BY ED MORRISSEY   

The generally accepted view of the Deepwater Horizon disaster has focused on the blowout preventer and the non-standard procedures BP conducted just before the explosion and fire.  However, most of the damage and the main source of the spill came from the collapse and sinking of the DH platform rather than the initial explosion.  A new report by the Center for Public Integrity, based on testimony from people on scene and Coast Guard logs, contains evidence that the platform sunk because of a botched response from the Coast Guard, which failed to coordinate firefighting efforts and to get the proper resources to fight the fire:

The Coast Guard has gathered evidence it failed to follow its own firefighting policy during the Deepwater Horizon disaster and is investigating whether the chaotic spraying of tons of salt water by private boats contributed to sinking the ill-fated oil rig, according to interviews and documents.

BY ED MORRISSEY   

Despite the ruling this week that temporarily suspended the most controversial parts of Arizona’s new immigration-enforcement laws, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has no intention of slowing his efforts to find illegal immigrants and smuggling operations.  Under the aegis of previously-existing state laws, Arpaio has already committed to an enthusiastic approach to immigration law enforcement, regularly conducting sweeps and busting stash houses.  The setback in federal court has hardly dampened his spirits, as CBS News reports:

Lost in the hoopla over Arizona’s immigration law is the fact that state and local authorities for years have been doing their own aggressive crackdowns in the busiest illegal gateway into the country.

By STEVE TETREAULT

What is the mood in a state where almost one in five people is out of a job or underemployed? Where you've most likely held a foreclosure notice in your hand or know someone who has? Where nobody knows when the good times will return?

In Nevada, a new poll suggests people variously are angry, pessimistic, dismayed, anxious, fearful, skeptical and cynical, according to analysts reviewing the results. And to the extent Nevadans are looking for someone to blame, it probably does not help to be the Democrats in power.

"In Nevada and in many parts of the country the mood is very pessimistic," said Stephen Miller, chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "People are frightened. That mood out there is being reflected in the responses to the poll.

By Michael O'Brien

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) finds himself in a virtual tie on Friday with GOP candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada's Senate race.

Reid led Angle by one point, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal poll released this morning, well within the margin of error.

Forty-three percent of Nevada voters said they'd opt to reelect Reid if the election were held today, while 42 percent said they'd vote for Angle, a former state assemblywoman. Two percent said they'd choose someone else, 7 percent said they liked neither candidate, and 6 percent were undecided.

By JEANNINE AVERSA

The U.S. economic recovery will remain slow deep into next year, held back by shoppers reluctant to spend and employers hesitant to hire, according to an Associated Press survey of leading economists.
The latest quarterly AP Economy Survey shows economists have turned gloomier in the past three months. They foresee weaker growth and higher unemployment than they did before. As a result, the economists think the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates near zero until at least next spring.
Yet despite their expectation of slower growth, a majority of the 42 economists surveyed believe the recovery remains on track, raising hopes that the economy can avoid falling back into a "double-dip" recession.

By ANDY BARR

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced Wednesday night that he is considering introducing a constitutional amendment that would change existing law to no longer grant citizenship to the children of immigrants born in the United States.

Currently, the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to any child born within the United States.

But with 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, Graham said it may be time to restrict the ability of immigrants to have children who become citizens just because they are born within the country.

BY Noemie Emery

When he signed the health care reform bill earlier this year, Barack Obama gave progressives the prize they had aimed at for seven-plus decades, an event they compared to the passage of civil rights and of Social Security. At the same time, he destroyed the best chance the Democrats had for enduring center-left governance since the mid 20th-century, shattered the coalition that brought him to power, and dealt his party and faction a political setback from which they may not recover for years.

Only a year ago, to hear the press tell it, Obama was that rare bird, a transformational figure, the new FDR or the left’s Ronald Reagan. He was no mere presider—like the Bushes or Clinton—but a deliverer of major-league change. The alignments and mores of the past 30 years had been shattered; all that remained was to pick up the pieces and fashion them into a whole new mosaic that would run things for decades. Few doubted that this would be done.

