coast Guard officials told the Center for Public Integrity that the service does not have the expertise to fight an oil rig fire and that its response to the April 20 explosion may have broken the service’s own rules by failing to ensure a firefighting expert supervised the half-dozen private boats that answered the Deepwater Horizon’s distress call to fight the blaze.”

“The question of what caused the platform to collapse into the Gulf two days later remains unanswered,” CPI said, a crucial point in accurately assessing responsibility, “because the riser pipe from which the majority of BP’s oil spewed did not start leaking until after the rig sank. Experts and some lawsuits have openly tied the sinking of the drilling vessel to the severity of the leak.”

When the rig tipped over and sank, did it strike and damage the riser pipe, unleashing the gusher of oil into the Gulf? Could it be that in addition to failing to respond to requests to help Gulf Coast states prevent serious environmental and economic damage the federal government, because of the Coast Guard’s fire fighting error, is actually responsible for most of the oil spill, or all of it?

And what role did politics play in this crisis? Is it true that, as The Times suggested, the Swedish and UAR skimmers were kept out to protect American union workers? Was the incomprehensibly slow federal response a political move to improve the case against continued use of fossil fuels?

There are many questions to be answered, and possibly several villains in addition to BP, Transocean and Halliburton, and all must be held accountable.

Are the Democrat leaders in Washington out of touch with the mood of the country? Do they have a death wish? Are they insane?

Those are serious questions, prompted by the almost incomprehensible behavior of the country’s three most visible leaders, as well as a fair number of members of Congress and administration officials.

President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem either unable to understand that Americans are not in favor of their idea of health care reform, or they simply do not care what the people think.

Three nationwide polls reflect the mood of the country quite plainly:

• A CBS News/New York Times Poll conducted Feb. 5-10 asked, "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" The economy and jobs topped the list at 52 percent, while health care garnered only 13 percent.

• The liberal Web site Daily Kos poll conducted by Research 2000 from March 8-11 asked, "Do you feel the country overall is heading in the right direction or wrong direction?" Thirty-nine percent answered the right direction, but 60 percent said the wrong direction.

• Perhaps the most telling of all is the Gallup Poll from March 4-7, which asked, "In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?" Nearly four to one, Americans are dissatisfied (79 percent to 19 percent).

These polls reflect dissatisfaction with the country’s direction, which includes a dangerously intrusive and unpopular health care reform effort, but the leaders ignore this message, still obsessed with jamming through health care reform. And, not only do Americans not like the reform bills, many senators and representatives don’t like them, either.

The Senate bill needed 60 votes to pass and it took Majority Leader Harry Reid buying votes with sweet deals for a few key members to get 60 votes, and the House bill passed with only two votes more than needed. The Senate bill had no Republican support, and the House version had one Republican vote.

The next step in this compulsive exercise is for the House of Representatives to vote on the Senate bill. But some don’t like public funding of abortions, and thus don’t support the bill, and others don’t support it because it doesn’t have a public option. All in all, there’s enough stuff in the bill, and enough stuff that’s left out of the bill, that the 216 votes needed for passage may not materialize. If it passes and becomes law, the Senate will then vote for a reconciliation bill to the fix problems.

Or not. There is no guarantee that once the House passes the bill and the president signs it that the Senate will do anything, leaving features in that many object to, and leaving out things people want in. Many House members will likely support the bill only because their objections can be dealt with through reconciliation.

Undaunted by the lack of popular and legislative support for the bill, Ms. Pelosi now may resort to a scheme referred to as the “Slaughter Solution,” dreamed up by New York Democrat Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, where the House will simply “deem” the Senate bill passed by the House, which means that the president will be signing a bill into law that the House of Representatives never voted on, an act of desperation that is said to be unprecedented in U.S. history. This is underhanded, unacceptable, and probably illegal.

Here are some more serious questions: Is a bill that has the support of only one party a good piece of legislation? Isn’t good legislation that which has a broad and substantial majority of support? Did we elect these people to enact partisan legislation? And, is that the best way to run the country? The answers to those questions are: No. Yes. No. No.

What a revealing situation: In spite of negative poll numbers, in spite of crumbling support in both houses of Congress, President Obama, Mr. Reid, and Ms. Pelosi charge ahead to force health care reform through, apparently at any cost.

This behavior defies common sense. These three individuals are committed statists, and are determined to increase the size and authority of government, even if they take themselves and their party down in the process.

Their ideology is sharply at odds with America’s founding principles and is contrary to what the American people want from their public servants, but it is controlling so much of what is happening in Washington today. It appears to be more important to these leaders than their political future and the political future of other Democrats, whose re-election they expect those members to sacrifice to satisfy this lust for big government legislation with socialistic overtones that these three believe in so strongly.

