In the light of day

I forgot last night—it was late—that BP is also drilling a new well that it hopes will relieve pressure from the leak and perhaps slow or eliminate the flow. Maybe that will work.

It’s hard, though, to take seriously anything BP says, since it’s consistently understated the size of the leak and withheld information from Congress and the public, including video that showed multiple leaks gushing oil and gas at rates impossible to measure. Now, according to BP President Tony Hayward, “Everything we can see suggests that the overall environmental impacts of this will be very, very modest.”

This is more than spin control. It’s lying.

Tony—and let’s add Rush Limbaugh, who bloviated that environmentalists are overreacting and the ocean is self-cleaning—needs to get some detergent and rags and start cleaning pelicans, or paddle up into a saltwater marsh and tell us how he’s going to clean oil out of reed beds.

One thing we do know: when it’s over, if it’s ever over, we’ll have lots of tar and feathers.