(AFP) – The Obama administration said Wednesday it is sending its ambassador in Tokyo to a ceremony next week marking the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the first time a US ambassador has attended the event.
"Ambassador John Roos will represent the United States at the August 6 Hiroshima Peace Memorial, to express respect for all of the victims of World War II," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.
He said Roos is the first ambassador to attend the event, but could not immediately confirm if he is the highest-ranking US official or the only US official so far to join the ceremony.
Roos is expected to lay a floral wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on August 6, the 65th anniversary of the World War II bombing that helped force Japan's surrender, reports said.

Japan is the only nation to have been attacked with atomic bombs.
More than 140,000 people were killed instantly in Hiroshima or died in the days and weeks after the US attack. Three days later a US plane dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing more than 70,000 people.

By JACQUES BILLEAUD and AMANDA LEE MYERS

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona's immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown.

The overall law will still take effect Thursday, but without the provisions that angered opponents - including sections that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws.

The judge also put on hold parts of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places. In addition, the judge blocked officers from making warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants.

"Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked," U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled.

By THOMAS JOSCELYN & BILL ROGGIO

The battle for hearts and minds in Afghanistan has taken a new turn in the past two months. The Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar, has ordered his forces to kill or capture any civilians, including Afghan women, who cooperate with Coalition forces. Omar’s latest directive contradicts his marching orders from just one year ago, when he told his Taliban commanders to refrain from harming civilians working with the Coalition.

Omar reportedly issued his latest order in June. NATO announced that it had recovered a copy of the directive in July. Since then, Afghan press outlets have published a translation of Omar’s five-point order.

By PATRICK H. CADDELL AND DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN

During the election campaign, Barack Obama sought to appeal to the best instincts of the electorate, to a post-partisan sentiment that he said would reinvigorate our democracy. He ran on a platform of reconciliation—of getting beyond "old labels" of right and left, red and blue states, and forging compromises based on shared values.

President Obama's Inaugural was a hopeful day, with an estimated 1.8 million people on the National Mall celebrating the election of America's first African-American president. The level of enthusiasm, the anticipation and the promise of something better could not have been more palpable.

And yet, it has not been realized. Not at all.

By COREY KILGANNON

Manhattan playgrounds are serious stuff.

Swings, slides and seesaws are so 20th century, an antiquated approach to child leisure now routinely laughed out of the sandbox of learning theory. These days, child learning experts recommend playgrounds that equip children with “loose parts” and other tools to create a “child directed” play space.

So do not be surprised if there is a – child-directed – line of budding young geniuses outside the figure-8-shaped Imagination Playground when it opens Tuesday at the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan.

The playground has been five years in the making, a result of tons of research in progressive learning theory and child-development research, as well as $7.4 million in financing. In smaller, portable versions, it has been tested and tweaked after trial tours all over the city.

By Donovan Slack

Senator John Kerry said today he will voluntarily cut a check to the state of Massachusetts for some $500,000 in sales tax for a yacht he purchased in Rhode Island earlier this year.

"We’ve reached out to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and made clear that, whether owed or not, we intend to pay the equivalent taxes as if the boat’s home-port were currently in Massachusetts," Kerry said in a statement released this afternoon. "That payment is being made promptly."

Kerry has been dogged by questions in recent days by questions about whether he purposely tried to evade taxes in his home state by listing the $7 million yacht's home berth as Newport, R.I., when he actually intended to use the boat at his summer home on Nantucket. His yacht purchase was first reported in the Boston Herald.

Michael Medved

If conservatives want to succeed in taking our government back, we need to drop the popular but misguided slogan about "taking our country back."

Yes, an arrogantly incompetent president has combined with a corrupt collection of nanny-state, leftist hacks to grab (temporary) control of the Washington levers of power, but that doesn't mean that America itself has been seized or stolen. Clear-thinking conservatives can never lose sight of the fact that the nation, with its free market economy and incomparably dynamic private sector, is always bigger and better and, ultimately, more powerful than the government.