Sensible Americans – Democrats, Republicans and independents – will oppose this desperate and tawdry process. They will oppose it despite what they think about the health care reform bills because they believe in the principle of good government, which is sadly missing in Washington, DC, and has reached a new low since the 2008 election.

Watching the left try to cope with the Tea Party movement is fascinating. Some evidence suggests that fear is in control, like the desperate marginalizing and demonizing of the Tea Party movement that so effectively shows the dissatisfaction of millions of Americans with government over-reaching. The left resorts to name-calling and tries to paint the Tea Party participants as a bunch of wild-eyed radicals, bent on revolution, perhaps even violence. But that is a gross distortion of these Americans, the vast majority of whom are everyday citizens merely taking advantage of their God-given and constitutionally-protected right to speak their mind.

Some on the left are unable to accept this movement as a genuine citizen protest against Big Government excesses and intrusions into personal freedom. That perspective is represented by columnist Reg Henry, who wrote last week, “If you happened to see the health care summit that President Barack Obama hosted the other day … you saw the Republicans insist with great certainty that Americans don’t want health care legislation.” Well, Mr. Henry, that’s not what Republicans said, which is that Americans don’t like “this” legislation, and are saying so loud and clear.

And as for their certainty in saying so, well, it’s because Republicans aren’t deaf or blind. They hear from their constituents, both Republicans and Democrats. They recognize that Tea Party participants are fed up with the over-bearing nature of the federal government, and the arrogant way the president and the leaders of Congress ignore their objections, and they say Congress had better not enact legislation affecting 17 percent of the economy by a 50 percent-plus-one vote when the country is so sharply divided on the issue, and Republicans are finally paying attention.

They know multiple polls conducted repeatedly over several months continue to show a consistent disapproval of the direction the country is heading, ranging from 60 to 73 percent, and a small percentage of approval, in some polls as low as 22 percent.

Another columnist, Ann McFeatters, relies on superficial thinking and insufficient research to help her misunderstand this phenomenon, in her column taking President Obama to task “for wasting political capital and failing to get as much done as he could have.”

No surprise that the left doesn’t understand the Tea Party movement; and no surprise that it fears its opposition. Many liberals are unable to cope with logical disagreements, and because they don’t think things through cannot present logical arguments for their ideas.

Hence, instead of working with the opposition to find common ground on the nation’s problems, the majority party tries to force its ideas on the country, which is government at its worst.

One of the saddest developments of the 2008 election is the death by suicide of the national news media. Any lingering questions of a liberal media bias have been laid to rest since the party conventions.

That the media is biased is not news to objective observers, who have been saying so for years. But this year’s fawning favoritism shown Barack Obama has caught the attention of everyday Americans, 49 percent of whom said in a Rasmussen poll last July they believed the media would slant their coverage toward Barack Obama in the race for the White House. They were right. Only 14 percent said they thought the media would benefit John McCain.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) 2008 Election News Watch Project confirms media favoritism for Sen. Obama in an October 14 statement. CMPA, a non-profit, non-partisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University, found that “since the party conventions kicked off the final phase of the presidential campaign, comments about Senator Barack Obama on the network evening news shows have been 65% positive, compared to only 36% positive comments about Senator John McCain.” CMPA also found that “despite a brief flurry of good press during the GOP convention, comments about [Alaska] Governor Sarah Palin have been only 42% positive.”

While the statement didn’t go into detail about the treatment of Gov. Palin when she came out of the blue to be John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, it was evident that the media didn’t know how to react, and resorted to spending time and ink on allegations against Gov. Palin’s husband and children, her newborn Down syndrome baby boy, and accusing her of being an unacceptably fundamentalist Christian.

And, it’s not only the news media that are biased, as late night comedians heaped ridicule upon Gov. Palin and John McCain along with the humor, and the two were more frequently the target of such humor than Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden. It is a sad commentary on American culture that millions of Americans allow late night TV to form or affect their political opinions, but that is reality.

From January through September of this year, CMPA found that John McCain was the butt of late night jokes 790 times to Barack Obama’s 502, 57 percent more often.

Sarah Palin only collected 185 jokes, but then she only came to prominence when she was named the VP candidate August 29. In September alone Palin was the subject of jokes 168 times, the most in a single month of all politicians in the report. Biden was the subject of jokes only 24 times in August and September combined.

An explanation of why Gov. Palin has attracted so much negative attention among comedians was explained by “The View’s” Joy Behar, an Obama worshiper reputed to be a comedienne herself, who told Larry King that Palin is a joke and has oodles of things to make fun of. Of Obama, she said, “he’s not funny; he’s not a joke. There’s nothing to make fun of with the guy.” Maybe it all depends upon your perspective, Ms. Behar.