Moreover, the notion that we've lost the country itself - that America is "done," as one of my talk show colleagues recently proclaimed on air- only undermines the prospects for political success. Regaining control of Washington, D.C., after all, remains a less daunting undertaking—and a vastly more achievable goal—than "taking back" an entire nation that's somehow been lost.

 By Josh Rogin

As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee gets ready to vote on President Obama's nuclear arms reductions treaty, several Republican senators are now hinting that they will support the agreement and are working toward bipartisan ratification.

The key senator to watch is Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican point man on the treaty. Kyl, who is in talks with the office of Vice President Joseph Biden, isn't saying which way he's leaning -- but his friends say Kyl is getting closer to supporting ratification.

Utah Sen. Bob Bennett told The Cable in an exclusive interview Tuesday that he wants to vote for the treaty, but is holding off until he gets the nod from his leadership.

By JEFF ZELENY

Democrats added another 20 House seats to their list of targeted districts, officials confirmed Tuesday evening, raising the party’s commitment in television advertising for the final weeks of the campaign to more than $49 million.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reserved a third wave of television time, one week after announcing the selection of the first two waves that identified 40 of the most vulnerable seats in the midterm elections. The latest cluster of districts includes 14 open seats, a sign that Democrats intend to expand their sights – to a degree, at least – beyond a strict defensive match.

The districts, which stretch from Arkansas to West Virginia, include five seats currently held by Republicans. It was unclear how much advertising time was being reserved in those Republican seats and whether it signaled a real commitment or a political head fake, with Democrats hoping to entice their rivals into also investing there.

The decisions, which were confirmed by party strategists on Tuesday evening, bring even more clarity to the battlefield on which the two parties will fight for control of Congress over the next three months as Republicans work to reclaim the majority.

By Lulu Liu

Worldwide, 2010 is on track to become the warmest year on record.

Scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies reported recently that the average global temperature was higher over the past 12 months than during any other 12-month period in history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released corroborating data, adding that the past four months, including June, have each individually been the hottest on record as well.

The NASA findings were based on data from 5,000 weather stations around the world, said scientist Reto Ruedy, co-author of the study. Scientists used temperature anomalies, or departures from the baseline, rather than absolute measurements to account for differences in the instruments of individual stations.

The average global temperature, computed over a 12-month period, reached a new record in May and held steady for the month of June, he said. This was despite the recent minimum in solar activity, which should have had a cooling effect on Earth.

By IVAN MORENO

The federal government is rapidly expanding a program to identify illegal immigrants using fingerprints from arrests, drawing opposition from local authorities and advocates who argue the initiative amounts to an excessive dragnet.

The program has gotten less attention than Arizona's new immigration law, but it may end up having a bigger impact because of its potential to round up and deport so many immigrants nationwide.

The San Francisco sheriff wanted nothing to do with the program, and the City Council in Washington, D.C., blocked use of the fingerprint plan in the nation's capital. Colorado is the latest to debate the program, called Secure Communities, and immigrant groups have begun to speak up, telling the governor in a letter last week that the initiative will make crime victims reluctant to cooperate with police "due to fear of being drawn into the immigration regime."

The US Coast Guard dispatched emergency teams Tuesday after a boat crashed into an oil well off the coast of New Orleans, reportedly sending crude spewing some 20 feet into the air.

The wellhead, located about 65 miles (104 kilometers) south of New Orleans, was ruptured when it was struck by a dredge barge being pulled by a tug.

The Coast Guard said it could not immediately confirm reports that a giant fountain of oil was now spewing from the damaged wellhead, which was situated only six feet (1.8 meters) below the surface of the sea.

A strike Coast Guard team from Mobile, Alabama had been dispatched by boat to the scene as well as a helicopter from New Orleans with a marine pollution investigator on board.

"There have been reports of oil from the elision and we are investigating those reports to mitigate any environmental concerns," petty officer William Colclough, a Coast Guard spokesman, told AFP.

"The oil spill liability trust fund has been enacted to provide monetary support for any clean-up operation."

Unrelated to the massive gusher recently capped by BP deep down on the seabed, the incident did occur in a nearby part of the Gulf of Mexico and could require clean-up vessels to be redeployed if reports are confirmed.