The fawning and favorable treatment Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden have received must have lulled them into a sense of warm, fuzzy security, which perhaps explains the crazy events of last week.

Appearing on an Orlando, Florida television station Thursday, Sen. Biden was asked some pointed questions by WFTV anchor Barbara West. It is apparent from watching the interview that Mr. Biden expected to be asked the usual puffball questions he is accustomed to, and when Ms. West referenced the Karl Marx dictum “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” when asking if Senator Obama’s comment about “spreading the wealth around” was a socialist mechanism, Mr. Biden responded by asking, “Is this a joke? Are you joking? Is this a real question?” Told that it was a real question, the Senator laughed and then denied that Sen. Obama’s plan is “spreading the wealth around.”

Other appropriate questions were equally unappreciated, and the Obama-Biden campaign responded to this brazen act of responsible journalism by cutting WFTV out of future interviews during the campaign, the first of which was the cancellation of a scheduled interview with Sen. Biden’s wife Jill. This immature and petulant reaction strongly indicates that the campaign expects to not be asked tough questions by the media, and won’t stand for anything else. That reflects a troubling attitude that has no place in the White House.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects free speech, not the least of which is that of the press. It guarantees the press the freedom to tell the American people the unbiased and objective truth, and provide them the information to make sensible, informed decisions in life and in elections.

Through its disgraceful abandonment of its duty to the American people the media has been it’s own undoing, and perhaps that is justice of a sort.

But what do we do about its role in trying to elect a President of the United States, and how do we restore the media to its honorable and proper station?

Visit my Web site, Observations

A lot of people think voter registration efforts are a good thing. After all, shouldn’t every American participate in the electoral process that is such an important part of our nation and what makes it special?

A voter registration drive seeks to register to vote those who are eligible but not registered. Such drives are sometimes undertaken by non-partisan groups and are aimed at the general population.

Sometimes, however, they are undertaken for partisan purposes, and are aimed at specific demographic groups that are likely to vote for a particular candidate. One such effort so ubiquitously in the news lately is that of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The goal of ACORN and its Project Vote voter registration drives is “to empower low-income and minority communities by giving them a voice in the political process” and “working to increase public participation in our democratic process,” according to the organization’s Web site. ACORN also says that it “hopes that expanding the electorate will result in more candidates who appeal to historically underrepresented voting populations.”

Although it has a highly partisan edge, ACORN’s motive seems to be aiming to help people who are outside the mainstream of society by bringing them into the election process. But as you likely have read and heard, the foul stain on ACORN’s image goes much deeper and is far more sinister than mere partisanship.

In the past few years, eight of the organization’s employees pleaded guilty to federal election fraud in Missouri, and five others in Washington State. Reports of phony registration forms are legion: ACORN often turns in hundreds or thousands of fraudulent registrations during its drives, overloading state election officials who must sort the good registrants from the bad. ACORN’s efforts represent all that’s wrong with voter registration drives.

We might argue that those organizations that register legitimate and eligible voters without sparking a criminal investigation are doing good work, but we must realize that there is far more to exercising one’s right to vote than merely registering to vote and going to the polls.

Voting is a right, but like all rights it carries with it responsibility and people who vote must put out the effort to be sufficiently informed to make a reasoned decision about candidates and issues. One can argue that they might also be expected to take the initiative to register on their own if they are truly interested in participating in the election process. So, if people who are otherwise able don’t care enough about voting to register themselves and go to the polls, they probably shouldn’t be encouraged to vote.

This may be especially true for young people, many of whose abysmal ignorance of the candidates and issues should disqualify them from voting. This phenomenon has been recently demonstrated by John Stossel of ABC News. He went to a college campus and asked young people there basic questions about the United States government. Some showed substantial knowledge about their country, but most did not know basic information like how many states are in the union, how many U.S. Senators represent each state, and how many Senators are in the U.S. Senate. Do we want people with so little basic knowledge about their country helping to pick its president?

Thinking that perhaps a college campus was not the best place to find educated voters, with all that implies, Mr. Stossel moved to Washington, DC, and did a man-on-the-street survey showing photographs of prominent people to participants, most of whom were young people. The photographs were of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, candidates Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Sarah Palin, and also Judge Judy of television fame.

Senators Obama and McCain were routinely recognized; Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden less so, and some confused Mr. Biden with Mr. McCain. None recognized Justice Ginsberg, but most recognized Judge Judy.

Mr. Stossel spoke with Marc Brownstein and Andy Bernstein, the co-chairs of HeadCount, an organization that registers voters, and suggested that perhaps people who are uninformed really ought not to be voting. Mr. Brownstein called that “an argument that really, really smacks against everything we hold dear as Americans.” “Democracy,” opined Mr. Bernstein, “is not about taking the most educated portion of society and having them decide.” Presumably, he thinks those who recognize Judge Judy or think there are 12 U.S. Senators from each state are as able as educated voters to make good decisions at the ballot box.

However, despite the myopic view of Mr. Brownstein and Mr. Bernstein, being knowledgeable about candidates and issues is an essential element in an electoral system that truly reflects the will of the populace, and is so transparently obvious that it ought to be unnecessary to mention it.

Uninformed voters are easily manipulated, and as likely to make a bad choice as a good one. These people are more than just uninformed, they are dangerous.

People must demonstrate that they know how to drive a car before they get a drivers license. Should we do less for something as important as voting?

James Shott's Web site

Each American should know the honest and truthful history of their country, and most of us probably think we do. It is particularly important for the younger generation to know the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of the United States so that they will be properly prepared to defend America from challenges to its character, and efforts to change it into something it was not intended to be.

What we know and learn about our country during our lifetime we get from media reports; what happened before we were born we learned through the history books we read in school.

Knowing the truth about what goes on in the United States today is difficult because our media is increasingly biased and often dishonest. As it turns out, American history textbooks, both old and new, are inaccurate and biased, too, and some of what we thought we knew is false.

Ray Raphael has authored three books on American history, the most recent of which is Founding Myths: Stories that Hide our Patriotic Past, published in 2004. In writing this book he reviewed twenty-two elementary, middle school, and high school texts and found that while some were better than others, all contained serious lapses.

As examples he describes “warmed-over” stories from the 1800s, such as the story of Paul Revere’s Ride, which he said was “popularized in 1861 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who distorted every detail of the event to make his story better.”

 “More of the myths are perpetuated in elementary and middle school texts than in AP high school texts,” he said, “but this raises a troubling question: why are we telling children stories that we know to be false? Worse yet: why do we give these tales our stamp of approval and call them ‘history’”?

He cites another book in which the author reveals that she discovered ninety separate state and local “declarations of independence” that were written before the one we all celebrate. This shows that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, Thomas Jefferson had a lot of company thinking about declaring independence.

Such myths pervert our view of historical and political processes, Mr. Raphael said, leaving students with a warped idea of how their country was born and has evolved.

In addition to these myths and fanciful stories, many of today’s texts now also have a distinct anti-America bias, and try to paint our country as a evil influence in the world.

A new book by Larry Schweikart, a professor of history at the University of Dayton, details some of this in 48 Liberal Lies about American History. In an interview with FrontPageMagazine.com, Professor Schweikart discusses some of the inaccuracies he found in the top, best-selling college U.S. history textbooks that he examined.

About the idea that it was Mikhail Gorbachev, not Ronald Reagan, that ended the Cold War, Mr. Schweikart responded: “This lie is prominent, and in some form appears in most of the textbooks … Gorby is portrayed as this good-hearted, wonderful reformer who had to convince that evil Ronald Reagan that nukes were bad. It's absurd … [Gorbachev] had to do something about the Soviet economy because … it was collapsing like a house of cards. Reagan kept the pressure on, especially with ‘Star Wars,’ and the evidence is overwhelming from the former Soviet archives that this was what happened. Reagan forced Gorbachev to change, not vice versa.”

Among the perfidies Prof. Schweikart exposes are these:

• Columbus was responsible for killing millions of Indians
• Women had no rights in early America
• The Constitution was the creation of powerful elites protecting their financial interests
• The Rosenbergs were not spies, and were wrongfully executed
• Sen. Joseph McCarthy concocted the "Red Scare," and there was nothing to fear from Communist subversives
• John F. Kennedy was killed by LBJ and a secret team to prevent him from getting us out of Vietnam
• Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK because he was a deranged maniac—not because he was a Communist
• LBJ's Great Society had a positive impact on the poor
• Neither Ronald Reagan's election nor the "Contract with America" proved the triumph of conservative ideas
• September 11 was not the work of terrorists—it was a government conspiracy
• No terrorists, al-Qaeda leaders, or weapons of mass destruction were hiding in Iraq
• Muslim terrorists are poor and uneducated and hate us because we support Israel
• Global warming is a fact—and it's a man-made, American-driven problem

What kinds of images do distortions like those exposed in Prof. Schweikart’s book create in the minds of readers? Can they really understand their country and what it stands for? Will they be moved to defend its ideals if they believe those lies represent the truth?

When history is not factual, when it is distorted to make a story more appealing or to accomplish some narrow political goal, when the reporting of historical and contemporary events is in the hands of unprincipled, dishonest and biased people, truth is lost, and without truth we are a rudderless ship in a fierce storm.

Visit my Web site, Observations.